WICHITA, a city of Kansas, U.S.A., on the Arkansas river at the mouth of the Little Arkansas, 20o m. S.W. of Kansas City and 1,300 ft. above sea-level; the county seat of Sedgwick county and the second city of the State in size. It is on Federal high ways 54 and 81 and the airway from Chicago to Mexico and the Gulf ; has a municipal airport a mile square; and is served by the Frisco, the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient, the Midland Valley, the Missouri Pacific, the Rock Island, the Santa Fe, and electric railways. Pop. (1925) 88,367 (91% native white) ; in 1930, by Federal census. It is the commercial, financial, and industrial metropolis of southern Kansas and northern Okla homa. Its banking transactions, whether on the basis of clear ings ($425,000,000 in 1927) or of debits to individual accounts ($628,605,000) are greater by far than those of any other city in the State. Its stock yards handle 25,00o carloads and 75,00o truckloads of live stock in a year; its packing plants send out 15o, 000,000 lb. of meat products; and its flour-mills have a daily
capacity of Ii,000 barrels. Wichita is a leading centre for the manufacture of aeroplanes. An aeroplane factory, established in 1919, in 1928 employed about i,000 persons. The total output of its industries in 1927 was $57,789,969. Since 1909 the city has operated under a commission-manager form of gov ernment. A municipal university was established in 1926, to which were transferred the properties of Fairmount college. Friends university, in the western part of the city, was founded and is supported.by the Kansas Yearly Meeting of Friends. The city's assessed valuation of property for 1928 was $135,169,071.
Wichita was the name of a tribe of Indians. The city was founded in 1870 and chartered in 1871. In 188o it had a popu lation of only 4,911.