Kansas City, Kansas

Kansas City is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas. It is the county seat of Wyandotte County. Kansas City is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. About two million people live in this region. The city is part of the "Unified Government". This also includes the cities of Bonner Springs and Edwardsville. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 146,867. The city is at Kaw Point, which is the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers.
History.
Kansas City formed in 1868. It was first officially mentioned in October 1872. The Kansas-Missouri border area became the first battlefield in the conflict over slavery that led to the American Civil War. The first city election was held on October 22, 1872. It resulted in the election of Mayor James Boyle. The mayors of the city after its organization have been James Boyle, C. A. Eidemiller, A. S. Orbison, Eli Teed and Samuel McConnell. John Sheehan was appointed Marshal in 1875. He was also Chief of Police. He had the control over five policemen. In June 1880, the Governor of Kansas made the city of Kansas City a city of the second class with the Mayor Samuel McConnell present. James E. Porter was Mayor in 1910.
It was one of the 100 largest cities for many US Census counts, from 1890 to 1960, including 1920, when it had over 100,000 residents for the first time. In 1997, voters approved a proposition to unify the city and county governments.
On March 30, 2011, Internet search company Google Inc. announced that Kansas City had been selected as the site of an experimental fiber-optic network that Google will build at no cost to the city. Kansas City was chosen from a field of 1,100 US communities that had applied for the network. Google plans to have the network in operation by 2012.
Geography.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 127.8 sq mi (331.0 km2). 124.3 sq mi (321.8 km2) of it is land and 3.5 sq mi (9.2 km2) of it is water.
Cityscape.
Kansas City is organized into a system of neighborhoods, some with histories as independent cities or the sites of major events.
Neighborhoods of Kansas City, Kansas
Climate.
Kansas City is near "Tornado Alley", a region where cold air from the Rocky Mountains and Canada meets warm air from the Gulf of Mexico. This situation causes the formation of powerful storms. The most recent tornado to strike Kansas City itself was in May 2003. The region is also prone to ice storms, such as the 2002 ice storm during which hundreds of thousands lost power for days and (in some cases) weeks. The MoKan area was subject to flooding, including the Great Flood of 1993 and the Great Flood of 1951.
People.
As with Kansas City, Missouri, the percentage of the city's biggest ethnic group, non-Hispanic whites, has gone down from 76.3% in 1970 to 40.2% in 2010.
Sister cities.
Kansas City has four sister cities, as designated by Sister Cities International: