Wheat fields, sunflowers, tornadoes and the Wizard of Oz—these are images of Kansas. Residents of the mostly treeless Great Plains appreciate wind, trees, and rivers. KanZe is an Indian word meaning “south wind.” The French changed the word to Kansas, which was applied to an Indian tribe and a river, and finally to the state of Kansas.
For their state bird and tree, Kansans chose the musical meadowlark and hardy cottonwood. The Great Plains’ most popular bird and tree, they also represent Nebraska, Kansas’ northern neighbor. Kansas shares its state animal, the bison, or “American buffalo,” with its southern neighbor, Oklahoma.
But Kansas’ most beloved emblem is the flower that gives it the nickname Sunflower State. Together, Kansas’ symbols celebrate the grasslands that have been largely replaced by wheat fields.
One of America’s finest remaining patches of natural grassland is protected in Flint Hills National Grassland. East of the Flint Hills, the Osage Plains cover eastern Kansas along the border with Missouri south to the edge of the Ozark highlands.
West of the Flint Hills lie the Great Plains, interrupted by the three ranges of the Smoky Hills in north-central Kansas. In the western range, explorers and settlers first encountered Castle Rock and Monument Rocks, famous landmarks carved of chalk deposited by ancient seas. Few pioneers imagined they were also landmarks in time, tombstones for fantastic creatures buried beneath their feet.
From the Smoky Hills the High Plains of western Kansas slope upward towards the Rocky Mountains in neighboring Colorado, interrupted by sand dunes along the Cimarron and Arkansas rivers.
Before Alaska was admitted to the Union, the center of the United States was in Kansas. And the heart of Kansas is a prairie sea carpeting an ancient chalk bed that underlies about one third of the state. There’s no place like Kansas!
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - 
