About Wichita, Kansas
The most populous city in the state of Kansas, Wichita had a population of about 400,000 as of the 2020 census, whereas the Wichita metropolitan area had a population of a little over 647,000. It is located in south-central Kansas along the Arkansas River.
Wichita began as a trading post on the Chisholm Trail in the 1860s and was incorporated as a city in 1870. It became a destination for cattle drives traveling north from Texas to Kansas railroads. In 1875, Wyatt Earp served as a police officer in Wichita for about one year before going to Dodge City.
In the 1920s and 1930s, businessmen and aeronautical engineers established aircraft manufacturing companies in Wichita, including Beechcraft, Cessna, and Stearman Aircraft. The city became an aircraft production hub known as “The Air Capital of the World”. The open, flat prairies of the Midwest provided ideal, obstruction-free areas for early test flights, while the steady regional winds allowed pioneers to safely test aircraft capabilities. Textron Aviation, Learjet, Airbus, and Boeing/Spirit AeroSystems continue to operate design and manufacturing facilities in Wichita, and the city remains a major center of the American aircraft industry.
Catholic places of interest in the Wichita, Kansas area:
Wichita: Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception: tomb of Fr. Emil Kapaun.
Clonmel (15 miles southwest of Wichita): Saint John the Evangelist Church
Traveling to Wichita, Kansas:
By air: The main commercial airport in Wichita is Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (code ICT), the largest airport in Kansas.
By train: There is currently no Amtrak train service directly to Wichita. The nearest Amtrak station is in Newton, Kansas (29 miles north of Wichita), served by The Southwest Chief, which runs from Chicago to Los Angeles.
We guess the line in the 1987 movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is true. The exact quote spoken by the character Owen (played by Dylan Baker) is: “Train don’t run out of Wichita… unlessin’ you’re a hog or a cattle. People train runs out of Stubbville.” There is no actual town named Stubbville, it was a fictional town made up for the movie.