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Throughout 2025, the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum is offering free admission on Sundays. The free Sundays have been offered since 2022 thanks to a gift from the Ruth Spooner Stone Charitable Trust and Instrust Bank.

Following are next week’s menus for Friendship Meals and Meals on Wheels in both Sedgwick County and Sumner County. The recommended cost is $5 per meal, if you are able to pay.

Kansas, like other states, recognizes a number of symbols that represent its customs, cultures, and environment. Because Kansas is one of the major wheat production states, it is often referred to as the “Wheat State.” Other symbols, including the buffalo, cottonwood tree, honeybee, Western meadowlark, salamander, sunflower, and box turtle, little blue stem, and Harney loam silt are officially designated as state symbols. Symbols become official through the legislative process. In 1861 the Kansas Legislature adopted the state seal. In 1986 when the state was celebrating its 125th birthday, a sixth grade class in Caldwell, Kansas, nominated the ornate box turtle to be the state reptile, which started the legislative process. Students from Sabetha, Valley Falls, and Healy supported the state fruit, Sandhill Plum.

Before the 1600s, the Kanza or Kaws lived as one nation with a large number of Siouan-speaking people known as the Dhegiha Siouan group. Originating east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River, the Dhegiha tribes migrated west down the Ohio River. Although scholars differ as to exactly when this translocation occurred, it is clear that it was accomplished by the 1600s and, at that time, the Dhegihans had separated into the five tribes we now know as the Kaws, Quapaws, Omahas, Osages, and Poncas.

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8 Years Ago On a 4-3 vote, the Haysville USD 261 Board of Education voted Monday to place the district’s new natatorium at Campus High School. The decision at the regular monthly meeting effectively ends efforts with the city of Haysville to build the natatorium adjacent to the new Haysville Activity Center that currently is under construction at Fred A.

SUMNER COUNTY – The Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society in Wellington will host “Bound for Canaan: The role of Abolition and the Underground Railroad in Kansas' this Monday. The presentation will be at 6:30 p.m.

140 Years Ago The city council met on Jan. 12, 1885.

Chelsea Ayres Priest, former resident of rural Garden Plain and former Garden Plain student, became a partner at Sidley Austin, LLP on Jan. 1.

TSnews GODDARD – The January meeting of the Goddard Chamber of Commerce was a great opportunity for local business owners and managers to learn about additional resources right here in Sedgwick County. The guest speaker at the Chamber meeting was Brandy Willett, regional director for the Kansas Small Business Development Center located at Wichita State University.