|
 Seats for Forklifts Kansas - Kansas is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, that in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," though this was probably not the term's original meaning. Inhabitants of Kansas are referred to as "Kansans."
For thousands of years what is now Kansas was home to diverse and numerous Native American tribes. Tribes within the Eastern area of the state normally lived within villages along the river valleys. Tribes within the Western region of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, during the midst of political wars over the slavery problem. When opened officially to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas will become a free state or a slave state. Therefore, the region was a hotbed of chaos and violence during its early days as these forces collided, and was called Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on the 29th of January, the year 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Following the Civil War, the residents of Kansas grew fast, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Nowadays, the state of Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum and sunflowers.
The agricultural outputs of Kansas are cattle, sheep, sorghum, wheat, cotton, soybeans, hogs, corn, and salt. Eastern Kansas is part of the Grain Belt, an area of major grain production within the central United States. The industrial outputs are commercial and private aircrafts, transportation equipment, publishing, food processing, chemical products, machinery, apparel, petroleum and mining.
The state of Kansas ranks 8th within U.S. oil production. Production has experienced a steady, natural decline since it becomes more and more difficult to extract oil over time. Ever since oil prices bottomed during the year 1999, oil production within Kansas has remained fairly constant, with an average monthly rate of roughly 2.8 million barrels during 2004. The recent higher prices have made carbon dioxide sequestration and other oil recovery methods more economical.
Kansas also ranks 8th in natural gas production, though production has declined since the 90's. This is mainly due to the gradual depletion of the Hugoton Natural Gas Field, which is the biggest natural gas field within Kansas. During the year 2004, increased coalbed methane production and slower declines in the Hugoton gas fields contributed to a smaller overall decline.
The Kansas economy is also heavily influenced by the aerospace trade. Some large aircraft companies have manufacturing facilities within Kansas City and Wichita, like for example Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing, Cessna, Learjet, and Hawker Beechcraft (previously Raytheon). A lot of these major company's have their head office within the state of Kansas, such as: Embarq, the Sprint Nextel Corporation, Garmin, YRC Worldwide, Koch Industries and Payless Shoes.
| |
