Salina /səˈlaɪnə/ is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 46,889.

In the early 1800s, the Kanza tribal land reached eastward from the middle of the Kansas Territory. In 1858, settlers from Lawrence founded the Salina Town Company with a wagon circle, under constant threat of High Plains tribal attacks from the west. It was named for the salty Saline River. Saline County was soon organized around this township, and in 1870, Salina incorporated as a city.

As the westernmost town on the Smoky Hill Trail, Salina boomed until the Civil War by establishing itself as a trading post for westbound immigrants, gold prospectors bound for Pikes Peak, and area American Indian tribes. It boomed again from the 1940s-1950s when the Smoky Hill Army Airfield was built for World War II strategic bombers.

It is now a micropolis and regional trade center for North Central Kansas. Its larger employers are Tony's Pizza, Exide Battery, Great Plains Manufacturing, and Asurion. Saline is home to Kansas Wesleyan University and KSU College of Technology and Aviation higher education institutions.

Shortly prior to European colonization of the area in the early 1700s, the site that would become Salina was located within the western territory of the Kansa people. Claimed first by France as part of Louisiana and later acquired by the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, it was within the area organized by the U.S. as Kansas Territory in 1854. The French traders who mapped the forks of les Grande Riviere des Cansez, located the western village of les Cansez at the general confluence of the Smoky Hill, Saline, and Solomon Rivers with villages of the Paducas tribe just to the west on heads of those streams.

By the time of exploration of the prairie by the United States following the Louisiana Purchase in the early 1800s, the Republican Pawnee had established its influence in the Smoky Hills, driving the Kansa to its northeastern Kansas settlements.

The United States established forts throughout the territory to provide security for established commercial trade trails, including the Smoky Hill Trail and the Santa Fe Trail. The Smoky Hill Trail passed through the Salina site where the Fort Riley/Fort Larned Road split off to cross the Smoky Hill River to the southwest.^{[citation needed]}

By the time of the first tentative settlements by United States citizens, the site was claimed as hunting grounds by the High Plains tribes of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux, which had expanded into the area, driving out the Pawnee. However, the Kansa continued to hunt in the area, in which they were joined by the Delaware and Potawatomi tribes which had been relocated by the U.S. Government near the Kansa's reserve and assured of hunting access to the plains. The High Plains tribes were hostilely opposed to both the U.S. settlers in central Kansas and to the relocated tribes in Eastern Kansas and Nebraska, who they also regarded as settlers, and there were several raids in the Salina area in the 1850s. These Indian skirmishes repeatedly discouraged settlement of the Salina site until 1857, according to William A. Phillips who resided in Lawrence while scouting settlement locations.