Topeka, Kansas

Topeka (/təˈpiːkə/ tə-PEE-kə) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 126,587.

The city, laid out in 1854, was one of the Free-State towns founded by Eastern antislavery men immediately after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Bill. In 1857, Topeka was chartered as a city.

The city is well known for the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

The name "Topeka" is a Kansa-Osage word that means "place where we dig potatoes", or "a good place to dig potatoes".^{[citation needed]} As a placename, Topeka was first recorded in 1826 as the Kansa name for what is now called the Kansas River. Topeka's founders chose the name in 1855 because it "was novel, of Indian origin, and euphonious of sound". Mixed-heritage Kansa Native American Joseph James, called Jojim, is credited with suggesting Topeka's name.

For many millennia, Native Americans inhabited the Great Plains of North America. From the 16th to the mid-18th centuries, the Kingdom of France laid claim to large parts of North America. In 1762, late in the French and Indian War, France secretly ceded Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. In 1800, Spain returned Louisiana to France. In 1803, the United States purchased the territory, which included most of the land of modern Kansas, from France for $15 million (~$380 million in 2024).

In the 1840s, wagon trains made their way west from Independence, Missouri, on a journey of 2,000 miles (3,000 km), following what came to be known as the Oregon Trail. About 60 miles (97 km) west of Kansas City, Missouri, three half-Kansas Indian sisters married to the French-Canadian Pappan brothers established a ferry service allowing travelers to cross the Kansas River at what is now Topeka. During the 1840s and into the 1850s, travelers could reliably find a way across the river, but little else was in the area.

In the early 1850s, traffic along the Oregon Trail was supplemented by trade on a new military road stretching from Fort Leavenworth through Topeka to the newly established Fort Riley. In 1854, after completion of the first cabin, nine men established the Topeka Town Association. The group included Cyrus K. Holliday, an "idea man", who became mayor of Topeka and founder of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Soon, steamboats were regularly docking at the Topeka landing, depositing meat, lumber, and flour and returning eastward with potatoes, corn, and wheat. By the late 1860s, Topeka had become a commercial hub that offered many Victorian era comforts.

Topeka was a bastion for the free-state movement during the problems in Kansas Territory between abolitionist and proslavery settlers (the latter of whom controlled the legal government based out of Lecompton). After southern forces barricaded Topeka in 1856, Topeka's leaders took actions to defend the free-state town from invasion. A militia was organized and stone fortifications were built on Quincy Street. The fortifications seemed to consist of low-lying earthwork levies strengthened by the presence of at least one cannon. The militia manned the fortifications until at least September 1856, when the siege around the town was lifted.