Oh Give Me A Home
Kansas Wildife and Parks Magazine, written by Mark Shoup.
Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play.
Every Kansas elementary school student is familiar with these lyrics; they're from the official Kansas state song, "Home On the Range" (lyrics by Dr. Brewster Higley, music by Daniel Kelley). It's the official Kansas state song because the Kansas legislature made it so in 1947.
Most official Kansas symbols evoke the outdoors. The Sunflower State, as we are often called, officially gained statehood on January 29, 1861. It was named after the Indians that the Sioux called the Kansa, meaning "people of the south wind."
The official Kansas flag has a dark blue background with the state seal in the center. A sunflower on a bar of twisted gold lies above the seal. The seal contains a landscape that incudes a rising sun, a river, and a man plowing a field. A wagon train heads west, and buffalo are seen fleeing from two Indians. Around the top of the seal is a cluster of thirty-four stars. The state motto - Ad Astra per Aspera - appears above the stars.
Even this motto evokes the outdoors: "To the Stars through Difficulties."
The actions of one elementary school show one way a symbol becomes official. Caldwell, Kansas became the official ornate box turtle capital of the world in 1986 after a massive campaign by the 1985-86 Caldwell 6th grade class to have the ornate box turtle named the official state reptile. The turtle was named the state reptile on April 14, 1986, when Kansas Gov. John Carlin signed the official bill passed by the legislature.
In 1994, a similar effort by Wichita school children resulted in the barred tiger salamander gaining state symbol status.
How many other state symbols can you name? What's the state mammal? Of course, it's the first critter named in the state song -- the buffalo, more correctly called the American bison. This great animal once roamed the Sunflower State by the millions.
In 1937, the Kansas legislature proclaimed one of our more familiar wildlife, the meadowlark, the state bird because it is "preferred by a vote of the Kansas children."
And who could ignore the state flower: "She's a sunflower,/She's my one flower/She's a sunflower from the Sunflower State," as the song goes, and the sunflower holds a special place in the hearts of all Kansans. Thus, the legislature reasoned in 1903:
"This flower has to all Kansans a historic symbolism which speaks of frontier days, winding trails, pathless prairies, and is full of the past, the pride of the present, and richly emblematic of the majesty of a golden future."The legislature specificied only the genus Helianthus, so take your pick of the several sunflower species found in Kansas.
As the Great Seal of Kansas depicts, Kansans are an industrious people, so what more appropriate symbol for the state insect than the honeybee? This interesting and beneficial animal was declared the state insect in 1976.
But if you were asked to pick a symbol of strength and majesty closely associated with images of the prairie, none would be more endearing than the giant cottonwood tree, found throughout Kansas. In 1937, the Kansas Legislature named this popular tree a Kansas state symbol.
Belive it or not, Kansas has a state soil. Harney silt loam was adopted as the Kansas State Soil on April 12, 1990, when Governnor Mike Hayden signed Senate Bill 96. Kansas is one of only seven states to have named a state soil. It took five years through a strong grassroots effort to get Harney named as the state soil.
Is there anything left? Other suggestions for state symbols have been made, such as a state fish and a state fossil, but so far, they have not joined the elite - the symbols of a great state.
A note of thanks to the Kansas Heritage Home Page for allowing us to use some of their graphics.