Today in 1861, Kansas became the 34th state in the Union.
That gave Kansas all kinds of benefits, like representation in Congress, and a spot on the map.
But like its fellow states, it also meant that from time to time, people would propose seceding from that state and forming a new entity, like the movement in the 1990s to create the state of West Kansas.
If you look through the efforts to create new states out of existing ones, a lot of them are launched by people who feel like their part of the state is not being heard by the powers that be.
In the 1990s, the Kansas government approved a new statewide system for funding public schools.
The idea was to ensure a certain level of funding for kids across the state.
In southwestern Kansas, the formula would have capped their per-student spending at levels that were lower than what they had been spending, while also raising their taxes.
In a region already felt like it was on the outside looking in when it came to state government, the school funding framework left some western Kansans fed up.
So they started talking about forming their own.
Nine southwestern counties started signing petitions to turn their region into the 51st state, West Kansas.
Voters in these areas backed non-binding ballot questions by big margins.
There was a gathering in the community of Ulysses, Kansas to determine borders: some proposals called for adding parts of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico to the new state.
And they chose state symbols: the yucca as state flower and the pheasant as state bird.
A motel in the area even put up a sign trolling Kansas’ capital city, it read “To hell with Topeka, let’s secede.”
Of course, they did not.
Their movement ran into the same hurdles as many other state-level secession efforts.
Plus, the state of Kansas had argued that creating a new state in the west was unconstitutional.
The plan’s backers said, fine, let’s amend the constitution, though the rest of the state voted that idea down.
New York City has said goodbye to MetroCards as a payment system for bus and subway rides.
But you can relive the glory days of those plastic fare cards in a new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum.
They’ve got lots of designs for the magnetic cards, the instructions New York created to introduce the cards to residents, and the Metrocard’s official cartoon mascot, Cardvaark.
Cardvaark!
Parts of Kansas once tried to secede and form ‘West Kansas.’ It helps explain our politics today (KAKE)
NYC’s Transit Museum Pays Homage to the MetroCard (Hyperallergic)
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