Lawrence, Kansas
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N 38° 58.397 W 095° 14.143
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This is the Wikipedia entry For Lawrence, Kansas.
Waymark Code: WM2YAC
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 01/09/2008
Views: 158
Lawrence is a river city in and the seat of Douglas County, Kansas, United States, 41 miles (66 km) west of Kansas City, along the banks of both the Kansas (Kaw) and Wakarusa Rivers. It is considered governmentally independent and is the principal city within the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 80,098, making it the sixth largest city in Kansas. Lawrence is the home of the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.
History
Lawrence was founded in 1854 for the New England Emigrant Aid Company by Charles Robinson, who later served as governor of Kansas. The city was named after Amos Adams Lawrence, a prominent politician and antislavery partisan and the son of famed philanthropist Amos Lawrence.
In the Bleeding Kansas era, Lawrence was a center of anti-slavery sentiment. On May 21, 1856, a pro-slavery posse led by Sheriff Samuel J. Jones burned the Free-State Hotel, destroyed the equipment of two anti-slavery newspapers, and looted several other businesses in an attack known as the sack of Lawrence; only one man was killed, struck dead by a stone falling from the burning hotel. Abolitionist John Brown's nearby Pottawatomie Massacre is believed to have been a reaction to this event. On August 21, 1863, during the American Civil War, Confederate guerrillas led by William Quantrill burned most of the houses and commercial buildings in Lawrence and killed 150 to 200 of the men they found in the Lawrence Massacre. Of historical importance is KU's Pioneer Cemetery, perhaps best known for being the final resting place of Thomas Barber, a free-state settler, and Elmer McCollum, KU alumnus who is credited with discovering Vitamin A. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, is buried in East Lawrence in Memorial Park Cemetery.
The University of Kansas was founded in Lawrence in 1865 by the citizens of Lawrence under a charter granted by the Kansas Legislature, with the donation of 40 acres (160,000 m²) of land on Mount Oread by former Kansas Governor Charles Robinson and his wife, Sara, and a small monetary gift from Amos Adams Lawrence. As a college town, Lawrence is known for its liberal philosophy and distinctive culture.
Lawrence also holds the distinctions of having been the site of operation for the state's first railroad in 1871 and the city where the state's first telephone was installed in 1877. In 1989, when the Free State Brewing Co. opened in Lawrence, it was the first legal brewery in Kansas in more than 100 years. The restaurant is in a renovated inter-urban trolley station in downtown Lawrence. The city is home to the state's only hydro-electric plant.
In the early 1980s Lawrence grabbed national and later world attention because of the television movie The Day After. The TV movie first appeared on ABC but was later shown in movie theaters around the world. The movie depicted what would happen to average Americans, particularly those living in Lawrence and surrounding communities, if the United States was destroyed in a nuclear war. The movie was filmed in Lawrence with help from many people in the community.
Geography
Lawrence is situated at 38°57'36?N, 95°15'12?W (38.959902, -95.253199)GR1.
This is about 41 miles (66 km) west of Kansas City, and about 20 miles (30 km) east of Topeka.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 28.7 square miles (74.3 km²), of which, 28.1 square miles (72.8 km²) of it is land and 0.6 square miles (1.5 km²) is water, including Potter Lake on the KU campus. The total area is 2.06% water.
Google Earth, software that allows the user to "fly" over the surface of the earth, mapped with high-quality satellite photography and accurate topographical data, has a default position when started up that is centered exactly on the city of Lawrence (specifically on Meadowbrook Apartments, lying between Compton Square and Regency Place). This may be verified by running the software and zooming in from the default start position without rotating the virtual globe at all. This location was set by Brian McClendon, a 1986 graduate of the University of Kansas and director of engineering for Google Earth.[1]
Climate
Over the course of a year, temperatures range from an average low of almost 20°F in January to an average high above 90°F in July. The high temperature reaches 90°F an average of 49 days a year and reaches 100°F an average of five days a year. The minimum temperature falls below the freezing point (32°F) an average of 96 days a year. Typically the first fall freeze occurs between mid-October and the second week of November, and the last spring freeze occurs between the last week of March and the third week of April.
The area receives nearly 40 inches of precipitation during an average year with the largest share being received in May and June; the April-to–June period averages 32 days of measurable precipitation. During a typical year the total amount of precipitation may be anywhere from 27 to 54 inches. There are on average 100 days of measurable precipitation each year. Winter snowfall averages almost 18 inches, but the median is less than 10 inches. Measurable snowfall occurs an average of 10 days a year with at least an inch of snow being received on six of those days. Snow depth of at least an inch occurs an average of 18 days a year.
Sites of interest
Downtown Lawrence, in particular Massachusetts Street, has a lively atmosphere and is filled with restaurants, bars, galleries, shops and music venues.
Bowersock Power
Bowersock Dam provides hydropower to riverfront businesses like the Lawrence Journal-World.
The University of Kansas campus is home to many museums, including the KU Natural History Museum [2] and the Spencer Museum of Art [3]. The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics houses various artifacts from the life of the former Kansas Senator. Another site of interest is the Lawrence Arts Center. It has daytime activities, organized plays and acts, and an art gallery filled with artwork created by the townspeople. Artwork, theater, and other related activities are some of the biggest parts of Lawrence.
Clinton Lake is approximately three miles (5 km) southwest of Lawrence and has areas for boating, swimming, fishing, and camping.
There are a variety of mountain biking venues, including the trails at Clinton Lake, and the river trails by the Kansas River.
Home to the Gaslight Tavern.
From 1947 until 1981, Lawrence was the location of the Centron Corporation, one of the major industrial and educational film production companies in the United States at the time. The studio was founded by two University of Kansas graduates and employed university students and faculty members as advisers and actors. Also, many talented local and area filmmakers were given their first chances to make movies with Centron, and some stayed for decades. Others went on to successful careers in Hollywood. One of these local residents, Herk Harvey, was employed by Centron as a director for 35 years and in the middle of his tenure there he made a full-length theatrical film, Carnival of Souls, a horror cult film shot mostly in Lawrence and released in 1962. The Centron Corporation soundstage and residing building is now called Oldfather Studios and houses the University of Kansas film program.
There are three separate tunnel systems underneath Massachusetts Street, as well as an extensive steam-tunnel network underneath the University of Kansas, which includes tunnels designed as nuclear attack shelters.
Lawrence's Mount Oread is named after Oread Seminary in Worcester, which was founded by the organization that sent the city's first settlers.[2]
The unincorporated area of Stull, Kansas, which lies just west of Lawrence across Clinton Lake, contains a cemetery that a popular local urban legend claims is a "gateway to hell." In 2002, a church that stood next to the cemetery was torn down after years of abandonment.[4]
The default Google Earth view is centered on the Meadowbrook apartment complex in Lawrence, because the developer of the software lived in that complex as a child.[3]
Places of interest include Haskell Indian Nations University. The campus can be accessed from 23rd Street and Barker Avenue.
Notable natives and residents
Main article: People from Lawrence, Kansas
Poet, author, and counterculture figure William S. Burroughs moved to Lawrence in 1983 and died there at age 83, from complications following a heart attack, on August 2, 1997.
Writer, editor and early Oscar Wilde biographer Frank Harris worked as a cowboy in the Lawrence area and attended KU during the 1870s. His experiences in Lawrence are described in his books "My Reminiscences as a Cowboy" and "My Life and Loves."
Three well known bands hailed from Lawrence, Kansas; The Get Up Kids, The Appleseed Cast and The Anniversary.
The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, was the first basketball coach at the University of Kansas and was the only KU coach with a losing record.
Well-known singer-songwriter Josh Ritter wrote a song called "Lawrence, Kansas".[5]
Lawrence in the Media
In the popular CW television series, Supernatural, Lawrence is the hometown of the two stars, Sam Winchester and his brother Dean.
In the 1983 TV movie The Day After, Lawrence was ravaged by fallout from detonations of nearby Soviet nuclear bombs, including one which destroyed Kansas City, Missouri. Lawrence was also destroyed in the 2006 TV Series Jericho: In the seventh episode of the series, it is mentioned that Lawrence was destroyed by a nuclear blast. Some exterior shots for the CBS series Jericho were filmed in Lawrence. [6]
Colleen McMurphy, a character in the cult TV series China Beach, hailed from Lawrence.
A scene from Where Pigeons Go To Die, a movie directed by Michael Landon, was shot in the 1300 block of Massachusetts Street.
In the television show Supernatural, the main characters were born in Lawrence; several scenes from the pilot (and one whole episode) were set in Lawrence.
The beginning and ending chapters of Peter Cameron's novel The City of Your Final Destination (novel) take place in Lawrence, where the protagonist is a graduate student at the University of Kansas. The novel depicts Lawrence in a way more closely approaching reality than it does Uruguay, where most of the novel's action takes place.
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