Tour the world, without leaving the state

By Tom Hein, Public Affairs Manager for Sedgwick County 

Here's some mid-week fun for you. We all know that Kansas is home to amazing communities with histories and heritages all their own.

One KDOT employee likes to tell people he just returned from Moscow. The usual reaction he gets is “Wow, that sounds like an interesting vacation!” He doesn’t always tell them that Moscow is a town of about 300 in Stevens County, Kansas.

There is a Moscow in Kansas and of course, Moscow, Russia

It turns out, one can travel to a lot of exotic places in Kansas. There are great vacation locales like Rome, Milan, Agra, Perth, Toronto, Havana, Bern and Zurich.

There is a town called Rome in Kansas, but it's not Rome, Italy

Did you know in Kansas, Norway and Cuba are neighbors in the north but Peru is almost to Oklahoma?

And we have LOTS of four-letter town names, a few of them names of someone you know. There’s Alma and Arma, Elmo, Fred, Gano and Gove, Hawk, Hope and Hoyt, Iola and Iuka, Kipp, Lane and Leon, Neal, Olpe, Otis and Otto, Peck, Rock and Rose, Troy, Voda, Zook and Zybo, just to name a few.

There are cities in Kansas that represent iconic state symbols as well:

We have Cottonwood Falls to recognize our state tree while Bison and Buffalo celebrate our state animal.

Where’s Waldo? Eureka! It’s just east of Paradise.

Kismet is a Gem of a name and Jewell makes us Smileyberg.

Who wouldn’t want to go to Buttermilk?

Isn’t all this Bazaar?

Painting of a historical battle during the battle of Waterloo during the Napoleonic Wars. 

But in your travels of Kansas towns, be careful you don’t find your Waterloo (a little berg in Kingman County). It’s where Wellington (in Sumner County) got the best of Napoleon Bonaparte.