KNS

For small towns with dwindling populations and shrinking tax bases, luring travelers to stop and spend a few dollars is a matter of community survival. Some turn to quirky roadside tourist attractions. And the community pride these offbeat sites generate can be just as valuable as the money they bring in.

For Kansans living in Liberal, Dodge City and Hays, there’s only one airline that flies to and from the local airport. So when that airline filed paperwork this spring to terminate services, it sent shockwaves through these remote towns.

Installing fiber-optic internet in sparsely populated places like western Kansas is extremely expensive, even with government subsidies. But some smaller, local broadband providers are finding ways to make it work where the big national companies have not.

The Kansas wildfire season is typically winding down around this time of year. But after months of drought, high winds and dry grass continue to fuel extreme wildfire conditions across the state.

The water in the Ogallala aquifer is worth billions of dollars to western Kansas, but it’s rapidly disappearing. And it's been a challenge to find ways to slow the depletion.

For towns with only a few hundred residents, keeping tap water clean and safe can pose a crippling expense. The predicament is likely to become more common in western Kansas as farm chemicals seep into dwindling water supplies.

In rural places like western Kansas, the physical distance between support services and victims of domestic and sexual violence adds to the psychological and cultural barriers that might keep someone from seeking help.

Cotton growing is on the rise in Kansas, but it still only accounts for a small fraction of the state’s farm production. Now, a combination of global warming, dwindling water and new infrastructure might set the stage for southwest Kansas to become cotton country.

As the number of coyotes in Kansas grows, hunting contests have sprung up as a way to remove potential threats to livestock. But the resilient canine keeps finding ways to survive, no matter what humans throw at it.

Extreme winds and drought fueled widespread grass fires across western and central Kansas earlier this month. Now, the ranchers, farmers and communities who lost so much begin to pick up the pieces.