Wichita, KS

Wichita is the Air Capital of the World, and the claim is industrial fact: in the 1920s the oil-flush plains city became the workshop of American flight — Cessna, Beechcraft and Stearman all founded here, Learjet arriving later — and for a century a substantial share of the world's general-aviation aircraft has been built in its plants; Boeing's wartime B-29s rolled out of the same halls. The city's other invention was smaller but spread further: White Castle, opened in Wichita in 1921, was the first fast-food hamburger chain on earth, and Pizza Hut followed from a Wichita State student venture in 1958.

At the confluence of the Arkansas rivers stands the Keeper of the Plains, the 13-metre steel figure honouring the Indigenous peoples of the grasslands, its ring of fire lit each evening — the city's unifying image. Concert life centres on Century II, the round blue-roofed hall of 1969 on the riverbank documented in this archive, home of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and stage for the touring seasons; the Wichita Grand Opera named beside it in the source records is a company, not a venue (a note for the registry). Aircraft, hamburgers and a ring of fire on the river: Wichita builds things that travel.