Wichita eagle., 1889-09-15
WITCHING WICHITA.
HER SHADED STREETS AND SYL-
VAN SUBURBS.
Some of the Secrets Which Render the
Princess of the Plains so Peerless.

Business life is ever attractive. and the
more active and stirring it is, the greater
! its allurement. Humanity delights II
! Jostling and crowding. The full house is
the more popular assemblage, the narrow
and crowded street the most desirable
alike to the buyer and seller. Wichita,s
entlcement, that which so favorably i'm
| presses every new conner and which capti-
Yates SO many, is often attributed to be
| the bright, restless life Of her business
streets. Everybody seems wideawake and
all are On the rush. But Wichita's power
TO bewitch and charm is only partially at
| tributable to the momentum found along
her trade thoroughfares. In the earlier
and more crude days of herexistence such a
conclusion might have been the proper
one, for Wichita was born busy as a bee,
but it is not true of the present improved
city Of delightful streets and beautiful
homes. The city of Wichita in verdure,
In trees and in shrubs and vines, is not ap-
preached by any western city Of this or
any other state. One square IN any dlrec-
ton from either of her six or seven bust
ness streets and you are into an intermid-
able park of trees, vines and embowered
avenues. which are in turn lost in the
woods that line the two rivers on one side,
or that fade gradually away into the
green of the high rolling prairies that
hens the other. Wichita has about twenty
three miles of densely ahaded sidewalks,
and half as many miles OF streets the in
tertwining limbs of the trees of which
form long continuous emerald arches
through whose protecting green the softest
streaks of sunshine can only struggle.
And there are miles of other residence
streets and sidewalks which are already
partially shaded and which will be COM
pletely protected III two or three years
more. New Havens elm studded avenues
nor the streets of any city of the country,
OF which we have any knowledge, can
rival the uniform rows of stately foliage
which range either side of score of
Wichita's older and finer streets
in the central and resident por-
ton of the city. Travellers and
visitors knowing that they are
to land in q city built on the plains of
Kansas, except to see its spires, roofs and
steeples broadly dazzling in the binding
sunlight, the dust of its streets reveling
upon the wings of untiring winds and no
protection save such as is afforded by the
average exposed. high-praIrie town or city,
are upon the other hand plunged by his in
coming train down into the midst of
cool, shadOwy forest, beneath whose shell
tering boughs are the homes and streets of
a very city. An entire stranger looking
down from any of the convenient emf
nences hereabouts would be led to con-
clude it impossible that any city of thirty
or forty thousand people lay at his feet and
that what there was of it was only sub
urbs built UP around central forest or
park.
With the little mora of leisure and of
means, both of which the fight of time is |
rapidly furnishing the citizens of Wichita |
when yards with their grass plots and |
shrubs can be more universally attended |
to, and trees uniformly trimmed, and side
walks parked aud streets paved; with the /
weeds all gone and mud among the impos- |
sibilities; Wichita, with her three streams, |
her abundantly wonderful foliage and her |
green outlying prairies, that roll upward |
rs they roll away, Wichita will be one of |
5he most beautiful cities in the world, as
she is now the most delightfully."- attractive
If any of all the newer states.