Topeka, Kansas

**Topeka** () is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas. Topeka is the county seat of Shawnee County, and it is in the northeast part of the state. In 2020, 126,587 people lived there.

Topeka was  in 1854 when nine white men founded the Topeka Town Association. At an election in November 1861, the people of Kansas chose Topeka as the permanent capital of the state.

## Naming history
The name *Topeka* is made up of three words from the Kaw, Omaha, and Iowa Native American tribes. The first, *to*, means "potato". The second, *pe* (short for *pekae*) is an adjective meaning "good". The third, *okae*, means "to dig". Thus, the name *Topeka* means "a good place to dig potatoes". The name was chosen because "[i]t was a novel name of Indian origin,  [pleasing] of sound and simple".

## History and culture
Charles Sheldon and Charles Fox Parham, both important people in the history of American Christianity, were preachers in Topeka. Many historians believe that the modern Pentecostalism movement started in Monroe's church in 1901. Sheldon was a preacher in Topeka around the same time, who is famous for coming up with the phrase "What would Jesus do?"

*Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka* was a lawsuit that went before the United States Supreme Court in 1954. Several families sued the public school board in Topeka for the right for black students to go to the same schools as white students. The Supreme Court decided that school districts could not make students go to different schools because of their race. Today, the government has a museum in Topeka about *Brown v. Board of Education* and civil rights for African-Americans.

## Geography
Topeka is at ,

### Weather
In 2007 Forbes Magazine saidd Topeka as one of the leading U.S. cities in terms of having the biggest changes in temperature, precipitation, and wind.
Topeka has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification *Dfa*). It has hot, somewhat humid summers and cool to cold, fairly dry winters. It is in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6. Over the course of a year, the monthly daily average temperature ranges from  in January to  in July. The high temperature reaches  on average of 41.5 afternoons per year. The high reaches  an average of 3.5 afternoons per year. The low temperature falls below  on average of four mornings per year, and there are 21 afternoons per year that stay below freezing.

### 2010 census
The 2010 census says that there were 127,473 people, 53,943 households, and 30,707 families living in Topeka.

### Crime
## Culture
### Sports
### Cuisine
C W Porubsky's Deli & Tavern's chili "has been a lure to north Topeka since 1951". In 2014, *Travel + Leisure* said it was one of America's Best Chilis.

## Media
### Print
The *Topeka Capital-Journal* is a newspaper that is published every day. *The Topeka Metro News* is a newspaper that is published twice per week. Both newspapers have online versions (The Topeka Metro News - Online Edition and CJOnline).

### Radio
The following radio stations are licensed to Topeka:

**AM**

**FM**

### Television
The following television stations are licensed to Topeka:

## Infrastructure
### Transportation
Greyhound Lines has buses going towards Denver, Colorado, eastward to Kansas City, Missouri, and southwest to Wichita, Kansas.

## Related pages
* Great Flood of 1951
* 1966 F5 tornado

## Notes
## References
## Other websites
* 
* Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce
* Kansas State Historical Society
* 
* Topeka City Map, KDOT