Geology
~285 to 275 Mya Early Permian gray and blue-gray calcareous shale of the Wellington Formation and the overlying reddish-brown Ninnescah Shale (Sumner Group), laid down in a shrinking, evaporating arm of the Permian sea near the margin of the Hutchinson salt basin; the shales hold thin beds of impure limestone, gypsum, and anhydrite that record an arid climate
Epoch
Early Permian (Leonardian)
Native lands
Wichita (Kitikiti'sh, "raccoon-eyed people," a Caddoan-speaking nation named for the black tattoos men wore around the eyes), whose ancestral country centered on the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas rivers here; pressed south toward the Red River through the 1700s by Osage (Wazhazhe) expansion and French-allied raids, the Wichita and affiliated Caddo, Tawakoni, Waco, and Kichai who had sided with the Union were brought north as refugees in 1863 and 1864, roughly 1,800 people building a village of grass lodges near the mouth of the Little Arkansas; they were removed back to Indian Territory in 1867, and the city that grew on the site took their name. The Osage held the recognized cession title to south-central Kansas; Comanche (Nʉmʉnʉʉ) and Kiowa (Cáuigù) hunted the surrounding plains.
Displacement & Tenure
Native title to south-central Kansas was extinguished through the Osage, not the Wichita who lived at this confluence. The Osage Treaty of June 2, 1825, ceded Osage claims to nearly all of present Kansas and Oklahoma while reserving a reservation strip across southern Kansas; the Treaty with the Osage of September 29, 1865 (Canville Trading Post, ratified 1866) sold off that reserve as the Osage Ceded Lands and Diminished Reserve, opening Sedgwick County to settlement. The Wichita, who had returned to the river junction as Union refugees in 1863 and 1864, were removed to the Leased District in Indian Territory in 1867 without ever negotiating a cession for the homeland. Into the village they left, James R. Mead and the Cherokee and Scottish trader Jesse Chisholm set a trading post in 1864; the county was organized in 1867, and the town of Wichita was platted around the post in 1870, taking the departed nation's name. Chisholm's 1860s freight road south to Indian Territory became the Chisholm Trail, and the creek running through the park still carries his name.
Shadow History
The Chisholm Creek that the nature center restores as wetland and tallgrass prairie also drains Wichita's industrial north side, where the corridor holds some of the largest groundwater contamination sites in Kansas. The 1,440-acre 29th and Mead plume in the North Industrial Corridor and the 57th and North Broadway Superfund site, whose eastern edge follows Chisholm Creek between 47th and 61st Streets, are both contaminated with chlorinated solvents and 1,4-dioxane that have migrated through the shallow aquifer toward public water-supply wells, the legacy of decades of industrial solvent use now under long-term pump-and-treat remediation by the EPA and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Ecology
Restored and remnant tallgrass prairie, bottomland riparian woodland of cottonwood, hackberry, and American elm along the creek, and natural and constructed wetlands and ponds, managed as a Wichita Wild Habitat Area; wildlife includes white-tailed deer, beaver, muskrat, painted and snapping turtles, great blue heron, and waterfowl, with the prairie and ponds drawing dragonflies, butterflies, and grassland and wetland birds.
Hydrology
Chisholm Creek runs through the park within the Arkansas River basin; fed by its West, Middle, and East forks draining eastern Wichita, the creek joins the Arkansas River in the south of the city. The corridor is heavily engineered for flood control under the Wichita and Valley Center project of levees, floodways, and improved channels on the Arkansas, Little Arkansas, and Chisholm Creek.
