Manhattan is a city in and the county seat of Riley County, Kansas, United States,
The city was founded by settlers from the New England Emigrant Aid Company as a Free-State town in the 1850s, during the Bleeding Kansas era. Nicknamed "the Little Apple" as a play on New York City's moniker of the "Big Apple", From 1780 to 1830, it was home to the Kaw people, also known as the Kansa.
1854: Polistra and Canton
The Kansas–Nebraska Act opened the territory to settlement by U.S. citizens in 1854. That fall, George S. Park founded the first Euro-American settlement within the borders of the current Manhattan. Park named it Polistra (some histories refer to it as Poliska or Poleska).
Later that year, Samuel D. Houston and three other pioneers founded Canton, a neighboring community near the mouth of the Big Blue River. Neither Canton nor Polistra ever grew beyond their original founders. Led by Isaac Goodnow, the first members of the group (with the help of Samuel C. Pomeroy) selected the location of the Polistra and Canton claims for the Aid Company's new settlement. Soon after the New Englanders arrived at the site, in April 1855, they agreed to join Canton and Polistra to make one settlement named Boston. After realizing they were stranded, the Hartford passengers accepted an invitation to join the new town, but insisted that it be renamed Manhattan, which was done on June 29, 1855. Manhattan was incorporated on May 30, 1857.
Early events
thumb|[[Blue Mont Central College building, built in 1859]]
Early Manhattan settlers sometimes conflicted with Native tribes, and the town was threatened by pro-enslavement Southerners. Manhattan was staunchly Free-State, and it elected the only two Free-State legislators to the first Territorial Legislature, commonly called the "Bogus Legislature".
By the time the Kansas Pacific Railroad laid its tracks west through Manhattan in 1866, the 11-year-old settlement was permanently ensconced in the tallgrass prairie. Manhattan's population has grown every decade since its founding.
20th century
The town received the All-America City Award in 1952, the first in Kansas.
Geography
Manhattan is located at coordinates 39.1836082, -96.5716694 in the scenic Flint Hills and Great Plains of the state of Kansas,
Geographic features
thumb|right|[[Flint Hills Discovery Center]]
thumb|Rocky Ford spillway fishing area on the [[Big Blue River (Kansas)|Big Blue River (2021)]]
Manhattan is in the Flint Hills region of Kansas, which consists of continuous rolling hills covered in tall grasses. However, the downtown area – Manhattan's original site – was built on a broad, flat floodplain at the junction of the Kansas and Big Blue rivers. Manhattan is the largest town in the Flint Hills, and is home to the Flint Hills Discovery Center.
Tuttle Creek Reservoir is north of Manhattan. The lake was formed when the Big Blue River was dammed for flood control in the 1960s, and it is now a state park that offers many recreational opportunities. South of the city is the Konza Prairie, a tallgrass prairie preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University.
Earthquakes
Kansas is not known for earthquake activity, but Manhattan is near the Nemaha Ridge, a long structure bounded by several faults, and which is still active. In particular, the Humboldt Fault Zone lies just eastward of Tuttle Creek Reservoir.
On April 24, 1867, the 1867 Manhattan earthquake struck Riley County. Measuring 5.1 on the Richter magnitude scale, the earthquake's epicenter was by Manhattan. It remains the strongest earthquake to originate in Kansas, at an intensity of VII (Very strong) on the Mercalli intensity scale, and felt across roughly . It caused largely minor damage, reports of which were confined to Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Although Kansas is not seismically active, a strong earthquake could pose significant threats to the state. If an earthquake had occurred along the Nemaha Ridge prior to 2010, it could have destroyed the dam on Tuttle Creek Reservoir, releasing of water per second and flooding the nearby area, threatening roughly 13,000 people and 5,900 homes. A study in the 1980s found a moderate earthquake "between 5.7 to 6.6 would cause sand underneath the dam to liquefy into quicksand, causing the dam to spread out and the top to drop up to three feet." To address this threat, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a project in July 2010 that replaced the sand with more than 350 concrete walls and equipped the dam with sensors. Alarms are connected to these sensors, which would alert nearby citizens to the earthquake.
Climate
Manhattan has a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfa), typically experiencing hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from in January to in July. The high temperature reaches or exceeds an average of 58.9 days a year and an average of 9.6 days. The minimum temperature falls to or below on an average 4.1 days a year.
|source 2 = National Weather Service
Tornadoes
thumb|right|The 2008 tornado damaged an industrial area on the west side of Manhattan before hitting the KSU campus.
The state of Kansas falls within an area sometimes called Tornado Alley. The most destructive tornado in Manhattan touched down at approximately 10:30 pm on June 11, 2008. Thirty-one homes and several businesses were destroyed by the EF4 tornado. Kansas State University's campus incurred about $20 million in damage – a number of university buildings sustained significant damage and the tornado's winds destroyed the Wind Erosion Laboratory's garage. No one was killed.
Previously, the most destructive tornado to hit Manhattan was on June 8, 1966. The 1966 tornado caused $5 million in damage and injured at least 65 people in Manhattan.
Flooding
thumb|The Tuttle Creek Spillway Downstream Flooding after the emergency gates were opened in July 1993
Manhattan was built on a floodplain at the junction of the Kansas and Big Blue rivers, and it has faced recurring problems with flooding from heavy precipitation. The worst floods were the 1903 and 1908 floods, the Great Flood of 1951, and the Great Flood of 1993. In 2019, record amounts of rainfall in Kansas brought water levels up massive amounts and flood records were broken that had not been seen since 1993. Tuttle Creek Reservoir recorded its second highest flood level ever on May 31 at 1,135.80 feet above sea-level. The only level higher came from The Great Flood of 1993, which recorded an astounding 1,138 feet above sea-level on July 23. The top of the emergency Spillway gates measures at 1,136 feet, only 0.2 feet above the 2019 record lake level. The only time that the emergency Spillway gates have ever been opened was on July 19, 1993, at 3:15 PM. The gates were opened 0.8 feet which allowed 10,000 cubic feet per second of water to move through the downstream channel. The gates were slowly opened more each day until July 23 at a peak 60,000 cubic feet per second (450,000 gallons per second). The gates remained open until August 9, 1993. The normal level for Tuttle Creek Reservoir averages 1,075 feet.