Changing Relations: Newcomers and Established Residents in Garden City, Kansas

Abstract

Garden City is located in southwest Kansas, 215 miles west of Wichita and 309 miles southeast of Denver, Colorado. At an elevation of approximately 2,900 feet, it rests amid a semiarid region of short grass and sandsage prairie. With an estimated population of 25,000, it is not only the Finney County seat but a trade and service center for small agricultural communities and unincorporated rural settlements in a five-state area of the southern High Plains (Garden City Planning Department 1989). What follows is an attempt by the Changing Relations Project--six sojourners--to understand and explain how Garden City has met and accommodated its newest arrivals.