An early camping ground of the Osage and Wichita tribes, the county is thought to have been on the route of the celebrated explorer Coronado and the site of an 1827 encampment of the frontiersman, Kit Carson. Perhaps this is what prompted the editor of the newspaper in Wichita to write in 1910 that "Few counties of the United States possess the stirring and romantic history that attaches to Sedgwick County, Kansas." He asserted that in just two generations a wilderness had been transformed from grass and game to a haven of opportunity. The first European purported to sample the lush grasslands of the county was a Frenchman, M. DuTissenet. His wanderings, at the direction of the French governor of Louisiana, placed him on the banks of the Arkansas in 1719. Following the arrival of soldiers and traders, the settlers came and homesteaded in the land of wind, sun and prairie grasses. The first bona fide Caucasian settler is thought by many to have been C.C. Arnold who arrived in 1857 with a party of hunters.

The act establishing the county was passed on February 26, 1867. The following year, the County had its first election when thirty five voters selected their first school officials. After an attempt to organize a county government was declared void by the governor in 1869 due to "irregularities and informalities," a census was taken which determined that the county had the requisite number of inhabitants. The Governor then designated three Commissioners with the power to complete the organization and in April, 1870, the first county officials were elected along with the selection of Wichita as the county seat over neighboring Park City.

Like many other fledgling Kansas counties during this era, the County was named for a Civil War hero, Major General John Sedgwick of the Union Army, who was killed on May 9, 1864 during the battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse in Virginia. Sedgwick had spent 10 years in Kansas prior to the war and had most likely traversed the land that was to become his namesake. Only one other county, in the state of Colorado, bears the General’s name.

Sedgwick County runs a gamut of hot winds, cold winters, drought, grasshoppers, jack rabbits, boom, bust, oil, wheat, fast food and aircraft. Its history is replete with accounts of violence, economic crisis and hardship. These elements combined to toughen the hardy souls who built and, subsequently, inhabited it. Today, the county has more than 450,000 inhabitants making it the most populous of Kansas' 105 counties.

For more comprehensive information on the County’s early history,
refer to The Silver Shield published by the
Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department.