City of Great Bend

City of Great Bend Convention & Visitors Bureau

Local Attractions

Prior to the European settlement of the area, Great Bend was located in the northern reaches of Kiowa territory. The first Europeans to claim the area was France as part of Louisiana, which was later acquired by the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Welcoming visitors at the northeast entrance of the Great Bend Brit Spaugh, this piece of transportation history is a cherished site, Santa Fe engine #3416. The railroad arrived in 1872 and Great Bend became a boarding point for cattle, stimulating growth.

Great Bend Municipal Airport was constructed in the early 1940s as a World War II Army Air Force Base to accommodate the B-29 Superfortress bomber. The airfield included three intersecting 8,000-foot long paved runways, taxiways, aircraft park aprons, aircraft storage hangers, and several support facilities to include administrative buildings, barracks, and automobile access roads.

The unique location between Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area and Quivira National Refuge gives Great Bend the unique advantage of attracting "bucket list birds" for beginners to advance watchers to experience and see. The Cheyenne Bottoms and nearby Quivira National Wildlife Refuge form a wetlands complex of global importance to migratory waterfowl and shorebirds. Of the 477 species of birds documented in Kansas, 352 have been observed at the Bottoms. Cheyenne Bottoms falls square in the midst of the Central Flyway – equivalent to a sky interstate for migrating birds