Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Liberal, KS

Liberal is a city in and the county seat of Seward County in southwestern Kansas, sitting on U.S. Route 54 near the Oklahoma state line under the motto Crossroads of Commerce.

Liberal got its name from settler Seymour S. Rogers, who built the first house there in 1872 and became famous for giving free water to thirsty travelers, prompting the response, That's very liberal of you.

Rogers named the local post office Liberal in 1885, the townsite was platted in 1888 after the railroad arrived, and the city was founded and incorporated that same year, reaching about 800 residents within a year.

The 2020 census counted 19,825 people in Liberal, living in 6,618 households and 4,771 families.

Liberal is a young and majority-Hispanic city: 68.1% of its residents were Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 census, the median age was just 30.3 years, and Seward County has the highest Hispanic share of population of any county in Kansas.

Liberal is famous for its International Pancake Day race, held every Shrove Tuesday since 1950 in competition with the town of Olney, England, to see which town's women run the course fastest.

Liberal is home to The Land of Oz exhibit, a recreation of Dorothy Gale's house and the Yellow Brick Road from The Wizard of Oz, which was designed for Topeka in 1981 and moved to Liberal in 1992.

The Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal holds the fifth-largest collection of civilian and military aircraft in the United States, more than 100 aircraft, begun with a gift of fifty planes from General Tom Welch Jr.

Liberal's Coronado Museum preserves material from Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition through the area in 1541, alongside Native American and ranching history.

Natural gas was discovered west of Liberal in 1920 in what became the massive Panhandle-Hugoton Gas Field, oil followed in 1951, and the National Helium plant that opened in 1963 was the largest helium plant in the world.