James R. Mead (1836–1910) moved west from Davenport, Iowa, in 1859 and quickly established himself as a legendary trader and buffalo hunter with a successful trading post near what is now Salina. In 1863, at only twenty-six years of age, he moved south and established new trading posts in the Arkansas Valley, the first near Towanda, with another near the Wichita Indian settlement. Mead soon entered the freighting and government-contracting business and became a wealthy man while still in his twenties. He is commonly given credit for suggesting “Wichita” as the name for the new city at the forks of the Arkansas.
