A national list ranked Kansas the least beautiful U.S. state. Show us why it’s wrong.

There is no need to prove what we already know to be true. Kansas is a beautiful place — with its fields of tall prairie grass, beaming sunflowers and intricate caves and rock formations. There is so much to admire about the state.

As Frank Sinatra sings in his rendition of “Home on the Range”: Kansas is where the skies are not cloudy all day and where the heavens are bright with the lights from the glittering stars.

Yet, a recent list by Thrillist that ranks the states based on beauty, boldly listed Kansas in last place.

That’s right, 50th out of 50, and we want your help to prove the list wrong. There’s a form at the bottom of this story where you can submit a photo to show how beautiful Kansas is.

To create the flawed list, the publication found a group of writers who have been fortunate enough to see all 50 states and had each writer rank the states. The group compared rankings and landed on the final list after considering each state’s natural landscape, according to the article.

We don’t know what happened during those deliberations, but we do know that novelist Willa Cather taught us that “anyone can love a mountain; it takes a soul to love the prairie.”

California scored first place, while many states in the middle of the country like Oklahoma (ranked 46th), Missouri (ranked 42nd) and Kansas were piled into the lowest rankings.

“If Kansans can love their land, no one else has any excuses not to love the bejesus outta theirs,” the article reads.

Well they had one thing right. We know that Kansans love Kansas. Nearly 3 million people call Kansas home and get to see what makes it beautiful on a daily basis.

For 161 years, Kansans have celebrated the great Sunflower State and this year the New York Times listed Humboldt, Kansas, as one of its 52 Places for a Changed World.

Help us highlight what you love about Kansas by sharing pictures of what makes the state so beautiful.

We’re going to take your submissions to create a list about why Kansas is beautiful.

Heads up: If you fill out this form, we’ll take that as you giving us permission to publish what you share.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 5:00 AM.