HUTCHINSON  , a

city and the county-seat of Reno county, Kansas, U.S.A., in the broad bottom-land on the N. side_of the Arkansas river . Pop . (1900) 9379, of whom 414 west foreign-born and 442 negroes; (1910 census) 16,364 . It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, the Missouri Pacific and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways . The principal public buildings are the Federal building and the county court house . The city has a public library, and an industrial reformatory is maintained here by the state . Hutchinson is situated in a stock-raising, fruit-growing and farming region (the principal products of which are wheat, Indian corn and fodder), with which it has a considerable wholesale trade . An enormous deposit of rock salt underlies the city and its vicinity, and Hutchinson's principal industry is the manufacture (by the open-pan and grainer processes) and the shipping of salt; the city has one of the largest salt plants in the world . Among the other manufactures are flour, creamery products, soda-ash, straw-board, planing-mill products and packed meats . Natural gas is largely used as a factory fuel . The city's factory product was valued at $2,031,048 in 1905, an increase of 31.8% since 19oo . Hutchinson was chartered as a city in 1871 .