Modern-day Galena began as a wooded part of the Kansas Ozarks and by 1835 lay within the Cherokee Neutral Lands, but Euro-Americans quickly settled the region after Kansas became a state in 1861. Because it bordered slave-state Missouri, the area saw bloody Civil War skirmishes. The railroad arrived in 1871, and after lead sulfide ore deposits were discovered in 1876, the Galena Mining and Smelting Company laid out the town. Known at various times as Cornwall, Short Creek, and Bonanza, it incorporated in 1877 and took its name from abundant galena lead ore. Mining brought prosperity, and the population grew to more than 10,000 by the turn of the 20th century. In 1926, Main Street became part of Route 66, and increased travel brought new gasoline stations, restaurants, and hotels; by 1929, Kansas Route 66 was fully paved. Mine work remained hard and led to several bloody United Mine Workers' strikes from 1935 to 1937, including one that required National Guard intervention. Galena stayed an important mining town through World War II as part of the tri-state mining district of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, producing vital zinc and lead for wartime industry. By the early 1970s, depleted mines and the bypassing of the town by Interstate 44 reduced traffic and contributed to decline. Many early 1900s brick buildings along the original Route 66 still stand much as they had since the 1940s, and renewed interest in Route 66 has given some of them new uses. Less than a mile north, Empire City was another mining boom town, linked to Galena by Red Hot Street, notorious for gambling and dancing halls, brothels, and saloons. Rivalry between the towns flared in 1877 when Empire City built an eight-foot-high, one-mile stockade and posted armed guards to stop residents from moving to Galena, but a posse from Galena burned the wall. After decades of jealousy, Empire City was absorbed into Galena in 1907. Galena also helped inspire the fictional town of Radiator Springs in Disney Pixar's Cars: downtown ghost signs and a 1951 International Harvester boom truck influenced its look and the character Tow Mater. That truck now sits at Cars on the Route, a diner and souvenir shop in the restored 1934 Kan-O-Tex Service Station, which had closed after I-44 bypassed the town and was restored in 2007.
