Salina Community Theatre (SCT) is a regionally recognized theater that performs a variety of summer shows, musicals, plays and other theater productions throughout the year. Occasionally, it also hosts events such as the Kansas State Fair, Kansas City Film Festival and the annual Kansas Arts Festival. The agriculture of the area includes a wide range of crops, from maize, soybeans, wheat, cotton, maize and soybean oil to wheat and barley. Saline hosts a number of agricultural festivals, such as the Missouri Valley Fair and Kansas Farm Show, as well as other agricultural events.

The Smoky Hill Museum, located at 211 W. Iron Avenue in Salina, offers visitors a wealth of history in the area. It is operated by the Department of Arts and Humanities of the municipal administration and contains a collection from 1879 as well as artifacts of the Historical Society of the Salzlandkreis.

Salina is 110 miles west of Topeka, Kansas, and is located south of the 1970s and continues to serve as an important hub for the Kansas State University system and the University of Kansas. The city is located in a wheat-growing area in central Kansas and with a population of about 2,000 inhabitants is the second largest city in the state after Kansas City, Missouri, and is located just east of Wichita, the capital of the city. It also houses a number of universities and colleges, as well as several hospitals, schools and other public facilities. Salinas Municipal Airport, located southwest of the city and used primarily for general aviation, has hosted major events such as United Airlines Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Chicago Air National Guard Base.

Salina is home to the Salina High School football team and Kansas State University, which play in the National Collegiate Indoor Football Association (NCAA) Division I Champions League. His teams have competed in the US Open, the NCAA Division II National Championships, and it is home to the University of Kansas basketball teams. It has hosted several major events, including the World Cup of Basketball and World Baseball Classic, and hosted the United States Women's National Basketball Association.

In 1965, however, the base was finally closed by the Ministry of Defense, and the city of Salina later acquired it and converted it into the Saline Municipal Airport Industrial Park. The closure of the base had a significant economic impact on the region and the local economy. Over the years, manufacturing became the main engine of the local economy, developing the airport and industrial parks to attract companies like Beechcraft.

Soon after, large groups of settlers arrived in Saline County, including 60 Swedes from Galesburg, Illinois, who arrived in 1868, 200 homeowners from Ohio, who arrived in 1869, and 200 more from Illinois and Missouri, who all arrived in 1870. Growth returned from the soldiers of the war and the city expanded, but there were four railroad lines running through the city, making it a transportation hub for central Kansas.

Almost immediately, a number of new settlers arrived, most of them in Salina and its immediate neighbourhoods. The city was overrun by those who settled east of it, who made it as far as Junction City and Fort Riley and headed to the Great Plains, which reached a distance of 51 miles in one day.

The 25 horses and six mules, most of which were owned by the Kansas Stage Company, made their way to Minneapolis, where they learned that there were Indians between the Saline and Solomon Rivers. From there they moved on and began along the Smoky Hill River, which they followed to its mouth and followed the course until crossing the Salomon River. R.H. Bishop, who rode from Fort Riley to Salina, covering a distance of 50 miles in five hours, mounted one of his horses, but when he left, he realized he had missed it.

In February 1858, however, the Kansas Legislature passed a law that organized and defined the City of Salina and other cities and businesses in the area, and on March 30, 1859, the Sixth Territorial Legislature of Kansas issued a statute to all of them. In the following two years, the territorial legislature organized the area as Saline County, named it the county seat and chartered the towns of the companies.

The city is the second largest city in Salina County and the third largest in Kansas State. The population is distributed over the city, 14.3% are 65 years or older. The population is spread over a total area of 2.2 square kilometers, with an average population of about 1,000 people per square mile (0.8 square kilometers).

Median income per household in the city is $42,027, and median income per family is $54,491. The ethnic composition of the cities is approximately 60% white, 40% black, 20% Hispanic, 10% Indian, 4% Asian, 2% Latin American, 1% African-American and 0.5% Pacific Islanders. It is the second largest city in Salina County with a population of about 1,000 people per square mile (0.8 square kilometers) and is home to the University of Kansas and Kansas State University.