Kansas' Affordable City Near Wichita Boasts A Walkable Downtown, Tasty Bites, And A Popular Brewery

Houezo, a home buying and selling platform, has ranked Winfield, Kansas, as the 7th cheapest place to live in the Sunflower State, at nearly 30% lower than the national average. In southeast Kansas, Winfield is a little under an hour's drive from Wichita, a bustling and underrated city in its own right and home to the closest airport to Winfield, Strother Field-WLD, which is a 15-minute drive. Along with boasting impressively affordable prices, Winfield is a charming college town with a strong food and drink scene, including a brewery, a delightful downtown district, and a renowned annual music festival with its own yummy dining and local drinks options to boot. 

Downtown Winfield stretches approximately 10 blocks along Main Street on the west side of town, and it's fun to just walk through the area and check out all the little shops and boutiques there. At Urban Prairie Mercantile, you can get locally made decor, home goods, and gifts, as well as vintage and pre-loved items. For more antiques and quality consignment pieces, stop by The Emporium and Trunk N Treasures. Both are great places to wander and find something you never knew you needed. If art is more your thing, you can appreciate some incredible murals that pay homage to the city and state's history. 

Likewise, downtown is also home to the Marquee Performing Arts Center in the historic Fox Theatre where they host fun events like interactive murder mystery dinners. The Snark Side of the Moon, an improv comedy troupe, is also based there, and you can even join in with their rehearsals if you're brave enough. The Gallery 1001, meanwhile, features art by area artists in a building that dates back to 1882. It's truly a smorgasbord of stuff to do and see.

If you're someone who needs a boost of caffeine to start your day, Winfield's College Hill Coffee is a must-visit. Along with classic coffee drinks, breakfast burritos, and pastries, it has monthly drinks specials, like for the holidays, you can get a maple cardamom coffee or a gingerbread latte. For breakfast downtown, Ike's Donut Shop and Oasis Coffee are both locally loved. When it comes to a tasty lunch, Grammies Sandwiches is a popular spot with soups and, you guessed it, sandwiches. For more lunch options as well as dinner, Luigi's Italian Restaurant is a family-owned spot, and from pizzas to pasta, everything is made fresh. Shindigs Bar & Grill used to be a train station, and now it makes well-reviewed American comfort food like burgers, steaks, and sandwiches. 

And, while Kansas City may be the barbecue capital of the world, plenty of other places in the Sunflower State have amazing barbecue too. In Winfield, it's all about Boss Hog's BBQ. As one Google reviewer gushed, "Some of the best bbq I have had. So good, had to get the shirt. [...] The brisket was melt in your mouth good. The pulled pork was so good it didn't need a sauce." Winfield is also home to Southwestern College, and like any good college town, it has a great brewery. Ladybird Brewing opened in 2021, and owners and brewers Kaydee and Laura Riggs-Johnson use local herbs, hops, and grains whenever possible in their delicious and creative beers. It's open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and there's monthly trivia nights as well as occasional live music.

Notably, you can enjoy Ladybird Brewing's beers at the Picker's Pub at Winfield's Walnut Valley Festival too. The Walnut Valley Festival is a beloved acoustic music festival held around the third weekend of September. The first festival was in 1972, and the four day event now features four stages, and dozens of performers with over 200 hours of music; popular bluegrass and folk musicians have performed there, like The Chicks (previously The Dixie Chicks) and Alison Krauss. While Winfield has a few chain hotels and motels to choose from, you can also camp out for the festival in either a tent or an RV, which means you get to hear a lot of good, impromptu music right from your campsite. There's also an arts and crafts festival, and the midway is full of all kinds of food trucks, featuring carnival style treats like funnel cakes and BBQ.

Each year on the Tuesday before the festival starts, the Hamburger Feed and Music Crawl takes place downtown. The event itself is free, though you can buy a hot dog or hamburger meal and proceeds help beautify the downtown area. Ladybird Brewing is on site with beer on tap, and there's live music. That's not the only fun annual event in Winfield. For the holidays, there's a downtown parade and the mile long drive through light display at Island Park at the north end of Main Street. You could make your Winfield visit a day trip from Wichita, which is about an hour's drive away, but if you plan to stay the night, outside of the Walnut Valley Festival, the hotels are generally less than $100 per night, there are also a handful of Airbnbs, and you can camp at the fairgrounds year round.