This former frontier outpost on the Kaw — what some now call Kansas’ most livable city — is the product of its residents’ resilient and long-running ability to carve solutions from problems and consensus from sometimes violent conflict.

Lawrencians have proven repeatedly they can make good things grow from bitter ashes, whether from Quantrill’s Raid or the burning of the Kansas Union almost a century later.

In the city’s past 50 years, its residents have fought often-bitter battles about how and where Lawrence should grow, what it should look like and which pieces of environment should be preserved.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the city founded from violent conflict briefly returned to it. The era was marked by racial tension, opposition to the war in Vietnam and the shooting deaths of Rick Dowdell, a black teenager, and Nick Rice, a white KU freshman.

By 1970, demonstrations against the war were no longer peaceful. Militant black students were arming themselves, and in April someone set fire to the Kansas Union, causing more than $1 million in damages.

Other disagreements, though bitterly fought, rarely turned violent. A disagreement over a so-called cornfield mall and the future of downtown, for example, stretched from the 1970s into the 1980s. In the end, it was a battle fought in courtrooms.

So, too, has been the battle about completion of the South Lawrence Trafficway. Deadlocked for more than 20 years, the project these days has as many supporters as detractors, and its completion remains an open question.