Part 20 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration UNION STATION, ST. LOUIS.]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
KANSAS CITY
THE CENTRAL CITY
BY CHARLES S. GLEED
In early literature and in early United States Indian treaties the Indian word ”Kansas” appears as Caucis, Konza, Konseas, Kons, Kanzaw, Kanzau, Kaw, and Kanzas. Kansas, meaning smoky, was the name of a tribe of Indians still existing in the Indian Territory and it came to be applied to all the country west of the Missouri River over which the tribe roamed (the country which is now largely in the State of Kansas), and also to its chief river.
There are two Kansas Cities, one in Missouri, the other in Kansas. The Kansas City in Missouri was named after the Kansas Indians, the Kansas River, the Kansas country, or all of them. The Kansas City in Kansas was named after the Kansas City in Missouri. The two cities are one except in law and the line dividing them is not discoverable except by the surveyor.
The Kansas City in Kansas was made up of a number of small towns the chief of which was Wyandotte. It was thought that the Kansas town would be helped by adopting the good name belonging to the Missouri town. The Kansas City in Kansas has about 60,000 people; the Kansas City in Missouri has about 225,000. The former is the largest city in Kansas, while the latter is the second city in Missouri. In this sketch the two towns are considered as one.
[Ill.u.s.tration KANSAS CITY FROM THE SOUTH.]
Among large cities Kansas City is central, for the exact centre of the United States is about two hundred miles west in Kansas. At the point where Kansas City is located, the Kansas or ”Kaw” River coming from the west empties into the Missouri River coming from the North. The Kansas-Missouri State line runs south from near the junction of the two rivers. In the angles formed by this junction are very high hills, almost mountains. Standing on the high point close in the southern angle, one may look away for ten to twenty miles to the north and the east along the valley of the Missouri and to the west along the valley of the Kansas. It is in these valleys and on these miniature mountains that the city is built. The parts in the valleys present no special difficulties to the town builder, but in the higher parts almost every difficulty is presented. The hills are composed of rocks which must be blasted, and of yellow clay. The original bluffs are cut by numerous ravines leading towards the rivers, and those streets running parallel with the rivers and therefore crossing the ravines are necessarily in many cases very steep. This topographical situation has required the removal of enormous quant.i.ties of earth and rock, the filling of great ravines, and the artificial establishment of the grades of streets. This rendered the city unsightly through its earlier years, but the unsightliness is rapidly giving way to great beauty and picturesqueness.
The first plat of the ”Town of Kansas” was filed in 1839. It included the land bordering the Missouri River some distance south and east of the mouth of the Kansas River and bounded by the river, the present Second Street, the present Delaware Street, and the present Grand Avenue. There was no technical incorporation, and the common name of the place was at first Westport Landing--this being the river landing for the trading post called Westport, four or five miles south of the river.
[Ill.u.s.tration JACKSON COUNTY COURT HOUSE, KANSAS CITY.]
In 1850, the County Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence, created the ”Town of Kansas” as an incorporation governed by a Board of Trustees. The first board, appointed February 4, 1850, failed to act and on June 3d of the same year another board was appointed, composed of William Gillis, Madison Walrond, Lewis Ford, Bennoist Troost, and Henry W. Brice.
This board controlled the town until the Legislature of Missouri, February 22, 1853, granted the right of incorporation to the city of Kansas. From the small original town, by one addition after another, has grown a city covering an area of nearly one hundred square miles.
Long before any incorporation or any platting of town sites there was much activity in this locality. Judge E.P. West, an eminent local geologist, produces indisputable evidence in the shape of stone arrow-heads and spear-heads found on the present town site that the place was inhabited at least 21,000 years ago. The local museum contains a great number of specimens of flint and stone work indicating to geologists and archaeologists the presence of races dating back many centuries.
In 1825, the Jesuit Fathers penetrated all parts of the wilderness surrounding what is now Kansas City. They were doubtless the first white settlers and in all probability they had only the usual purpose, zeal in propagating the religion of their fathers. They are known to have built a small log house in the neighborhood of the northern part of what is now Troost Avenue. It was as much a church as a dwelling, for here the tribes to whom they had come attended religious service. In 1835 a missionary named Father Roux established the first actual church in this locality.
There were many trappers and hunters of the French-Canadian type who had intermarried with the Indians. In 1835 Father Roux purchased of a Canadian some forty acres on the hill adjoining the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, almost exactly in the centre of the present city, and in 1839 was instrumental in having a log church built on a part of the land situated between what are now Eleventh and Twelfth Streets on Penn Street.
Here for a period of at least twenty years a congregation composed largely of French Canadians and the children of the French and Indian intermarriages wors.h.i.+pped together. In 1845 Father Bernard Donnelly was made pastor of all Western Missouri, and ministered to the Indians and whites alike. Through his efforts a brick church was erected on the corner of what are now Eleventh Street and Broadway, and from 1857 to 1880, when he retired from active work to die a few months later at the age of eighty, he devoted himself entirely to his priestly duties. The church and the city owe an unmeasured debt of grat.i.tude to this unselfish and lovable man.
[Ill.u.s.tration CONVENTION HALL, KANSAS CITY.]
Questions of transportation have been of overwhelming interest to the people of Kansas City from the beginning. The first crossing of the Missouri River at this point was established in 1836 by the operation of a flatboat at the mouth of the ”Kaw.” The Rev. Isaac McCoy and his son established the ferry and operated it until 1854. Then came the horse-power ferryboat, and the steam ferryboat. In due time full-fledged steamboats made their appearance on the Missouri. Westport Landing, by reason of a rocky bank and deep water in front of it, afforded an excellent landing.
Here were unloaded the goods for the great Indian and Mexican trade of the West, and from here were s.h.i.+pped eastward wool, furs, buffalo robes, and other products of the region. Immigration overland to Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Mexico, and California came to this point in boats and then went westward by the old Santa Fe trail. From about 1850 to the coming of the railroads, from six to ten boats daily came to this landing. In 1857, during the nine months of navigation, no fewer than fifteen hundred boats arrived and departed. Some of them were palatial structures, judged even by the standard of to-day, and many of them were magnificently furnished and equipped to care for pa.s.sengers.
One of the early features of the travel and traffic between Kansas City and the West was the old Concord Coach and another was the ox and mule wagon known as the ”Prairie Schooner.” The coaches carried from ten to fifteen pa.s.sengers, and the pa.s.sengers as a rule carried from two to a dozen weapons of defence against the Indians. At one time the fare per pa.s.senger from Westport to Santa Fe, New Mexico, was $175 in gold, and the schedule time was thirteen days and six hours. The trip involved travelling night and day, asleep and awake, without stopping except for meals. The ”Overland Mail Express Company” maintained an office for years on the Levee, and for carrying mails received $172,000 a year. Mail, pa.s.sengers, and express matter usually yielded from $5000 to $6000 a trip.
In 1843, the Mexican trade from this point was suspended by Santa Anna, who closed the northern port of entry. As soon, however, as the embargo was removed, trade revived and greatly increased. At this time Atchison, Leavenworth, St. Joseph, and Omaha entered upon the same business, but until the Civil War commenced Kansas City retained most of the trade. A book published in 1843 shows the tonnage between Kansas City and Mexico to have increased from 15,000 tons in 1822, to 150,000 tons in 1837, the increase being fairly uniform over the entire period. In 1850, 600 wagons began the overland trip from Kansas City; by 1855 the trade had grown to a total valuation of at least $5,000,000, and by 1860 had still further increased to a point which attracted national attention. In that year a correspondent sent by the _New York Herald_ to study the statistics of the business, reported that there were s.h.i.+pped from Kansas City in that year 16,439,134 pounds of freight, employing 7084 men, 6147 mules, 27,920 yoke of oxen and 3033 wagons, to which should be added the statistics of the trade with the towns of Kansas and Nebraska. This, for that time, enormous bulk of business, pa.s.sed over the Santa Fe trail which is now almost exactly the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad.
At the close of the Civil War in 1865, during which Kansas City, in common with all the border towns of Missouri and Kansas, was disturbed by the conflict, a tremendous immigration began to flow westward through the city.
Railroad enterprises in Kansas and beyond were opening up the country for settlement, and the families of those who had lately been engaged in war rushed westward to take up the vacant lands offered them.
The first railroads entering the city were the Hannibal & St. Joseph (which is now a part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system) and the Missouri Pacific--the first entering from the direction of Chicago, and the last from the direction of St. Louis. The first built to the west was the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, afterwards known as the Kansas Pacific, now a part of the Union Pacific.