Kansas City Area History

Before 1700--The Kansas Indians live at the meeting place of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They speak a Siouan language and number about 1,600. They live in pole-frame lodges covered with bark, cultivate corn, pumpkins, beans and melons, and hunt buffalo twice a year. They also hunt beaver, otter and deer.

Early 1700s---French and other explorers ascend the Missouri River, hoping to trade with New Mexico, find precious metals and exchange goods with the natives.

1724---French officer Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont passes the area on his way to visit the grand village of the Kansas Indians.

1804---Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery stops "at the upper point of the mouth of the river Kanzas" on June 26th, remaining for 3 days.

1806---The Lewis and Clark expedition climbs the bluffs on September 15th on its way back to St. Louis. The men shoot an elk and pick custard apples.

1820s---Area Indians have left the region as the result of a treaty.

1821---Beaver-felt hats are all the rage in Europe, commanding a handsome price. 21-year-old Francois Gesseau Chouteau, a French fur trader, his teenage bride Bereniece, and several other employees of the American Fur Company, establish a trading post. The place is called Kawsmouth. Chouteau writes to his uncle describing the perils of life at "Riviere des Kans." By the late 1820s, Chouteau has set up his headquarters there. The area becomes known as Chouteau's Landing.

Many of the hardy French Canadian and Creole trappers have native wives--Flathead, Cree, Gros Ventre, Kickapoo, and Sioux. Their mixed-blood children will be called metis, a people "in between."

Although never more than the home of a few dozen families, the French settlement at Kawsmouth is the center of an immense trade.

1823---German duke, Paul Wilhelm, visits Kawsmouth. He finds 18-year-old Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Lewis and Clark's guide, Sacajawea, living there.

1825---Cyprien and Frederick have both joined their brother Francois. Together they establish satellite trading posts up the Kansas River.

1826---The town suffers in a devastating flood. The Chouteau's post and home are flooded, forcing them to move to higher ground. The new house is built on the river bluff.

1827---James Hyatt McGee, his wife, and about a dozen children bring the first slaves to western Missouri.

1828---After the Osage tribe cedes rights to the future Jackson County, U.S. pioneers begin pouring in. A land office opens and soon Anglo names soon overshadow the French in the plat books.

James McGee buys 320 acres near Chouteau's warehouse. In 10 years his holdings will have tripled.

1830---The Indian Removal Act brings the Shawnees, the Delawares, and the Wyandots to the area. The Miamis, the Ottawas, the Kickapoos, the Potawatomis, the Weas and Peorias, the Iowas and the Sacs and Foxes also show up. The "emigrant Indians" will bring with them enormous buying power.

Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary and surveyor, is hired by the secretary of war to survey a boundary for the Delaware Indians who are soon to immigrate to the new Indian territory west of Missouri. He takes 2 of his sons, Rice and John Calvin as well as 2 other white men as chain carriers and a black man as cook. Calvin will first meet Methodist minister Thomas Johnson at Frederick Chouteau's trading house.

Invited by a group of Shawnee, Virginian Thomas Johnson establishes a Methodist mission several miles inside Indian Territory. He will use slaves, to the dismay of the Quakers.

1831---Another group of Shawnee request a Baptist missionary. Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary and surveyor, begins a mission with Johnston Lykins, his daughter Delilah's husband, near the edge of the ridge overlooking Turkey Creek.

Frenchman Gabriel Prudhomme is killed in a brawl, leaving a pregnant wife, 6 children, a riverfront farm fronting the natural rock landing (for which he had paid $340), and a ferryboat. James McGee has designs on the property.

1832---New York writer Washington Irving, traveling with a party that includes Paul Liguest Chouteau and J.H.B. Latrobe, visits the Chouteau's house. He will later write A Tour on the Prairies, which will help solidify the romantic image of the West.

Many of the Delawares die after drinking so much liquor.

Adeline Prudhomme is born. She will grow up to marry Milton J. Payne, Kansas City's third mayor.

1833---Priest Benedict Roux arrives at Kawsmouth. The Chouteaus support his efforts to build a church.

With an eye on the Indian annuities and the Santa Fe traders on their way from Independence, college-educated surveyor John Calvin McCoy returns to Jackson County and acquires land near his father Isaac's house. He goes into business with J.P. Hickman and J.H. Flourney.

A natural rock ledge hugs the water's edge and makes a small riverfront area. Isaac and Calvin McCoy own a flat-bottomed ferry that uses the ledge for a dock.

1834---Father Roux's log church is built--the town's first--with funds from the extended Chouteau family. Its name is St. Francis Regis but most people call it "Chouteau's church." Roux will run afoul of Chouteau's wife Berenice when he preaches against the popular weekly dances the French community holds.

The steamboat John Hancock arrives at the rock ledge landing with goods for Calvin McCoy's store. Then McCoy transports the goods 4 miles south to his store.

Calvin McCoy purchases land from Dr. Johnston Lykins and founds the town of West Port on one of the roads running southwest from Independence. He has the help of a black man named Tom who is a slave. A post office is established at West Port with McCoy as postmaster. He has trouble inducing anyone to move to his town, however. Between the visits of customers--business is slow--he and Tom have time to clear away the dense brush and vines from the land. A road is cut to the new town from the Chouteau warehouse on the Missouri River.

1835---John Calvin McCoy files a plat for a 9-square block which is a portal to the western wilderness. He and 13 other men buy 271 acres which hold a natural levee and boat landing. He calls it "Westport Landing." It is 4 miles inland from Chouteau's Landing on the river, and shortens the land route that goods have to travel from the river to Westport outfitter's stations. Independence, 10 miles to the east, is the main outfitting center.

1837---The Society of Friends (Quakers) begins its own mission.

James McGee has accumulated 1,000 acres in Jackson County and lusts after the Prudhomme property.

An order of the court puts the Prudhomme property up for sale. It is duly advertised in St. Louis and Liberty newspapers: "One of the best Steamboat Landings on the River...."

1838---McGee secures the role of auctioneer, selling the Prudhomme land to a stranger in town, Abraham Fonda. It's July 7th. An immediate uproar ensues with McGee accused of collusion with Fonda and paltry proceeds for the Prudhomme heirs. The courts set the sale aside and another sale is ordered for November 14th. A group of 14 investors under the leadership of the wealthy St. Louis fur trader William Sublette, and calling itself the Town of Kansas Company, puts in the successful bid of $4,220 (Fonda's bid had been $1,8000). McCoy is one of the other enterprising capitalists. Fonda is also one of the partners--it's his idea to make a town, his heart set on naming it "Port Fonda." But the majority of the other proprietors don't like him, so they refuse to allow it. "Kawsmouth" is considered and rejected along with "Rabbitville" and "Possum-trot." They call it "Town of Kansas (or Kanzas)" because no one can think of anything better.

Debt-ridden John Sutter slinks out of Westport on a pony, leaving his debts behind. He rides west.

Francois Chouteau dies and is buried in St. Louis. He leaves Bereniece and 8 children. Madame Chouteau will live another 50 years, outliving all of her children and most of her friends.

1839---Johnson moves his mission close to the Missouri border, expanding his influence to an area of 2,240 acres.

1840s---Steamboat traffic on the Missouri increases. The settlement begins to grow as a river port. Calvin McCoy's rock landing and the town overtake Independence as the principal outfitting point for the Santa Fe trade.

Dutch immigrant Dr. Benoist Troost arrives early in the decade with his wife.

The Wyandot tribe owns and operates a ferry across the Kansas (Kaw) River. They found the area as a town in 1843.

1842---A national depression hits Missouri hard. Prices plummet and foreclosures and bankruptcies rise.

1843---Kentucky farmer Richard Wornall buys a 500-acre farm from John C. McCoy. He will bring his wife and son John to the farm from Kentucky in the spring.

1844---The great Missouri flood devastates the area. The Independence wharves are destroyed and Westport Landing gains most of the Santa Fe trade.

The Northern and Southern Methodists split, forming the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

1846---The worst of the depression passes in Missouri.

After lawsuits, financial difficulties, deaths and a holdup on the transfer of the deed and title to Prudhomme's property, the Town of Kansas finally gets going. Calvin McCoy surveys and prepares a plat with 318 lots, although the land is so hilly that the back sides of the lots curl up the hill behind the narrow river levee. The 7 proprietors left set aside a public square and dedicate land for a graveyard. Pierre Chouteau, son of the deceased Francois Chouteau, is their attorney. Dr. Troost buys 5 lots.

1849---Asiatic cholera kills many citizens, including McCoy's wife and brother and William Gregory's wife, Elizabeth.

Troost and the uncle of his second wife, William Gilliss, build the town's first brick hotel, to cash in on California gold rush business. Gilliss House is situated near the river at the corner of Delaware and Wyandotte Streets.

1850---On June 3rd, the Town of Kansas becomes a municipality when it is chartered by the county court. The 700 inhabitants, including William S. Gregory, who had successfully petitioned for this to be done are mostly interested in improving police services. Troost is a trustee.

African-Americans represent one in 5 Jackson County residents. Of 14,000 people, 2,969 are slaves. The free black population is only 41. Hiram Walton Young of Independence is a former slave. He opens a wagon-making business. He is known all along the frontier for the quality of his wagons. He will buy many slaves at auction in Independence and allow them to earn their freedom by working in his shop.

21-year-old Milton J. Payne arrives in town.

28-year-old John Bristow Wornall marries, but his wife will die a year later.

1853---The Town of Kansas is chartered by special act of the General Assembly on February 22nd. Population is about 2,500.

63 vote in the election for mayor on April 18th. Grocer William S. Gregory wins over his opponent Dr. Benoist Troost by 9 votes. There is also a 6-member council. Gregory appoints a city treasurer, assessor, marshal, tax collector, and attorney. And he helps to write the city charter and signs Kansas City's first laws. It will be discovered later that he is ineligible to serve because of residency requirements, so Council President Dr. Johnston Lykins fills out Gregory's term, while Gregory continues as an alderman. The next year Lykins will be elected in his own right.

1854---Milton Payne establishes the Kansas City Enterprise newspaper.

Kersey Coates arrives in Kansas City.

32-year-old widower John Wornall marries Eliza Johnson, the daughter of Reverend Thomas Johnson.

1855---The First Baptist Church is organized.

The levee begins to receive not only tons of merchandise bound for Santa Fe but settlers bound for Kansas. The big question: will Kansas be slave or free? (See our Kansas page for more information.)

Yankee settlers coming into town from St. Louis after paying $12 for the steamboat ride, sing The Kansas Emigrants Song written by Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier to the tune of Auld Lang Syne: "We cross the prairie as of old / The Pilgrims crossed the sea, / To make the west, as they the east, / The homestead of the free."

So many slaves are being stolen in Jackson County that in November Kansas City imposes a curfew forbidding blacks or mulattos, slave or free, to be on the streets from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. without a pass. They are also forbidden to assemble at night.

Times are so tense that free-state settlers beg New England Emigrant Aid Company agents for weapons to defend themselves. The company clandestinely ships 200 Sharps carbines to Kansas.

Robert T. Van Horn comes to town with his wife Adela and 2 young sons after seeing his newspaper in Ohio collapse. He works as a common printer. He buys newspaper shares for $500 and builds a small brick home with a picket fence in the suburbs near Walnut and 11th streets. He begins to boost Kansas City as a business center, centrally located, that would be perfect for the railroads.

John Johnson is elected mayor but Milton Payne will complete his term. He will then be elected 5 times more.

Mountain man Jim Bridger buys a farm south of Kansas City.

1855-1857---The Wyandots sell their property and white settlers take over, calling the place Wyandotte.

Ohio native and ardent free-state man Abelard Guthrie lays out a new free-state town across the river in Kansas. It has a long frontage on the Missouri River and a rocky shore that makes a good harbor. Guthrie names the place Quindaro after his wife, a Wyandot Indian. A 45-room hotel goes up. Warehouses are soon filled with merchandise bound for Kansas. People across the river despise Quindaro because it is a refuge for runaway and stolen slaves.

1856---Father Bernard Donnelly brings 300 Irish laborers from Connaught County to work a brickyard on behalf of the Catholic Church, to cut roads through the bluffs and to help build the city's first Catholic cathedral.

The New England Emigrant Aid Company sends more weapons to Kansas, including 6 cannons. The guns never make it. The Arabia docks at Lexington and a thousand pro-slavery men take everything but the receipt.

Sara T.L. Robinson, the wife of Governor Charles Robinson, publishes Kansas : Its Interior and Exterior Life. While some of the book presents vignettes of pioneer life, she also describes events in and around Lawrence at the time and makes an impassioned plea for help against the pro-slavery forces. One of those who lambastes Sara most cruelly in print is the editor of The Kansas City Times.

The hotel on the riverfront will record 27,000 arrivals in this year and the next. The parlor floors are converted into sleeping quarters and a bell is put on the roof to announce meals.

The side-wheel steamboat Arabia leaves St. Louis on August 30th, carrying supplies, provisions, 400 barrels of Kentucky bourbon, one mule and 130 passengers for a trip up the Missouri River. It leaves Westport Landing on the way to Parkville on September 5th, hitting a snag that rips open her hull. She sinks within minutes in 15 feet of water. All the passengers escape, but the poor mule is tied below deck and goes down with the ship.

Mayor Payne gives up his newspaper and devotes himself to the city's business.

1857---Van Horn, Kersey Coates, and ex-missionary Johnston Lykins concoct their own railroad company, the Kansas City, Galveston & Lake Superior. It only exists on paper and the Missouri legislators laugh when approving it. But the charter allows for the acquisition and grading for a spur from Harlem on the Missouri's north bank to the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad line at Cameron 54 miles away.

Theodore S. Case, a struggling physician, moves to Kansas City.

Local officials pass laws including: "No person shall deposit any dead animal, or any excrement or filth from privies upon any ground in this city."

Dr. Lykins builds a palatial home downtown on the southeast corner of 12th and Broadway. This $20,000 showplace soon becomes a social and political focus in Kansas City.

1858---Wyandotte is incorporated as a town.

John and Eliza Wornall build a stately farmhouse next to the main dirt road going west to Santa Fe.

1859---Wyandotte is incorporated as a city.

The Wyandotte Constitution is framed in July. Under it, Kansas will be admitted as a state.

1860---Walter L. Watkins builds a 3 and 1/2 story brick mill near Lawson.

Jackson County's slave population is almost 4,000. Slave prices are soaring.

Kansas City's population has swollen to about 5,000.

1861---A Union candidate for mayor, Robert Van Horn, is elected in April. He goes to St. Louis to explain Kansas City's perilous situation to Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon and powerful Missouri Republican Frank Blair. He comes home with a major's commission in the improvised Enlisted Missouri Militia and a plan to keep the city out of Confederate hands. Kersey Coates joins Van Horn's battalion.

The Civil War begins. It seriously damages the economy of the area. Many move away from the violence. The profitable river and overland trade dies.

In June all Confederate flags are pulled down all over town.

The U.S. Army builds Camp Union at 10th and Central streets over the summer. It has walls, a guardhouse, and a 12-pound howitzer.

1862---W.H. Chick's warehouse on the levee is burned. Another on Santa Fe Street burns a few weeks later. He moves his family to the New Mexico Territory in the fall.

1863---4 woman relatives of Southern guerrilla leaders die when their temporary prison on Grand south of 14th Street collapses. One is the sister of "Bloody Bill" Anderson. 8 days later, Lawrence is burned and about 150 people are killed. 4 days after that, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing issues his General Order No. 11 (painted here by George Caleb Bingham), forcing all residents of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and parts of Vernon counties to leave their rural homes within 15 days if they cannot prove their loyalty to the Union to the satisfaction of Army authorities. John Calvin McCoy moves to Glasgow where he conducts his business as best he can.

Two-thirds of the population of the border counties is gone.

1864---Mayor Van Horn musters 60-day volunteers into the militia. All Kansas City men, Northern or Southern, young or old, are asked to sign up.

Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis sets up headquarters at the Harris Hotel in Westport. From the roof, he and his staff officers watch the early part of the Battle of Westport on October 23rd. It opens on the high ground above Brush Creek. Although they gain an early advantage, the Confederates are forced to retreat, leaving their dead and many severely wounded men on the field. An ambulance corps gathers up the dead and wounded. Field hospitals are established in nearby homes. The steamer Tom Morgan, tied up at the city wharf, takes 86 wounded Kansas State militiamen to the federal hospital at Fort Leavenworth. The Methodist Episcopal Church South is converted into a hospital for Confederate soldiers. The Confederate threat in the West is at an end, but the Civil War does not end in Kansas City churches.

1865---On New Year's Day, guerrillas fire through the front door of 62-year-old Reverend Thomas Johnson's farmhouse. He dies and is buried in the cemetery of his Shawnee Methodist Mission and Manual School.

The Civil War ends. Business leaders realize that the future of the city depends on the railroad. A showdown between Leavenworth and Kansas City will determine Kansas City's future. Dealmaker Charles E. Kearney and Detroit's James F. Joy, a powerful railroad executive, join boosters Van Horn and John W. Reid working for The Bridge.

Population stands at 3,500. Union loyalists live west of Main Street while Southerners favor roads east.

John Calvin McCoy returns to Kansas City.

1866---Jesse James robs his first bank: Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty.

The First Baptist Church splits over sectional differences. The minority Northern faction, led by Reverend Jonathan B. Fuller, establishes the Walnut Street Church.

Mattie Lykins founds the Widows' and Orphans" Home for Confederate Dead. The home stands on about 40 acres at about 32nd and Locust streets. But her strong Southern sympathies sometimes make it difficult to raise the money needed for the home.

1867---Reverend Fuller resigns his position and returns to Louisiana, Missouri.

35-year-old Octave Chanute moves to Kansas City to design The Bridge.

The Kansas City School District is founded. Until the end of the 1944-45 school year, students attend school for only 11 years, including a 7-year elementary education (no 8th grade) and the traditional 4 years of high school.

Postmaster Frank Foster reports that 936,000 letters passed through Kansas City, 234,000 letters were received, and $43,000 worth of stamps were sold in the year.

1868---Kansas City is platted.

Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church is built at Ninth and McGee streets.

Democrats launch The Kansas City Daily Times.

1869---Kansas City has far fewer people than Leavenworth or St. Joseph and is barely keeping pace with Atchison. All 4 cities want that first span over the Missouri. The Bridge opens near the foot of Broadway to national fanfare on July 3rd--the first railroad bridge over the Missouri River. (Later it will be known as the Hannibal Bridge.) There's barbeque, of course, liquor, and fireworks. A poem read at the formal banquet goes like this: "The Bridge, it is finished / In all its ponderosity / Trains have dashed over it / With great impetuosity / And thousands today / Have seen this curiosity." It helps to make the city a link in the nation's transcontinental railroad system.

Many Leavenworth and St. Joseph merchants buy into KC's hype, are convinced that their cities have forever lost, and hightail it to Kansas City.

Annie Chambers arrives in Kansas City and sets up a brothel on the north side of the river. Her business is an instant smash. A flourishing ferry delivers her loyal following for 3 years until she relocates in the town proper.

Octave Chanute plats the towns of Lenexa and Columbia (both in Kansas) on the same day.

1870s---The city develops as a market for grain, a stockyard center, and a meat-packing and flour-milling center during the next 2 decades.

1870---William Warner becomes mayor.

Kansas City's population has exploded to 32,000 people.

Thomas Speers is elected Town Marshall on the Democratic ticket.

Train service begins to Denver.

Suffragette Susan B. Anthony first visits Kansas City. She strikes up a friendship with civic leader Sarah Coates, "the one woman upon who rested the claim of leadership of our suffrage work in that city."

The Coates Opera House opens. Kansas City's first large theater, it soon becomes a hub for society.

1871---Railroad men and others organize the Kansas City Stockyards. The West Bottoms becomes the feeding place for cattle found for Chicago.

1872---Booming in commerce, population and politics in the years after the Civil War, Kansas City becomes the dominant city of the county. As land transactions and legal wrangles multiply, more county business must be handled in Kansas City. A new Jackson County Courthouse opens on January 10th. It is modeled in the French Second Empire style.

Kansas City is incorporated.

The Central (or Walnut Street) and First Baptist Churches reunite as the First Baptist Church.

43-acre rural cemetery, Elmwood Cemetery, is established as a private cemetery although there are already some graves that date back to 1840. Famous landscape architect George Kessler designs the park-like landscaping.

1874---In 1874, the "Metropolitan Police Law" established Kansas City's police department.  Missouri Governor Charles Hardin appointed George Caleb Bingham, a Missouri artist, W. M. McDearmon and H.J. Latshaw as the first Board of Police Commissioners. Bingham became the first President of the Board and led the Board in selecting Speers as the first Chief of Police, a post he held for 21 years.

As Chief, Speers' unique policy was to, whenever possible, proactively prevent crime. Rather than waiting, as most police departments of the time did, to respond and apprehend the suspect after a crime had occurred, Speers took a different approach.  During Chief Speer's tenure as Chief, Kansas City, Missouri was situated on nearly all lines of the great railroads leading from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making it one of the great railway centers. By 1901, an average of 20,000 people would arrive and depart from the Union Depot every day aboard the one hundred thirty five passenger trains passing through the city.  Thus, 7.3 million people would travel through the city every year aboard the trains.  Naturally, many professional criminals passed through the city among the train passengers. 

1876---Jim Pendergast, originally from Ohio, comes to the West Bottoms from St. Joseph to work in the factories.

Dr. Lykins dies August 15th at age 76. His good friend George Bingham will marry Martha Lykins.

1878---Martin Keck expands his father-in-law's (Henry Helmreich) brewery into Kansas City's first amusement park, the Tivoli Gardens.

The Times labels Kansas City a Modern Sodom. The population is close to 50,000. The 80 saloons in KC are 3 times as numerous as the number of churches, and 4 times the number of schools, colleges, libraries, and hospitals combined.

1879---Nearly every boat on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers is laden with former slaves who have the mistaken belief that free land awaits them in Kansas. The "Exodusters," some with absolutely no money, land at Wyandotte. Rough board shelters and tin shacks go up on the river levee across from Kansas City. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mayor George M. Shelley, and Fort Leavenworth provide food and clothing.

On April 25th, the Wyandotte Commercial Gazette reports that more than 1,000 destitute people, many from Mississippi and Louisiana, have arrived. Some stay on, settling Juniper Town and Rattlebone Hollow.

The city's first telephone directory is printed. It lists 58 telephones in Kansas City.

1880s---Octave Chanute returns to Kansas City. He publishes The Sewerage of Kansas City, which urges town builders to resist combining rainwater with "house refuse."

The Vaile Mansion is built in Independence during the early 1880s by U.S. mail contractor Harvey Merrick Vaile. The design is inspired by a large house in Normandy the Vailes had visited during a trip to Europe. The house, designed by Kansas City architect Asa B. Cross, is completed at a cost of $100,000. An 1882 article in The Kansas City Times says that it is "the most princely house and the most comfortable home in the entire west."

1880---Population is 55,785.

Ex-president, Union general, and notorious drinker Ulysses S. Grant stays with Robert Van Horn in the summer while he considers starting a business in Kansas City.

The Kansas City Evening Star profiles local drag queens under the headline "Strange Men."

1881---The first time electricity is used indoors in Kansas City is in March at the G.Y. Smith & Co. dry goods store on Main Street. Within a year, this "splendid triumph" of science is extended to 13 stores in the same block.

Irish poet Oscar Wilde lectures on aesthetics at Coates Opera House on April 17th.

People are driven from their homes and workers from the meatpacking plants when Kansas City is inundated by the flood of 1881.

Jim Pendergast wins a racetrack bet, which he puts to use launching a saloon below the bluffs among the unpainted shanties. His saloon also serves as a working-class bank.

A tornado tears through downtown, killing 4 people.

A drunkard inside the White House Saloon guns down Officer Martin Hynes on December 31st. It is Kansas City's first slaying of a police officer in the line of duty.

1884---Rabbi Joseph Krauskopt forms the nonsectarian Poor Man's Free Labor Bureau to help find work for the poor of all creeds.

Borrowing a couple thousand dollars from his mother in New York, Frederic Remington arrives in the spring, fresh off a failed attempt to run a Kansas sheep ranch. The 23-year-old opens a hardware store downtown. But he soon is out of the hardware business and into touring saloons and poolrooms.

Money from the sale of his sheep ranch enables Remington to buy an interest in a saloon. Although he thinks it is a good investment, he keeps it quiet to save his family from embarrassment.

Remington marries an old sweetheart in New York in October. He brings her to Kansas City. She is shocked by his business and leaves him by Christmas.

1885---The students and staff of Park College assist in building Benjamin Banneker School for blacks in the community. The one-room brick building will serve the community until 1902 when a larger facility is constructed.

Frederic Remington moves in with family friends and begins selling paintings through a Kansas City art supply dealer. His bar fails by summer, costing him his entire investment. He moves back to New York, reconciles with his wife, and continues to paint.

1886---On the morning of May 11th, a tornado rips through the Missouri River railroad bridge and then blows the top of the Jackson County Courthouse. 15 children die inside Lathrop School and 10 other persons elsewhere in the city. Many county records are lost or ruined.

Kansas City's first major-league baseball team, the Cowboys, plays in the National League.

1887---Martin City is established as a railroad stop called Tilden, and then renamed for himself by Edward Martin, one of the town's founders.

The Kansas City Exposition Building, inspired by London's Crystal Palace, opens in early October. It has multi-block fairgrounds, a racetrack and a baseball field, as well as a stunning roof containing 80,000 square feet of glass. It will have a spectacular but brief existence as the headquarters of Kansas City's annual agricultural exposition.

The first president to visit Kansas City while in office comes to town on October 12th as a part of a national tour. President Grover Cleveland and his new wife, Frances Folsom Cleveland, see the new Kansas City Exposition Building and the federal building before leaving for Memphis, Tennessee.

The Lawn Tennis Club of Kansas City is the first organized black athletic team in Kansas City.

Kersey Coates, having stoked his fortunes by dealing in West Bottoms property where rail lines and livestock pens merge, dies a millionaire twice over. He is buried in the Elmwood Cemetery.

1888---The Board of Trade building, designed by Chicago's Burnham & Root architectural firm, opens.

1889---A new charter officially changes the city's name to Kansas City.

John C. McCoy dies at his home on Olive Street.

1890s---Talk of founding a university in Kansas City becomes an increasingly evident part of the city's sense of growth.

William Allen White writes for Van Horn's Journal.

1890---Charles Dillon Stengel is born in Kansas City.

1892---Voters in the West Bottoms elect Jim Pendergast their alderman. He will extend his influence to the raucous North End where he develops another saloon.

1893---With attendance falling sharply amid the nationwide depression, the Kansas City Exposition Building closes.

1894---Bennie Moten is born on November 13th.

1896---Colonel Thomas H. Swope provides Kansas City with 1,334 acres for Swope Park, which is 4 miles from the city limits.

1897---Westport becomes part of Kansas City.

1898---Dr. Thomas C. Unthank establishes the all-black Douglass Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas.

1899---The city's first convention hall, designed by Frederick E. Hill, opens to the music of John Philip Sousa's band. It came in at a cost of more than double the original estimates, but is debt-free thanks to the donations of its citizens.

The Heim brothers open Electric Park next to their brewery in the East Bottoms, boosting both beer sales and their streetcar business. It features a German biergarten, bathing facilities, boating, rides, concerts, and a 2,800-seat theater for vaudeville and light opera.

Evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody begins his last evangelistic campaign in Kansas City on November 12th. He becomes ill during the last service, is unable to complete his message, and will die a few days later on December 22nd.

1900---The Democrats choose Kansas City as the site of their national convention.

Fire destroys the Convention Hall on April 4th (as well as the neighboring Lathrop School and Second Presbyterian Church), just 3 months before the scheduled convention. The city promises the Democrats a hall, and it does it, building one of the world's largest indoor arenas. Workers are adding the final touches just as the first delegates arrive. The phrase "Kansas City Spirit" is coined--a motto of proven merit. Kansas Citians strut around town wearing badges on their shirts saying "I Live in Kansas City--Ask Me."

Population reaches 163,752. 10,000 children are reported to be in "all degrees of poverty."

28-year-old Thomas J. Pendergast, Jim's brother, is named superintendent of streets.

Jim Pendergast nominated 38 year-old James A. Reed, the former prosecuting attorney for mayor. In the 1900 election, Reed the future senator owed his victory to Pendergast.

By 1900 Pendergast controlled the mayors office, the street and fire departments and dominated the police force. Pendergast named 123 of the 173 police officers on the force.

Kansas City's $1 billion in bank clearings are among the 10 highest in the nation.

Kansas City celebrates the turn of the century at Convention Hall.

Cable cars and electric streetcars are carrying Kansas City's population southward, farther and farther from its river origins. Urban sprawl is setting in.

1901---Kansas saloon smasher Carry Nation brings her crusade to Kansas City on April 15th, touring saloons and criticizing their managers. She refuses to disperse the crowd she had gathered on the street and is arrested. Freed the next day, the judge gives her until 6 p.m. to leave town. [For more information on Carry, see our Kansas page.]

The Kansas City Times is bought by William Rockhill Nelson, giving his afternoon Star a morning edition.

The Coates Opera House burns down.

1903---Swollen by spring rains, the Kaw and Missouri Rivers spill into the West Bottoms, turning the Missouri River into an inland sea that reaches the bluffs on both sides of the state line. The second great Kansas City Flood makes more than 22,000 people homeless, destroys bridges, ruins the waterworks and shorts out telephone and telegraph lines. After the flood, the railroads drop the idea of building a new station in the West Bottoms.

Fresh out of college, builder Jesse Clyde Nichols sells houses for less than $1,000 in Kansas City, Kansas.

A killer streetcar mows down B.M. Blankenship, a clerk at the Jones Dry Goods Co.

Dr. Thomas C. Unthank establishes the all-black Lange Hospital in Kansas City.

1904---Lyda Burton Conley leads the effort which saves the Huron Indian Cemetery from demolition. She lives in a shack on the site for 6 years while she studies law and becomes the first Native American woman lawyer in the country. Women's groups nationally pressure Congress into passing a bill prohibiting removal of the cemetery.

Standard Oil opens a refinery in tiny Sugar Creek. The prospect of cheap oil spurs industrial development in the Blue River valley.

Kansas City has only 5 beauty parlors.

1905---Alexander M. Dockery was Missouri, and he failed to appoint Pendergast candidates to the Police Board and Pendergast lost some of his influence. The Kansas City World reporter wrote: It is not extra-ordinary that Pendergast views with alarm a measure that proposes to put the quietus on the practice of doling out the positions in public service as rewards for political services rendered to party bosses. February 27, 1905.

1906---Jesse Clyde Nichols buys a 10-acre tract of land in order to build a "plaza" like the marketplaces he loves in Spain. (Country Club Plaza)

12 railroads settle on a site for a new railroad station. It will be built in the bed of the O.K. Creek, which runs south of downtown.

1907---J.C. Nichols opens his first "shopping center" at 51st and Brookside. The trolley line runs near the buildings.

The Heim brothers open a new Electric Park at 46th Street and The Paseo, also conveniently located on their streetcar line. It costs 10¢ to enter "Kansas City's Coney Island," with its artificial lake, roller coaster, band concerts, and 100,000 electric light bulbs that outline the buildings and rides. It is a great place to go after work, and more than 8,000 people do every day. But the fountain with living statuary is its unique attraction. 9 scenes are usually presented during each evening's 15-minute performance.

1908---A small band of religious zealots take on the entire Police Department. The cult's leader, James Sharp, who calls himself "Adam God," and his armed followers take exception to officers corralling their children for panhandling downtown. A riot ensues. Adam God flees but is found in a haystack in Johnson County and is sentenced to 25 years behind bars.

1909---Architect Nelle E. Peters arrives in Kansas City. She will soon be designing single-family homes and apartment buildings.

Henry Ford selects Kansas City as the site of the auto industry's first assembly plant outside Detroit.

The ASB (Armour, Swift and Burlington) Bridge opens, the second to span the Missouri River at Kansas City.

Worried by congestion, seediness, and the danger of floods around Union Depot, the City Council votes to build a new railroad station and voters approve the idea.

The Kansas City Zoo opens.

Kansas City annexes more land. It now covers 60 square miles.

1910---18-year-old Joyce Clyde Hall comes from Norfolk, Nebraska, to sell postcards in the growing Kansas City area. His move is inspired by a roving cigar salesman's story of the Convention Hall rising from the ashes.

A Pendergast man, James A. Reed, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1910.

The fireproof Empress Theater opens in May and is considered on of the most modern vaudeville houses in the country.

Thomas J. Pendergast succeeds his brother Jim as First Ward Alderman.

Popular ex-president Theodore Roosevelt bounces into town. He rides horses and speaks at Convention Hall with some 20,000 admirers squeezed in, filling every seat and aisle.

Construction begins on Union Station. Design changes and labor problems will delay the construction process and it will take 4 years for the station to open.

The city's pioneering Board of Public Welfare gets to work, although Pendergast's operatives work to smash the board and keep the poor all to themselves. The board and its hefty staff of social workers put Kansas City on the cutting edge of progressive thought. But by the end of the decade, its good intentions will fall victim to machine politics. The board is a harbinger of the welfare state.

The J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain is sculpted in Paris by Henri Greber.

Kansas City is populated predominantly with native-b