Kansas City

“ You see, Kansas City is a very young and very great center of business. It is still engrossed in making money, but, being so exceptionally sturdy, it has found [ 297] time, outside of business hours, as it were, to create its parks and boulevards—much as some young business man comes home after a hard day's work and cuts the grass in his front yard, and waters it, and even plants a little garden for his wife and children and himself. ”

“ Increased property values take care of that; the worst of the work and the expense is over, and Kansas City has lifted itself by its own bootstraps from ugliness to beauty. How much better it is to have done the whole thing quickly—to have made the gigantic effort and attained the parks and boulevards at what amounts to one great municipal bound—than to have dawdled and dreamed along as St. Louis and so many other cities have done. ”

“ Kansas City is notable for its park and boulevard system. 50 miles of boulevard connect 2,600 acres of public parks within the city limits. Kansas City is the distributing point for a vast agricultural region of the west and south and it has large wholesale interests. An immense business is done in grain, live stock, and meat packing. Kansas City is the largest winter wheat market in the world, and the second market in the receipts of general grain in the United States. ”

“ And I believe it is felt. There is every evidence that Kansas City's "slogan" is a promissory note—a note which, it may be added, she is paying off in a handsome manner, by improving herself rapidly in countless ways. ”

“ In reaching the necessary limit of a paper too short for its subject, I can only express my admiration of the indomitable energy and spirit of that portion of the West which Kansas City represents, and congratulate it upon so many indications of attention to the higher civilization, without which its material prosperity will be wonderful but not attractive. ”

“ The West of Bret Harte and Jesse James is gone. All that is left of it is legend. When I speak of a western city I think of a city young, not altogether formed, but full of dauntless energy. And when I speak of western people I think of people [ 296] who possess, in larger measure than any other people I have met, the solid traits of character which make human beings admirable.
Kansas City is said to be more American than any other city of its size in the United States. Eighty per cent. of its people are American born, of either native or foreign parents. ”

“ Of all the wonderful towns in the West, none has attracted more attention in the East than Kansas City. I think I am not wrong in saying that it is largely the product of Eastern energy and capital, and that its closest relations have been with Boston. I doubt if ever a new town was from the start built up so solidly or has grown more substantially. The situation, at the point where the Missouri River makes a sharp bend to the east, and the Kansas River enters it, was long ago pointed out as the natural centre of a great trade. ”

“ Perhaps the first of her improvements to strike the visitor is her system of parks. I am informed that the parked boulevards of Kansas City exceed in mileage those of any other American city. These boulevards, connecting the various parks and forming circuits running around and through the town, do go a long way toward making it "a good place to live in." Kansas City has every right to be proud, not only of her parks, but of herself for having had the intelligence and energy to make them. ”

“ While here I visited Wyandot on the North side of Kansas River, the same side as Kansas City on the Missouri. This is a very new free state settlement and although but of recent origin has many fine houses, stores and hotels. Possessing a very good site for a city with a good landing, it will be in time, when the resources of Kansas are developed, a thriving place. Kansas City is built on a bluff rising from the river bank and expensive grading was necessary to secure an area for houses. ”

“ Kansas City, the second greatest packing center in the United States, is the chief market for Kansas live stock, but there are several packing houses in different parts of the State. Creameries, canning factories, and pickling works represent other industries that have been developed to make use of our agricultural products.
The Mineral Industries. Although Kansas is not one of the great mining states, it has a number of valuable mineral resources, the chief of which are coal, lead, zinc, oil, gas, salt, building stone, and gypsum. ”

“ Kansas City.—I am not so well satisfied with what I see of the women of the prairie cities. I am writing this where I sit leisurely in a store in Main street, Kansas City, a streaming crowd on the sidewalks flowing by. The ladies (and the same in Denver) are all fashionably drest, and have the look of "gentility" in face, manner and action, but they do not have, either in physique or the mentality appropriate to them, any high native originality of spirit or body, (as the men certainly have, appropriate to them.) ”

“ There are no large towns on the Madison branch, either in Kansas or Missouri, and the country which that branch serves is largely agricultural, Kansas City being the nearest and most natural market for the products of the territory. ”

“ Passing trains whistled loudly and frequently. The shores became more populated.
“Two miles more and we’ll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,” said he. “We’ve crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three hundred and ninety miles—from one great city to another great one.
“St. Louis—Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West. In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas City. ”

“ Clyde, who for all his years in Kansas City had never ventured much beyond Kansas City, Kansas, on the west or the primitive and natural woods of Swope Parks on the east, nor farther along the Kansas or Missouri Rivers than Argentine on the one side and Randolph Heights on the other, was quite fascinated by the idea of travel which appeared to be suggested by all this—distant travel. ”

“ Besides its trunk-line railroads the [389] city has two belt railway systems and numerous private tracks, so that its equipment for industrial work is unexcelled. Its street-railway system of nearly two hundred miles is one of the finest in America. The tracks and the equipment are thoroughly modern in every respect.
The first newspaper published in Kansas City was a weekly called the Kansas Ledger. It was established in 1851, but was sold in about fifteen months, and then sold again and removed to Independence. ”

“ Atchison is named after a famous pro-slavery advocate, who came to Kansas, with his due quota of "border ruffians," for the avowed purpose of making Kansas a slave State. Topeka is an Indian name; Santa Fe is a Spanish landmark, tall as a lighthouse builded on a cliff. At the Missouri line is Kansas City, so named because this metropolis is created by Kansas. The metropolis is in Missouri; but is made rich and great by Kansas men and products. Kansas has not a large city in its borders, because this Kansas City has engrossed the great business interests of a great Commonwealth. ”

“ Two horsemen rode along the bank to hunt and bring in game, which was to go far toward supplying provisions for the expedition. After a five weeks’ journey they reached the mouth of the Kansas River, and encamped that night on the present site of Kansas City, Kansas. From there they continued up the Missouri River where it forms the present boundary line of Kansas, along the border of what has since become Leavenworth, Atchison, and Doniphan counties. Their account of the journey describes the country through which they passed and the different Indian tribes and villages they saw. ”

“ This, for that time, enormous bulk of business, passed over the Santa Fé trail which is now almost exactly the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé 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. ”

“ KANSAS—COLORADO—NEW MEXICO. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad—Land Grants—Farming Statistics—Immigration and Settling—Colorado—New Mexico—Santa Fé—Colossal Hotels—Archbishop Lamy—The Rio Grande.
We have now taken a new point of departure. In a few minutes we are in the State of Kansas (in which Kansas City is not, it is in Missouri) and the western world lies before us. We have crossed the great river by a bridge 1387 ft. long, which cost 200,000l. ”

“ But as there are no signs, I conclude that the present names are only tentative, and that when Kansas City gets through building, she will name her streets in sober earnest, and mark them in order that strangers may more readily find their way.
The "slogan" of Kansas City suggests that of Detroit. Detroit says: "In Detroit life is worth living." Kansas City is less boastful, but more aspiring. "Make it a good place to live in," she says. ”

“ True, they are monuments to the esthetic, compared with the old brownstone blocks of New York City, or the Queen Anne blocks of cities such as Cleveland, but it must be remembered that New York's brownstone period, and the wooden Queen Anne period, date back a good many years, whereas these Kansas City houses are new. And it is in our new houses that we Americans have had a chance to show (and are showing) the improvement in our national taste. I do not complain that the domestic architecture of Kansas City represents no improvement ”

“ Kansas City Star
See now how real life beats the reel life every now and then. Here, for instance, is the strange history of The Man in the Black Mask, as acted upon the stage of Kansas City’s streets in the deserted hours of the morning when everybody slumbers except holdup men, belated wayfarers and policemen.
REAL I.
Ed Wilson, alias E. Harry Miller, known in the family album at police headquarters as a “gunman,” fares forth very early this morning with a companion to make his living. At 2:30 o’clock at Thirteenth and Charlotte streets, they meet a man and begin their pleasant labors. ”

“ You have just reason for the pride you feel in your fair city, for within its gates business thrift and industrial activity, municipal growth and individual enterprise, the joy of beautiful homes and the charms of an intelligent society, combine to benefit and to delight. As a citizen of Kansas I share in your pride ”

“ An important feature of the business of Kansas City is in the investment and loan and trust companies, which are many, and aggregate a capital of $7,773,000. Loans are made on farms in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa, and also for city improvements.
Details of business might be multiplied, but enough have been given to illustrate the material prosperity of the city. ”

“ It was at one time known as T'Vault Creek for W. G. TÄVault, Oregon's pioneer editor, who lived at Dardanelles, near what is now Gold Hill.
KANSAS CITY, Washington County. Kansas City is the name of a crossroads community about six miles north-northwest of Forest Grove. It is said that the name was applied because some settlers from Kansas City, Missouri, established themselves there. The writer has not been able to find the name Kansas City on the Washington County post office list and apparently the locality never had a post office called Kansas City. ”

“ It is difficult to analyze the impression Kansas City first makes upon the Eastern stranger. It is usually that of immense movement, much of it crude, all of it full of purpose. At the Union Station, at the time of the arrival and departure of trains, the whole world seems afloat; one is in the midst of a continental movement of most varied populations. I remember that the first time I saw it in passing, the detail that most impressed me was the racks and rows of baggage checks ”

“ It has assailed ignorance with seven thousand school-houses. Of its 270,000 voters, at least 110,000 were soldiers during the civil war. The map of the Continent was disfigured by a desert—these people touched it with the magic wand of industry and enterprise, and lo! a garden blossoms in its stead. To populate a county thirty miles square within six months, and round out the half-year with a fight over the county seat between six towns, or to build a fair-sized city within a twelvemonth—these achievements may seem like a fiction, but they have been realities in Kansas. ”

“ Kansas is essentially a land of young politicians. When O'mie took his band to the capital city to play martial music for the big political rally, there were more young men than gray beards on the speakers' stand and on the front seats. I had gone with the Springvale crowd on this jaunt, but I did not consider myself a person of importance. ”

“ The Kansas men who located towns were, as a rule, sanguine 198and cheerful persons, and no matter how bleak and desolate were their surroundings, nor how unpromising the future really was, the ground in which they planted their stakes seemed to them specially designed, from the beginning of all things, as the site for a prosperous city. Before the first rude frame building was completed, they had drawn on the map of Kansas numerous lines of railway that must and would be built, and they lay down at night to dream delightful dreams of fortunes that were to be realized from corner lots. ”