Kansas City, abbreviated KC or KCMO, is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri by both population and area. It is located on the Missouri River at its confluence with the Kansas River, within Jackson, Clay, Platte and Cass counties. It is the 37th-most populous city in the United States and sixth-most populous city in the Midwest, with a population of 508,090 at the 2020 census. The Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Missouri–Kansas state line, is the 31st-most populous metropolitan area in the nation, at 2.25 million residents.
Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a port on the Missouri and Kansas rivers. On June 1, 1850, the town of Kansas was incorporated; soon afterwards, a region designated as the Kansas Territory was established. Confusion between the city and the territory of Kansas ensued, so the name Kansas City was assigned to distinguish the city from the territory. The city's growth was closely tied to westward expansion, as railroads and the Kansas City Stockyards established it as a major transportation and livestock center.
Situated along Missouri's western border with Kansas, Kansas City encompasses 319.03 square miles (826.3 km2), making it the 25th-largest U.S. city by area. It is one of the two county seats of Jackson County, alongside Independence. The city is known for landmarks and districts including the River Market, 18th and Vine, and Country Club Plaza. It is internationally recognized for Kansas City jazz, its extensive system of fountains, the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals sports franchises, and regional cuisine including Kansas City-style barbecue and strip steak.
History
The town of Kansas, Missouri, was incorporated on June 1, 1850, reincorporated and renamed "City of Kansas" on March 28, 1853, and renamed "Kansas City" in 1889. The Kansas City metropolitan area straddles the border between Missouri and Kansas at Kaw Point, and was considered a good place to settle. The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, and Woodneath are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Indigenous peoples and settlement
In past centuries, the area's tribal inhabitants include the Hopewell tradition, Mississippian culture, Kansa, Osage, Otoe, and Missouri. The first documented European visitor to the eventual site of Kansas City was French military officer Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, he had deserted his post as fort commander and was avoiding French authorities. Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles (140 km) east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs.
To clear his name, he wrote Exact Description of Louisiana, of Its Harbors, Lands and Rivers, and Names of the Indian Tribes That Occupy It, and the Commerce and Advantages to Be Derived Therefrom for the Establishment of a Colony in 1713 and The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River in 1714. In the documents, he describes the junction of the "Grande Riv[ière] des Cansez" and Missouri River, as the first adoption of those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the area's first reasonably accurate map.
The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but were not to play a major role other than taxing and licensing Missouri River ship traffic. The French continued their fur trade under Spanish license, before France reclaimed the territory in 1800. Then, after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, explorers Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers on their way to the Pacific West, in June 1804, and on their return, in September 1806. Clark noted it had "a Commanding Situation" to build a fort.
In 1821, the French Chouteau fur-trading family, active in St. Louis as early as 1765, reached the location of what would become Kansas City. There, François Chouteau established a trading post consisting of warehouses and dwellings, dubbed "Chouteau's Landing", the first permanent settlement of the site. The settlement changed locations several times due to floods but the Chouteau family, along with the French Canadian trappers, traders and voyageurs that had come with them, remained in the area.
With successive treaties and the 1830 national Indian Removal Act, tribes originally living in Missouri were progressively forced to move west, to Kansas and further, accelerating the settlement of the Kansas City area by whites.
In 1831, a group of Mormons from New York state led by Joseph Smith settled in the area. They built the first school within what became Kansas City, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833. In 1831, Gabriel Prudhomme Sr., a Canadian trapper and partner of François Chouteau, purchased 257 acres (104 ha) fronting the Missouri River. He established a home for his wife, Josephine, and six children, and operated a ferry on the river.
In 1833, John Calvin McCoy, son of Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy and brother-in-law of Johnston Lykins, established West Port along the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails, three miles (4.8 kilometers) south of the river. In 1834, McCoy established Westport Landing on a rocky ledge situated on a bend in the Missouri, to serve as a landing point for West Port, with Lykins as the first postmaster. He found it more convenient to have his goods offloaded at the Prudhomme landing, next to Chouteau's landing, than in Independence. Following the same route as emigrants and gold seekers headed toward the Pacific Coast, Sante Fe traders shipped goods up the Missouri river by steamboat to Westport before continuing West by land.
On the year of Gabriel Prudhomme's death, a group of fourteen investors purchased his land at auction on November 14, 1838, for $4,220. By 1839, the investors divided the property and the first lots were sold in 1846, after legal complications were settled. The remaining lots were sold by February 1850.
Founding and westward expansion
On June 3, 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the town of Kansas, Missouri, named after the nearby native tribe. By that time, the towns of Kansas, Westport, and nearby Independence, had become critical points in the westward expansion of the United States. Three major trails – the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon – all passed through Jackson County.
On February 22, 1853, Kansas was reincorporated and renamed the City of Kansas with its first elected mayor, William Samuel Gregory. Due to a legal discovery of living outside city boundaries, he was soon succeeded by Johnston Lykins as the second (but first legally elected) mayor. The city had an area of 0.70 square miles (1.8 km2) and a population of 2,500. The boundary lines extended from the middle of the Missouri River south to what is now Ninth Street, and from Bluff Street on the west to a point between Holmes Road and Charlotte Street on the east.
During the American Civil War, the city and its immediate surroundings were the focus of intense military activity. Although the First Battle of Independence in August 1862 resulted in a Confederate States Army victory, the Confederates were unable to leverage their win in any significant fashion, as Kansas City was occupied by Union troops and proved too heavily fortified to assault. The Second Battle of Independence, which occurred on October 21–22, 1864, as part of Sterling Price's Missouri expedition of 1864, also resulted in a Confederate triumph. Once again their victory proved hollow, as Price was decisively defeated in the pivotal Battle of Westport the next day, effectively ending Confederate efforts to regain Missouri.
General Thomas Ewing, Jr., in response to a successful raid on nearby Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill, issued General Order No. 11, forcing the eviction of residents in four western Missouri counties – including Jackson – except those living in the city and nearby communities and those whose allegiance to the Union was certified by Ewing.
Late 19th and early 20th centuries
After the Civil War, Kansas City grew rapidly. The selection of the city over Leavenworth, Kansas, for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad bridge over the Missouri River brought significant growth. The population exploding after 1869, when Hannibal Bridge, designed by Octave Chanute, opened. The boom prompted a name change to Kansas City in 1889, and the city limits to be extended south and east. Westport became part of Kansas City on December 2, 1897. In 1900, Kansas City was the 22nd largest city in the country, with a population of 163,752 residents.
Landscape architect George Kessler shaped Kansas City into a leading example of the City Beautiful movement, with a network of boulevards and parks. New neighborhoods like Southmoreland and the Rockhill District were conceived to accommodate the city's largest residencies of palatial proportions.
The obsolescence of Union Depot in West Bottoms in favor of the new Union Station in 1914, and the opening of the Liberty Memorial in 1923, provided two of the city's most identifiable landmarks. Robert A. Long, president of the Liberty Memorial Association, was a driving force in the funding for construction. Long was a longtime resident and wealthy businessman. He built the R. A. Long Building for the Long-Bell Lumber Company, his home, Corinthian Hall (now the Kansas City Museum) and Longview Farm. Further spurring Kansas City's growth was the opening of the innovative Country Club Plaza development by J. C. Nichols in 1925, as part of his Country Club District plan.
In 1911, Elias Disney moved his family from Marceline to Kansas City. They lived in a new home at 3028 Bellefontaine with a garage he built, in which Walt Disney made his first animation. In 1919, Walt returned from France where he had served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I. He started the first animation company in Kansas City, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, in which he designed Mickey Mouse. When the company went bankrupt, Walt Disney moved to Hollywood and started The Walt Disney Company on October 16, 1923.
The Kansas City streetcar system once had hundreds of miles of streetcars running through the city and was one of the largest systems in the country. In 1903 the 8th Street Tunnel was built as an underground streetcar system through the city. The last run of the streetcar was on June 23, 1957, but the tunnel still exists.
Pendergast political machine
At the start of the 20th century, political machines gained clout in the city, with the one led by Tom Pendergast dominating the city by 1925. Several important buildings and structures were built during this time, including the Kansas City City Hall and the Jackson County Courthouse. During this time, he aided one of his nephew's friends, Harry S. Truman, in a political career. Truman eventually became a senator, then vice president, then president. The machine fell in 1939 when Pendergast, riddled with health problems, pleaded guilty to tax evasion after long federal investigations. His biographers have summed up his uniqueness:
Pendergast may bear comparison to various big-city bosses, but his open alliance with hardened criminals, his cynical subversion of the democratic process, his monarchistic style of living, his increasingly insatiable gambling habit, his grasping for a business empire, and his promotion of Kansas City as a wide-open town with every kind of vice imaginable, combined with his professed compassion for the poor and very real role as city builder, made him bigger than life, difficult to characterize.
Mid- to late 20th century
Troost Avenue was once the eastern edge of Kansas City, Missouri and a residential corridor nicknamed Millionaire Row. It is now widely seen as one of the city's most prominent racial and economic dividing lines due to urban decay, which was caused by white flight. During the civil rights era the city blocked people of color from moving to homes west of Troost Avenue, causing the areas east of Troost to have one of the worst murder rates in the country. This led to the dominating economic success of neighboring Johnson County.
In 1950, African Americans represented 12.2% of Kansas City's population. The city's most populous ethnic group, non-Hispanic whites, declined from 89.5% in 1930 to 54.9% in 2010.
In 1940, the city had about 400,000 residents; by 2000, it had about 440,000. From 1940 to 1960, the city more than doubled its physical size, while increasing its population by only about 75,000. By 1970, the city covered approximately 316 square miles (820 km2), more than five times its size in 1940. Aggressively annexing the surrounding suburbs and undeveloped land spared Kansas City from the severe population loss suffered by cities like St. Louis and Detroit, similar cities which both lost over 50% of their population in the postwar era. In the most neglected neighborhoods, however, the same pattern of abandonment occurred and left behind massive numbers of vacant lots and abandoned homes, especially in the areas east of Troost.
The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was a major disaster that occurred on July 17, 1981, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200 others during a tea dance in the 45-story Hyatt Regency hotel in Crown Center. It is the deadliest structural collapse in US history other than the September 11 attacks. In 2015 a memorial called the Skywalk Memorial Plaza was built for the families of the victims of the disaster, across the street from the hotel which is now a Sheraton.