photo by gusto

The metropolitan area of Kansas City sprawls across the Kansas-Missouri state border. It is the second-largest city in the state, with a population of 150,000. The portion that falls within Kansas lies on hilly countryside adjacent to the Kansas River. Most of the attractions lie over the border, but Kansas City, Kansas, does have historic interest.

Before the arrival of Europeans, the Kansa people inhabited the area. They signed treaties with the government and eventually left Kansas in 1873 after selling their lands to buy a reservation in Oklahoma. In 1818 the US government made the area a reservation for the Delaware people. In the 1830s tribes such as the Wyandot and Shawnee, forced off their lands to the east, began to settle in the area. The Shawnee Indian Mission was established in 1839 at 3403 West 53rd Street by the Methodists to teach the English language and trade skills to Native Americans. In 1843 the Delaware sold the land to the Wyandot tribe who established a community known as Wyandot City, which had the first free school in the territory. In the 1850s, when the government opened the territory, Europeans arrived and renamed the settlement Wyandotte.

In the elections of 1855 proslavery candidates won control of the Kansas territorial legislature (with the help of like-minded Missourians who poured across the border to vote in the elections).

This “Bogus Legislature,” as it is sometimes known, passed pro-slavery laws and wrote a pro-slavery constitution. The laws were passed in the East Building (1841) of the Shawnee Indian Mission which, like the North Building (1845), is now open for viewing. However, the national congress refused to admit Kansas as a slave state. It was here, in 1859, that a convention wrote the first successful state constitution. Local citizens played a significant role in the anti-slavery movement and a number of African-Americans settled here after the Civil War.

When a meatpacking company opened in 1868, the industry attracted many immigrants from Europe. By 1880, their numbers had swelled the population to 3,200 residents. Other towns in the region grew around different meat-packing houses and, in 1886, Wyandotte merged with them to become Kansas City. By 1900, 50,000 people had settled there.

Of historic interest is the Huron Indian Cemetery, a nineteenth-century burial ground preserved in downtown Kansas City. Visitors can also see Grinter Place State Historic Site, an 1862 farmhouse with period furnishings, and Strawberry Hill Museum, which has exhibits relating to German, Russian, Balkan, and Eastern European communities. The history of slavery is remembered at Quindaro, a “station” on the Underground Railroad—a route along which escaped slaves were smuggled to freedom in Canada. To see it, visitors must apply at the Kansas City Public Library.

Kansas City is at the intersection of I-35, I-70, and I-29. Buses connect it with Lawrence, Topeka, Abilene, Denver, and Wichita. Just over the state border are a train terminal and an international airport.