History of the Kansas City metropolitan area
The history of the Kansas City metropolitan area relates to the area around the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers and the modern-day city of Kansas City, Missouri.
Before the arrival of European explorers, the area was inhabited at various times by peoples of the Hopewell tradition and later the Mississippian culture, as well as the Kansa, Osage, Otoe and Missouri tribes. In the early 18th century, Frenchmen from St. Louis, Missouri moved up the Missouri River to trap for furs and trade with the local Native Americans. The area was acquired by the United States from France in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and Americans began settling there in greater numbers after the organization of the Missouri Territory in 1812. In 1838, Kansas City was founded and eventually surpassed neighboring Westport to become the predominant city west of St. Louis. The area was also a focal point in the westward expansion of the United States, as both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails ran nearby. After formation of the Kansas Territory in 1854, the violence along its border with Missouri was a prelude to the American Civil War.
Exploration
Bourgmont
The first documented French visitor to the Kansas City area was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Bourgmont was on the lam from French authorities after deserting his post as commander of Fort Detroit, after being criticized for his handling of a Native American attack on the fort. He lived with a Native American wife in the Missouri village about east near Brunswick, Missouri, and illegally traded furs.To clear his name, Bourgmont 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 in 1714, "The Route to Be Taken to Ascend the Missouri River". In these documents, he described the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, as the first to refer to them by those names. French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the first reasonably accurate map of the area.
The French rewarded Bourgmont by giving him their highest honors and naming him commander of the Missouri. He built the first fort in 1723 at Fort Orleans, near his Brunswick home. In 1724, Bourgmont led a group of Native Americans probably up the Kansas River en route to the southwest to set up an alliance with the Comanche to fight the Spanish, thereby creating a New France empire extending from Montreal through Missouri to New Mexico. To celebrate the success of the venture, he took the Native American chiefs on a junket to Paris to hunt with Louis XV and see the glory of France at Versailles and Fontainebleau.
Bourgmont got promoted to official noble status and stayed in Normandy, not accompanying the chiefs back to the New World. According to legend, the Native Americans then slaughtered everybody in the Fort Orleans garrison. The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but were not to play a major role in the area other than taxing and licensing all traffic on the Missouri River. The French continued their fur trade on the river under Spanish license.
Lewis and Clark
Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Lewis and Clark Expedition left St. Louis on a mission to reach the Pacific Ocean. In 1804, Lewis and Clark camped for three days at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. During their stay there, they met French fur traders and mapped the area of Quality Hill in what would eventually become Kansas City, Missouri, calling it "a fine place for a fort". This became Kansas City, Kansas, memorialized at Kaw Point Park.Because of the burgeoning trade up the Missouri River from St. Louis, especially following Lewis and Clark's expedition, the United States Government sought to create government posts all throughout the area. In 1808, Fort Osage was established 20 miles from the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers near present-day Sibley, Missouri.
Kaw's Mouth
In 1812, after Louisiana officially became a state, the remaining portions of the original Louisiana Territory north of Arkansas were renamed the Missouri Territory. As plans were made to divide up the territory for the entry of Missouri into the union, it was determined that the western border of the new state would run from Iowa along the Missouri River to the confluence of the Kansas River and the Missouri River, then as a straight line running south to the northwest corner of Arkansas. As part of the Missouri Compromise in 1821, Congress admitted Missouri to the union as the 24th state and as a slave state. The area of the confluence of the two rivers, alternately known as the village of Kansa, Chouteau's, Quindaro, Westport Landing, Missouri River Quay, Town of Kansas, City of Kansas, and finally Kansas City, has been subject to several floods and river course changes. Since 1800, the confluence has moved about a quarter mile up the Missouri River.Early to mid-1800s
Native Americans
Missouri joined the Union in 1821 and, after the Treaty of St. Louis in 1825, the 1,400 Missouri Shawnees were forcibly relocated from Cape Girardeau to southeastern Kansas, close to the Neosho River. In 1826, the Prophet Tenskwatawa established a village in Argentine, Kansas. During 1833, only chief Black Bob's band of Shawnee resisted the relocation efforts. They settled in northeastern Kansas, near Olathe and along the Kansas River in Monticello, near Gum Springs. Tenskwatawa died in 1836 at his village in Kansas City, Kansas.Early European settlers
The language of the first European settlement in Kansas City was French. In 1821, 24-year-old François Gesseau Chouteau, nephew of René Auguste Chouteau, set up a permanent trading post in the great bend in the Missouri River that makes up the Northeast Industrial District. He referred to the post as "the village of the Kansa". In 1825, after natives agreed to leave the westernmost six miles of Missouri to the confluence of the Kansas, the area was referred to as "Chouteau's". In 1826, Chouteau moved his trading post to higher ground, Troost Avenue and the river, following a flood. He also financed the first Catholic church, which was built on Quality Hill.The area was soon populated by trappers, scouts, traders, and farmers, leading to the incorporation of Jackson County, Missouri, in December 1826 and the founding of the town of Independence a few months later, located approximately from the river junction, as its county seat. As the number of farmers increased, the fur traders retreated northward. In 1831, Moses Grinter established a ferry on the Kansas River on the old Indian trail by the Kaw's water. Grinter was one of the earliest permanent white settlers in the Kansas City, Kansas, area.
Latter Day Saint movement
In 1831, members of the Church of Christ, the original name of the Latter Day Saint church founded by Joseph Smith, came from Kirtland, Ohio, and New York State and purchased about of land in the Paseo and Troost Lake areas. Conflict between the Saints and other Missouri residents led to the eviction of the Latter Day Saints from Jackson County in 1833 and then the 1838 Mormon War. Despite their expulsion, many Mormons continued to believe that their New Jerusalem would be located at Independence, Missouri.Years later, various groups of Latter Day Saints returned to Jackson County, the first of whom were members of the diminutive Church of Christ, quickly followed by adherents to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints under the leadership of Joseph Smith III and members of other factions, several of whom had established their headquarters in nearby Independence, Missouri.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest sect in the Latter Day Saint movement and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The LDS Church opened the Kansas City Missouri Temple on May 6, 2012.
Westport and Westport Landing
Over the next years, the character of Kansas City was defined by those who wanted to live close to the river and those who wanted to live in the hills. John Calvin McCoy, who is considered the "father of Kansas City", had a hand in establishing settlements in both locations. In 1833, he opened a trading post in the hills three miles south of the river. McCoy named it "West Port" because it was the last place to get supplies before travelers went into Kansas Territory on the California Trail, Santa Fe Trail, and Oregon Trail. McCoy got supplies from boats that docked at a rocky outcropping on the river at what is Main Street and the river; the area was called "Westport Landing". McCoy's landing and Chouteau's trading post drove traffic to the last outpost before settlers traveled up the Kansas River or Missouri River. The road connecting Westport with the trading post and Westport Landing followed Broadway. In 1834, the steamboat John Hancock, which was laden with goods for McCoy, became the first steamboat to dock at the Westport Landing and opened up a new era of communication and transportation for the area.Town of Kansas
Expansion around the landing was stifled because it was a farm mostly owned by Gabriel Prudhomme. In 1838, McCoy, Chouteau, and other merchants formed the Town of Kansas Company and purchased Prudhomme's farm for. The investors had rejected other names for the new town including Port Fonda, Rabbitville, and Possum Trot. The next year, in 1839, Chouteau died, and the town outside of Westport Landing was named Kansas.Throughout the 1840s, the population and importance of Kansas swelled as it and nearby Independence and Westport became starting points on the Oregon, Santa Fe, and California trails for settlers heading west. Between St. Louis and California, one of the few substantially populated areas was around Kaw Point at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. The first railroad came to Kansas in 1847.
Jackson County formally incorporated the town of Kansas, Missouri on June 3, 1850, traditionally viewed as the retrospective founding date for what became Kansas City. Kansas's population was approximately 1,500 people. In 1851 or 1852, its first newspaper was called Public Ledger, was soon defunct, and in October 1854 was succeeded by the first permanent local newspaper, the Kansas City Enterprise. It was soon followed by the first telegraph service.