Kansas City

The 1869 crossing on the back of the plaque was the Hannibal Bridge, and it settled a rivalry. Leavenworth and the City of Kansas both wanted the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad's bridge, and Kansas City won. Designed by Octave Chanute, later an aviation pioneer, and built by the Keystone Bridge Company for about $1 million, it opened on July 3, 1869, as the first permanent rail crossing of the Missouri, with a swing span that opened in under two minutes. A tornado dropped a span in 1886, and a new bridge upstream replaced it in 1917.

What the plaque says

Kansas City At the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas (Kaw) rivers, on the great bend of the Missouri, longest of the U.S. rivers, this famous city of the vast Missouri Valley was first incorporated, 1850, as the Town of Kansas. The first white man known to have viewed this magnificent location was the French explorer De Bourgmond, 1714. Among trappers who later frequented the area was Daniel Morgan Boone, son of the pioneer. The Lewis and Clark Expedition camped here, 1804, and the first steamboat to pass, 1819 was the "Western Engineer." Kansas City is an outgrowth of François Choteau's fur trading post, first permanent settlement, 1821, and the town of Westport, established by J.C. McCoy, 1833. Since 1899 a part of Kansas City, Westport, for two decades, was an outfitting center and, for a time, terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. The Town of Kansas was first laid out, 1838. As immigrants, to what is now Kansas, and traders outfitted here, the town grew. By 1857 it was the Santa Fe Trail terminus and by 1860 the dominant river town and outfitter to Western trader and settler. (See other side) Erected by the State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Kansas City (Continued from other side) Kansas City, continental railroad and air travel center, famous livestock and grain market, huge industrial and food processing point, in 1860 had under 5,000 population. During the Civil War, the city languished under union occupation in an area almost depopulated by military order and guerrilla warfare. The Battle of Westport, October 23, 1864 ended the Confederate cause in Missouri. In this "Gettysburg of the West," 20,000 Federals commanded by Pleasanton and Curtis defeated 9,000 Confederates led by Price, Shelby, and Marmaduke, in bitter conflict. The site is marked in Loose Park. In 1865 the Missouri Pacific R.R. reached this point and here the Missouri River was bridged for the first time in 1869. Now six bridges cross the river here. Among point of interest are the Nelson Gallery of Art; Liberty Memorial; Proctor's "Pioneer Mother Group" and Dallin's "Scout" in Penn Valley Park; City Hall Observation Roof; Kansas City Museum; Swope Park Zoo; Univ. of Kansas City; Rockhurst College; Art Institute; Lookout Point; and Cliff Drive. Erected by the State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arabia Steamboat Museum — 1.2 mi
  The cargo of a sidewheeler that sank in 1856, dug out of a Kansas cornfield in 1988 and 1989 and shown in the River Market, from boots and buttons to jarred pickles.
• National WWI Museum and Memorial — 1.7 mi
  Kansas City's Liberty Memorial of 1926, paid for in ten days of giving, above a museum of the First World War entered across a glass bridge over 9,000 poppies.
• American Jazz Museum — 2.2 mi
  Kansas City's jazz museum at 18th & Vine, with Charlie Parker's Massey Hall saxophone, the 1912 Gem Theater across the street and the Blue Room, a working club inside the museum.
• Negro Leagues Baseball Museum — 2.2 mi
  The national museum of Black professional baseball in Kansas City's 18th & Vine Jazz District, two blocks from the YMCA where the Negro National League was founded in 1920.

More markers nearby

• This Gateway to Kansas — 1.4 mi
• Shawnee Friends Mission — 8.0 mi
• Delaware Crossing and the Grinter Ferry — 8.7 mi
• Liberty — 14 mi