175 Years of Jackson County, Missouri, History in a Nutshell

Jackson County, Missouri’s 175-Year History in a Nutshell

By The Jackson County Historical Society

The story of Jackson County starts with its northern boundary – the Missouri River.

Before there were towns and cities, before there were streets and highways, there was the river, a broad, shallow ribbon winding through towering bluffs and wooded banks. The Missouri River took travelers as far west as they could go by river passage – to what is now Jackson County. The river was a treacherous highway, fraught with snags and subject to floods. But it was the route of all travel and commerce in those days. It was a course traveled by Native Americans and newcomers alike, the conduit for the exchange of goods, information, and ideas.

In the earliest days of our recorded history, French trappers traveled the river, learning its secrets from the Osage Indians who first called this land home. In 1803, what is now Jackson County became United States territory, a part of the most advantageous real estate transaction in history – the Louisiana Purchase.

The next year, the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, traveled upstream on the Missouri River to what is now Jackson County. In June of 1804, Lewis & Clark arrived at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. Captain Clark wrote in his journal that, “The country about the mouth of this river is very fine.” In due time, his opinion would be shared by the citizens of Kansas City. Four years later, Clark returned to what would become Jackson County, this time to build a fort in the wilderness. Fort Osage would remain the westernmost presence of federal government until 1818. It was at Fort Osage that the Osage Tribes first relinquished their claims to their ancestral lands west of the Mississippi, bringing an end to their sovereignty and opening the door to white settlement. In 1819, Fort Osage welcomed the first steamboat in the region, the Western Engineer. Traffic on the great muddy highway was about to explode.

In 1821, the State of Missouri was admitted to the Union. That same year, Francois Chouteau, a French fur trader from St. Louis, arrived in the region, accompanied by his young wife Berenice. The Chouteaus eventually built a fur trading empire on the banks of the river in what is now Kansas City. Another event occurred in 1821 that would shape the history of this county: a bankrupt and desperate man, William Becknell, made a daring decision to save himself from debtor’s prison by embarking on a trading expedition to the Spanish territorial capital of Santa Fe. Becknell’s route was the Santa Fe Trail, which would become the thoroughfare for international trade, outfitted in Jackson County, for years to come.

On December 15, 1826, the Missouri General Assembly organized Jackson County.

By the next year, Independence was established as the county seat. In 1827, Independence was nothing more than a fallen tree near a popular spring. But in a few years, its new entrepreneurs would become the premier outfitters for the Trail trade. The glory days of Independence as the Queen City of the Trails continued until 1844, when a flood destroyed its river landing.

The stage was set for the town of Westport to become the headquarters for travelers along the trails. Westport was platted in 1835 by John Calvin McCoy. Westport had its own landing on the Missouri River, connected to the town by a road that was later named Broadway. John Calvin McCoy was an industrious man. By 1838, he joined a group of other investors to purchase the farm of Gabriel Prudhomme, located on the south bank of the Missouri River near the Chouteau property. The investors paid $4220 for the land, which McCoy named the Town of Kansas. In 1850, township government was established for the Town of Kansas, which covered 352 acres and had a population of 150. By 1857, the City Council began leasing space on the Market Square of what is now known as the City Market. This place has been used continuously as a public market ever since.

In 1859, back in Independence, construction was completed on the new Jackson County Jail and Marshal’s House. About the same time the jail opened for business, hostilities between free state and pro-slavery forces were reaching a boiling point. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened Kansas Territory to settlement. The act provided for popular sovereignty to determine the issue of slavery, setting the stage for bloody border conflicts between pro-slavery Missourians and anti-slavery settlers moving into Kansas Territory. In 1861, the Civil War began. In 1862, the Battles of Independence and Lone Jack both ended in Confederate victories and short-lived Confederate domination in Jackson County. Missouri remained a union state throughout the war, however, and was occupied by the Union Army. In Jackson County, the war tore families and friends apart. William Clarke Quantrill, who started life as a northerner, became a Confederate officer and led his [in]famous raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in 1863. He and his men killed 158 people ... nearly every man and most boys they could find.

In response, Brigadier General Ewing signed General Orders No. 11, requiring all persons living along the state line between the Missouri and the Osage Rivers to leave their farms. The enforcement of Order No. 11 resulted in terrible hardships for the people of Jackson County. Independence artist George Caleb Bingham captured their misery on canvas. In 1864, the Union and Confederate Armies met again on the battlefield, this time in the Battle of Westport. The Union Army won the battle, but 3000 soldiers lost their lives. By 1865, the Civil War came to an end. Jackson Countians, and the rest of the country, started the terrible task of rebuilding their lives and the Union.

Following the Civil War, Jackson County went on a building spree: Kansas City’s Jewish community organized the city’s first synagogue, Temple B’Nnai Jehuda. Construction started on the stockyards in the West Bottoms. Union Depot, also in the West Bottoms, was completed. Construction began on the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 11^th and Broadway. The New York Life Building, the city’s first skyscraper, opened at 20 W. 9^th Street. The Vaile Mansion was built in Independence. And, most important of all, the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad hired Paris-born engineer Octave Chanute to build the Hannibal Bridge across the Missouri River at the Town of Kansas. In 1889, the community that had started life as the Town of Kansas officially became “Kansas City.”

In 1907, one and one-quarter million immigrants entered the United States, thousands of them arriving in Jackson County. There was a dark side to the progress of the growing population of the region, however: The social norms that had their roots in the antebellum era took the shape of entrenched segregation following the Civil War. Racial segregation was a fact of life in Kansas City by the end of the 19^th Century. By 1920, the African-American population was confined to an area bounded by 9^th Street, Prospect, 27^th Street, and Troost. Its commercial center became the legendary intersection of 18^th and Vine.

The beginning of the 20^th Century marked the beginnings of the careers of three men whose impact upon Kansas City was enormous. J.C. Nichols got his start in real estate in 1903 selling houses in Kansas City, Kansas. By 1922, J.C. Nichols was announcing plans for the Country Club Plaza, following the construction of neighborhoods so well designed that they remain to this day some of the best examples of American urban planning. In 1910, Joyce Hall was selling postcards out of his room at the downtown YMCA. By 1922, his postcard business had evolved into a major enterprise that would eventually become the industry leader known as Hallmark Cards. Tom Pendergast was elected Jackson County Marshal in 1903. In 1910, Pendergast was elected to the Kansas City Council. By 1922, having established himself as the kingpin of the Democratic Party in Jackson County, Pendergast endorsed a young, unsuccessful businessman named Harry Truman for the position of Eastern Judge of the Jackson County Court.

In 1914, hostilities broke out in Europe that would eventually affect American lives: The Great War. It was during the World War I era that Kansas City acquired many of its most enduring landmarks: Union Station at 23^rd and Main Streets opened its doors. The statue called “The Scout” was installed in Penn Valley Park.

Following World War I, the Liberty Memorial was constructed to honor America’s fallen soldiers.

The end of World War I brought Prohibition and women’s suffrage in 1920. The era of flappers and speakeasies had begun. By the mid-1920s, over 150 speakeasies, nightclubs and dance halls were doing business in Kansas City.

The 1920s were remarkable for other reasons as well: Walt Disney, a young man with a big imagination from Marceline, Missouri, opened his Laugh-O-Gram Studios on 31^st Street. A mouse in residence there would later be named Mickey. Architect Nelle Peters designed elegant apartment buildings surrounding the Country Club Plaza, turning it into a high-density residential area as well as a shopping destination. Nell Donnelly turned her talent with a needle into a multi-million dollar industry headquartered in Kansas City’s garment district. And the Negro National League was organized at the Paseo branch of the YMCA, giving birth to the Kansas City Monarchs, whose roster included baseball legends Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Buck O’Neil.

The golden age of the 1920s came to an end in 1929, when the stock market crashed and the nation was plunged into the Great Depression. Jackson County, however, fared better than many places, the result of Tom Pendergast’s political creativity and the willingness of Jackson Countians to pass a $50 million dollar “ten year plan” for public improvements that also provided thousands of jobs. It was during this remarkable era of public building that Presiding Judge Harry Truman orchestrated the reconstruction of the Jackson County Courthouse in Independence.

The Pendergast Era was known for many things, including graft and corruption, but it did result in a level of prosperity for Jackson County that was unheard of throughout much of the country. People could find work here, including musicians. During the 1930s, the best musicians in the country came to Kansas City because they could work here. Count Basie took over Bennie Moten’s band, after Moten died during minor surgery. Julia Lee’s career took off like a rocket and Mary Lou Williams was one of the best piano players in the business. Pete Johnson played piano for Big Joe Turner, the blues shouter whose raucous style eventually gave birth to rock and roll. By the end of the decade, Jay McShann had his own band, which would come to include a young sax player named Charlie Parker.

And it was in the 1930s that the newly opened Nelson Atkins Museum of Art was one of the few museums in the country that had any money to buy art, resulting in one of the finest collections in the country.

In 1934, Harry Truman was elected to the United States Senate. By the end of the decade his political ally Tom Pendergast pled guilty to income tax evasion and was imprisoned. The Pendergast Era had come to an end.

By 1941, the United States had entered World War II. In 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose Harry Truman as his running mate, and they won an overwhelming presidential victory. But President Roosevelt would die only 82 days into his fourth term. Harry S. Truman became the 33^rd president of the United States on April 12, 1945. President Truman inherited the task of steering the country through the final days of WWII. In 1948, he was elected to the presidency, in spite of predictions to the contrary. The end of World War II changed everything, both here in Jackson County and throughout the country.

The old days were over and the modern era had begun.

Soldiers came home to start families. They moved by the thousands into new homes financed by federal programs, which, along with the emerging interstate highway system, started the trend toward suburban sprawl that continues today. The Civil Rights Movement started to gain momentum, its progress diligently reported by the Kansas City Call, headed by Lucile Bluford, its long-time editor.

The 1960s brought the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals to town. But the Armour meat packing company left town in 1966, bringing an end to the region’s meat packing industry. And the Emery Bird Thayer Department store closed, succumbing to rapidly changing demographic patterns. The 1970s saw the completion of the Truman Sports Complex and the death of its namesake, Harry S. Truman, in 1972.

By the last two decades of the 20^th Century, the local political scene became more diverse: Barbara Potts of Independence was elected the first woman mayor in the region. In 1991, Emanuel Cleaver became the first African-American mayor of Kansas City and in 1998, Kay Barnes was elected the first woman mayor of Kansas City.

In the past 175 years, Jackson County has evolved from a wilderness on the edge of the American frontier to the heart of a major metropolitan region. In those years, Jackson County has borne witness to many of the defining moments of American history, and in the process, has met challenges with strength and ingenuity.

Now, Jackson County has contemporary challenges to address:

· Concentrated poverty in our urban areas

· Chronic problems in the county’s largest school district, and

· Suburban sprawl

The year 2001 brought a new century, a new millennium and a new era in American history, following the harrowing events of September 11. The challenges that face us now will chart the course of our future. The way we meet those challenges today will determine how we are judged 175 years from now.