USA > Kansas > Wyandotte County > Kansas City > History of Kansas City illustrated in three decades : being a chronicle wherein is set forth the true account of the founding, rise, and present position occupied by Kansas City in municipal America > Part 6
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In February, 1865, the Missouri Legislature granted a charter for a railroad from Kansas City to the Iowa State line, in the direction of Council Bluffs via St. Joseph, and embrac- ing what had been built of the Kansas City & St. Joseph Railroad from St. Joseph to Weston. The interest in the road to Ft. Scott was revived, and the Kansas Legislature memori- alized Congress for a grant of land for it. Track-laying on the Missouri Pacific was resumed in February. Good progress was being made when, a month later, the country along the line began to swarm with bushwhackers, who not only prevented trade with adjacent parts of Missouri, but frequently robbed
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the men employed in constructing the road, and prevented their proceeding with the work, Ineffectually General Pope was appealed to for aid in suppressing them. He informed Governor Fletcher that the civil authorities must deal with them. In May about 350 of them assembled near Lexington, and threatened to sack and fire the town, but they now seemed to realize that the rebellion was at an end, though they had never credited reports to that effect, which had reached them before, and many of them, led by the notorious Bill Poole, sur- rendered to the authorities of Lexington, while others fled.
The Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, which was re- organized in July, became again, as it had been in ante-bellum days, a vigorous aid to railroad extension. The Fort Scott road was one of the first to receive the attention of that body. The old Kansas & Neosho Valley Company was reorganized under the presidency of Colonel Kersey Coates, and measures were taken without delay toward its construction. A proposi- tion was submitted to the people of Kansas City, September 19th, that they vote $200,000 to aid this object and $25,000 toward the completion of the Kansas City & St. Joseph Rail- road from Weston to Kansas City. On September 14th, five days before the election, Captain Charles G. Keeler had begun work on the Fort Scott road. Both appropriations were voted by the people by large majorities. In November following, Johnson and Miami counties, Kansas, each voted the Fort Scott road $200,000. This it is thought would practically secure its construction. As projected in 1856, this road was to have run to Galveston, and its friends were now waiting and watching for an opportunity to secure its right of way through
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the Indian Territory. , Such an opportunity was soon pre- sented.
During the war the Creeks Choctaws, Chickasaws, Semi- noles, Shawnees, Kiowas, Wichitas, Osages, Comanches, Senecas, Quapaws, and Cherokees had, in whole or in part, joined the rebellion. In consequence, the Government took the ground that these Indians had nullified all treaties formerly existing between them and the United States and that new treaties must be made, and Judge D. N. Cooly (Commissioner of Indian Affairs), Hon. Elijah Sells (Superintendent of the Southern Superintendency), Colonel Parker (of General Grant's staff), General Harney, of St. Louis, Thomas Nixon, of Phil- adelphia, and others were appointed commissioners on the part of the Government to meet the Indians at Fort Smith, September 5th, to negotiate such treaties. The friends of the railroad recognized in this treaty an opportunity to secure the much desired right of way, and the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce appointed Colonel R. T. Van Horn, Colonel E. M. McGee, Colonel M. J. Payne, and Matthew Mudeater (a Wy- andotte Indian) the Kansas City delegation to the conference. The balance of the delegation consisted of Silas Armstrong, of Wyandotte, Colonel Wilson, Major Reynolds, and General C. W. Blair, of Fort Scott, General R. B. Mitchell, of Paola, and Colonel T, J. Haines and General James G. Blunt. These representatives of their several localities secured the right of way through the Territory from Kansas to Texas, and at the instance of St. Louis capitalists a right of way was secured across the Territory from east to west, which was afterwards utilized by the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad.
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The Missouri Pacific was completed September 21, 1865, and opened with great rejoicing on the part of residents of Kansas City. The North Missouri Railroad people, having obtained control of the charter of the Missouri Valley Railroad, resumed operations as soon as the bushwhackers were driven from the country.
Early in 1866 a bill was passed by the Kansas Legislature, dividing about 120,000 acres of land, given the State for in- ternal improvements, between several railroad corporations. Of this aggregate the Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad received 25,000 acres. In February, Congressman Van Horn intro- duced in the House of Representatives a bill granting certain lands in Kansas to the Kansas & Neosho Railroad Company, and granting a franchise through the Indian Territory, A bill granting land aggregating about 800,000 acres to the Fort Scott Railroad became a law in July. At the session of the Kansas Legislature, early in 1866, the name of the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Fort Gibson Railroad was changed to the Leav- enworth, Lawrence & Galveston, and soon afterward the Kansas & Neosho Valley Railroad became known as the Mis- souri River, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad. On May 15th the first train was run from Leavenworth to Lawrence. In July Congress chartered the southern branch of the Union Pacific Railway with the right to run from Fort Riley down the Neosho River to Fort Smith. About the same time the Senate con- firmed the treaty with the Delaware Indians, by which their reservation in Kansas was sold for the benefit of the Missouri River Railroad Company, then just completed between Kansas City and Leavenworth.
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The opening of the year 1867 found the Kansas City & Cameron Railroad Company still without funds to complete the line. President Kearney and others went to Chicago to sell $100,000 of Kansas City bonds, and they and Kansas City were made the subjects of violent and derisive attacks in the St. Louis newspapers. Soon afterwards, under authority from the Legislature of Missouri, they mortgaged the road to the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. But it was yet necessary for the company to raise the $30,000 which the peo- ple of Jackson County, outside of Kansas City, had once voted down, and the proposition was again placed before the electors of the county March 19th, and again rejected. Mr. Joy, presi- dent of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, then offered to take the road off the hands of the company, cancel the people's subscription of $60,000, and complete the road by the first of December, on condition that the city and Clay County would release to him their stock in the road. After some delay, this proposition was accepted, and from that time forward the work of construction progressed rapidly. The corner-stone of the Kansas City bridge was laid August 21st, and the last rail of the road was laid November 22d, Colonel Kearney and William Gillis, the oldest resident of Kansas City, driving the last spike. Colonel Kearney sent congratulatory messages to the Chicago Board of Trade and the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce, the former returning a warm response, while the latter made no acknowledgment. February 21, 1870, this road was consoli- dated with the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, and soon afterward became the main line of that road.
NATIONAL BANKOF
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KANSAS CITY BK NOTE @ ENG
NATIONAL BANK OF KANSAS CITY, Fifth and Delaware.
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Early in 1867, Leavenworth attempted to secure legisla- tion in Missouri that would make the terminus of both the Platte County and North Missouri roads at that place, and to get through the Kansas Legislature an appropriation of $500,- 000, for the construction of a bridge there; but both these pro- jects were defeated. In March the Atchison & Weston, the Atchison & St. Joseph, and the St. Joseph & Savannah roads were consolidated by an act of the Legislature of Missouri, under the name of the Platte County Railroad, and the com- pany controlling them authorized to build a railroad from Kansas City via St. Joseph to the Iowa line, in the direction of Council Bluffs, and a branch from St. Joseph via Savannah to the lowa line, in the direction of Des Moines.
In January, 1868, it was learned that a company had pro- cured a charter for a railroad from Louisiana, Mo., to Kansas City, and in March a committee arrived in Kansas City to ask the people to take an interest in it. In June the electors voted $250,000 in its aid. Late in the year the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company became interested in the project, and the roadway was soon built from Louisiana to Mexico, where it connected with the North Missouri Railroad, but, owing to dif- ficulties about issuing bonds in some counties traversed by the line, the balance of the road was not built at that time. The Chicago & Alton Company built a bridge across the Missis- sippi at Louisiana, and operated fromr Kansas City to Chicago over the track of the North Missouri until 1878, when its own line was completed to Kansas City.
In March, 1869, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company took an interest in the Pleasant Hill & Lawrence Railroad,
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and in June it was under contract. In the first named month the city council submitted to the people an ordinance to aid the Kansas City & Santa Fé Railroad to the extent of $100,- 000, to be expended between Kansas City and Ottawa, but it was voted down because it was erroneously understood that Mr. Joy was interested in the scheme and would build the road without such aid. In April contracts were let for building the Leavenworth & Atchison road, and the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad. On the 6th the masonry of the Kansas City bridge was completed. The superstructure was speedily built and the bridge was opened, with great rejoicing, July 3d. This was the first bridge spanning the Missouri River, and its successful construction was deemed a wonderful engineering feat.
Early in the year 1877, a company, consisting of repre- sentatives of the different railway interests centering in Kan- sas City, was organized to build a Union depot-a measure which had been for some years under discussion. July 10th the old wooden shed, which had long served for that purpose, was abandoned, and the point of interchange moved to the State line depot. The demolition of the old building followed speedily, and the erection of the present structure was at once begun, and finished in January, 1878, at a cost of $225,000.
In January, 1878, arrangements for building the extension of the Chicago & Alton Railroad were completed, except the procurement of the right of way through the city. An effort was made to find a route and procure the right of way into the southeastern part of the city by the valley of O. K. Creek, but the grades were so high and the right of way so expensive, that this measure was abandoned, and about the 1st of July the
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route over which the line was subsequently built was adopted. Much difficulty was experienced in obtaining the right of way from the city, owing to the opposition of a few members of the city council, who secured its formal refusal by a vote of that body July 17th. At a spirited public meeting held in Board of Trade Hall on the evening of the 18th, the action of the council was severely commented on by leading business men. On the 8th of August the matter was again brought up in the council and the right of way was granted. The construction of the road was progressing rapidly below, and on the 4th of December the work was begun within the city limits.
Chief among railway extensions this year was that of the Chicago & Alton from Mexico, Mo., to Kansas City, making another through line to Chicago and St. Louis. This road was nearly completed during the year and was opened for business April 18, 1879, but did not begin running passenger trains until May 13th. The next in immediate importance, if it was not the most important for Kansas City, was the extension of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad from Pueblo, Col., to Clifton, N. M,, with a view to further extension to a connec- tion with the Southern Pacific of California, making a southern trans-continental route more valuable than the Union Pacific.
In 1882 there were several important extensions and changes in the railroads converging at Kansas City. The Missouri Pacific was extended to Omaha, penetrating and making ac- cessible to Kansas City the eastern and richest part of the State of Nebraska. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Company completed a line from Wymore, on its Atchison & Nebraska road, in Nebraska, to Denver, Colorado, and put on
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through trains from Kansas City to Denver, by way of this line and the Atchison & Nebraska and Kansas City, St. Joe & Council Bluffs lines. This afforded Kansas City not only a new and competing line to Colorado, but also secured it access to the whole of Southern Nebraska, which was intersected by the lines of the company.
Railway transportation facilities make commercial centers. When it is understood that Chicago had but twenty lines of railway, and that the area which the twenty-four Kansas City lines covered was more extended and more largely and variedly productive than the area penetrated by the twenty Chicago lines, the future of Kansas City could be no longer in doubt. All these remarkable railway developments marked an epoch of special importance in Kansas City's history, and its results were shown in the opening up of new territory to agriculture, the building of new towns and the establishing of new industries, making Kansas City the headquarters for their supplies and the com- mercial center of the Southwest.
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UNION DEPOT, 1880.
Third Decade. 1890 - 1900.
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PROPOSED ENTRANCE TO PENN VALLEY PARK.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Genesis of the Metropolis .- Enormous Contiguous Territory .- Romance of the Waters .- Geographical Center of the Na- tion .- A Startling Contrast .- Population .- Rail- roads .- Sketch of the "Boom."-Reaction. -Story of the Parks .- Retrospect and Outlook.
Remarkable as has been the page in history written by Western America during the last decade, that which has been written by Kansas City is hardly less noteworthy. Emphasis may be put on the present progress of the West, even in view of the astonishing transformation it had undergone during the previous period.
Within the memory of men still living, the immense area west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains has been transformed from a vast possibility into a prog- ress and populous actuality. Cities have sprung up almost in a night; prairies have slowly been brought in with axe and plow; the farmer has supplanted the nomad.
Aladdin-like and sudden as has been the change, the foun- dation of the new order of things appears not to have been lacking in stability. The larger Western cities seem to have enjoyed a healthy growth in keeping with the manufacturing and agricultural prosperity around them. Among such centers, and in point of natural location, none has been more
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fortunate than Kansas City. Situated at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, it early became an important point in river navigation, Being the eastern terminus of the Santa Fé Trail also gave it an additional prestige that has only gathered momentum with time. From tepee to cabin, from cabin to cottage, from cottage to mansion-from shack to shop, from shop to factory; such has been its history. Scarcely more than half a century ago the mists of the morning cleared away, and all that was seen in the way of civilization was a group of cabins which the fearless pioneer, who had penetrated far beyond its eastern confines, had erected near the meeting-place of the waters. Then nearly all was forest, the only break being an acre cleared here, or a barren spot there. Then the rifle of the settler brought him as much food as did the plow or hoe. The only chimney from which the smoke of the in- dustrial arts arose was that of the solitary blacksmith's forge; the one center of commercial activity was the general store, which contained all that the new community had to offer to the living or furnish the dead. The light of the tallow candle in the store and the glow of the forge fell upon the face of both the red man and the white.
The picture changed slowly enough at first, but the view dissolved day by day, and as the Spirit of the Kaw and the Missouri watched he saw the cabin fall and the palace rise; he saw the rifle laid away on the shelf, no longer an implement, but now a toy; he saw the plow pushed farther into the forest, and factories spring up where farms had stood.
The picture is not yet complete -not even at the beginning of this twentieth century of progress-but to-day the panorama
CLIFF DRIVE, NORTH TERRACE PARK.
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has become one of miles of great commercial and manufact- uring establishments, of blocks and streets of homes, of moving cars and the hurrying forms of 250,000 souls. The fulfillment of the prophecy has begun, but has not yet ended.
Kansas City owes its existence to the union of two streams. What happened was this: The Missouri River came down from the north and the Kansas River came in from the west and the two united-married, as it were-and, taking the name of the stronger of the two, went away to the eastward through Missouri to the Mississippi. At the point where this wedding of the waters took place there was and is a break in the big hills, almost mountains, which form the west bank of the larger river. Through this break in the hills came the Kansas (by early French settlers called the "Kaw"), bringing the runaway waters from near the foot of the great Rocky range, seven hun- dred miles to the west. The Missouri must certainly have been in love with and in search of the Kansas, for it made a bold detour from its easterly course in the far Northwest and came hundreds of miles south to meet the Kansas before re- suming its journey east,
The point where this wedding took place was undoubtedly intended by the Master of Rivers to be the exact geographical center of the United States-and therefore of the universe. The plan failed of execution just a little, the centeral spot falling somewhat more than a hundred miles westward in Kansas, near Junction City. Perhaps this was caused by the greed of the United States in settling its northwest boundary dispute with England; but whether so or not, the place where the rivers came together was deprived of the glory of being the exact
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center. So far as the distribution of big American cities is concerned, however, the place presisted in the original intention and held the very center.
The next thing that happened was this: Another stream began to flow-a stream of humanity-and it flowed against the current of the river, from east to west. There had been humanity in this region since God knows when, but it was copper-colored, The incoming stream was white, and it began to come about the year 1750. For a long time it was a very little stream-now trickling along timidly, now disappearing altogether under the hot breath of savage warfare and the ab- sorbing difficulties of the wilderness. In about 1819 the first of a long line of river turtles, dignified by the name of steam- boats, began to ply on the Missouri west of the Mississippi. These turtles, now nearly as scarce as they were in the be- ginning, grew in numbers and size, and after a few years, were carrying thousands of people and a vast tonnage of freight far northward beyond the mouth of the Kansas. The people who came on the backs of these turtles were of every white tribe under the sun. They came to fight the red men and to Christianize them. They came for gold and for glory. They came for homes and for adventure. They came to make some men free and others slaves. They came to establish justice and to defeat or escape it. They came for all the reasons that ever conspired to make men push their way into an unknown and hostile country.
In the years between 1820 and 1840, settlements were made at various points not far from the mouth of the Kansas, and Kansas City was born. First it was a miserable little
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MISSOURI VALLEY, LOOKING WEST FROM SCARRITT POINT.
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patch of a landing on the yellow banks of the river, originally called Westport Landing, the considerable town of Westport being four miles south from the river. This first landing was scarcely more than a snag in the river. But the snag stuck fast and steadily received contributions from the passing cur- rent, and in the years between 1840 and 1850 the town became so firmly established that its people no longer feared its dis- appearance with the next high water. In another ten years, 1850 to 1860, it gained rapidly, reaching the dignity of a news- paper, its first daily being the Journal founded in 1854.
The name "Kansas City" suggests that the city is in Kan- sas instead of in Missouri. There is now a Kansas City in each State. On the Kansas side of the line the original town was Wyandotte. A cluster of other villages grew up near Wyandotte and a few years ago these towns were consolidated and took the designation of Kansas City so as to share the good name of her big sister across the line. So there are now two cities named Kansas City-one in Kansas and one in Missouri-and where one leaves off and the other begins no man can tell until he has been told. The Kansas town claims 50,000 people and the Missouri town 250,000 people, the whole population in the immediate locality being at least 300,000. This is as large as Chicago or St. Louis twenty-five or thirty years ago, and is nearly half as large as St. Louis is now.
The early days of Kansas City were unpromising indeed. The rivers gave little help and the hills seemed insuperable. Flat country was preferred. Horses, mules, and oxen could do more on level land, and the wishes of the locomotive had not yet come to be considered. The great search for good
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grades for the use of the iron horse had not yet begun in the West, and the most sanguine early settler never expected to see Kansas City what it now is, the second city of the Union in its importance as a railway center.
As late as the year 1880, when Jay Gould was making Kansas City the center of his railroad operations, the city was a sight to make granite eyes shed tears. The old-fashioned Missouri hog, fitter for the race-track than for the pork-barrel, and not yet having the fear of the packing-house before his eyes, patrolled the streets and disputed the king's highway with the king and all his subjects. At night, when the hogs were off duty, a billion frogs in the green ponds at the bottom of the choicest unoccupied city lots told their troubles to the stars and saluted the rising sun with croaks of despair. In wet weather the town-site was a sea of mud and in dry weather a desert of dust. There was no paving, and the drainage was poor. A miserable breed of street cars, drawn by dissolute mules over a drunken track, furnished the only means of street transportation by rail. The water supply made whisky-drinking a virtue and the gas was not of much better use than to be blown out. The population of the city included as fine a collection of the ruffian brotherhood and sisterhood of the wild West as could well be imagined. Renegade Indians, demoralized soldiers, unre- formed bushwhackers, and border ruffians, thieves, and thugs imported from anywhere, professional train-robbers of home growth, and all kinds of wrecks of the Civil War, gave the town something picturesquely harder to overcome than the hills and gulches of its topography. In short, there seemed not a single pleasing prospect except the towering ambition, indomitable
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SCARRITT POINT.
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determination, and volcanic energy of the good people of the place. These were destined to triumph.
The work of securing railroads had begun in earnest in 1860. Bonds were voted to aid in securing a line to connect with the Hannibal & St. Joseph road, and part of the work was done in 1861. This line, now part of the Burlington system, and the Pacific of Missouri, now part of the Missouri Pacific, were completed soon following the war. The lines now known as the Kansas City, St. Joseph & Council Bluffs, the Hannibal & St. Joseph, the Wabash, and the Missouri Pacific, were the first lines to come into Kansas City and scatter consternation among the steamboat men on the river. It was a new idea, and one difficult of comprehension by the river men, that Nature's highway, the river, would not be able to compete suc- cessfully with the railroads. The line connecting with the Hannibal & St. Joseph road at Cameron had begun life bur- dened with the name, the "Kansas City, Galveston & Lake Superior Railroad," but after reforming this title, it constructed from Cameron to Kansas City, or rather to the river bank north of Kansas City, November 30, 1867; and by July 3, 1869, it had completed the bridge now known as the Hannibal Bridge.
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