marked the history of the town. In spite of floods and cholera and a great
fire, which swept away the business portion of the city, the community went
steadily ahead. The gold-fever helped St. Louis, for the Argonauts going
overland outfitted here, as in very recent years their fellows bound for
the Klondike and Cape Nome outfitted at Seattle. As the West built up St.
Louis builded too. Something substantial from the westward-moving stream
always found its way into the coffers of the St. Louis merchants. The
prosperity and power of the South lent prestige to the city. The city was a
great cotton market. It had a vast trade up and down the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers, up and down the Ohio and the Tennessee. The fleets of
steamboats at the wharves grew in size, until, old inhabitants say, there
were three or four miles of them at the river front at one time, being
loaded and unloaded day and night by singing negroes. As agriculture grew
in importance, St. Louis became a great wheat market, a great market for
cattle and swine, horses and mules. Its manufactures in every line throve,
as well they might, for it was the great depot of the West, with a
straightaway water route to the sea. There was plenty of work, plenty of
money, and more than plenty of pleasure. The society of St. Louis was
exclusive and magnificent. The ante-bellum balls were gorgeous affairs. The
women were beautiful, of the Southern type, and when it was desired to say
of one of them that she was royally bejewelled, a common phrase used was
"She wore a nigger on every finger." Steamboatmen, planters, slave-traders,
merchants dealing in cotton or in sugar, spent money like water. The town
was, as we say in these days, wide open, and of a perilous liveliness, for
the incoming Northerners and Easterners were never equal to the task of
suppressing what the New England American regards as vices not to be
temporized with. The brightness and gayety, however, did not wholly conceal
the dread of the sorrow that was to come. St. Louis was, for the most part,
intensely Southern; but the Revolution of 1848 had brought to this country
and to St. Louis a great number of Germans, who were set against slavery
and secession. The storm broke, and the breaking was a severe setback to
St. Louis, whose prosperity was founded chiefly on that of the South. Its
sympathies, through social, political, business ties, were mainly with the
South. The war destroyed business. St. Louis, if not the enemy's country,
was strongly suspected of disloyalty, and for a time it seemed as if war
would smite the city itself, while there hung in the balance the decision
of the alternative of Governor Claiborne Jackson of Missouri that he would
"take Missouri out of the Union or into hell." Feeling ran high in the
community. Almost a battle was fought on its outskirts. St. Louis had
bitter experiences of martial law, while its commercial activities seemed
to be mostly controlled by people who had government contracts. Here, where
Grant had been known as a none too tidy farmer, his name was loathed, as
was Lincoln's, by the larger element, while the Germans were profoundly
loyal. The misfortunes of the South were unfortunate for St. Louis in every
instance, and when the scourge of war passed, the region whence St. Louis
had drawn most of its wealth was devastated, and the sceptre of trade
passed to the North. As the fortunes of St. Louis declined from these
causes, they and other causes operated to push Chicago to the front, even
though, when Chicago had been twice visited by fire, St. Louis, as the
greater city, made large contributions to the relief of the sufferers. St.
Louis did not go backward, but the country to the north recovered from the
war and improved more rapidly than that to the south and southwest, and the
northern and western trade went to Chicago. St. Louis managed, in the face
of such obstacles, to hold its own. The work of expansion and extension of
improvement went steadily ahead, though with great conservatism. The boom
idea, that grew after the war, was never hospitably entertained in St.
Louis, though the manufacturers and merchants found a new trade and
strenuously developed it in the new Southwest. The southwestern railway
systems began to take shape, and the prosperity of St. Louis came back in
great measure late in the eighties. The great St. Louis bridge had been
opened in 1874, and the city was put in touch with the East, but the
greater movement of the country's wealth and energy was being felt in the
territory that was out of trade touch and political sympathy with the
field in which St. Louis was once supreme. Nevertheless St. Louis added to
her beauties steadily. She acquired Forest Park, the greatest natural
public city park in the country, after Fairmount in Philadelphia, also
O'Fallon Park, but little less magnificent. Through the philanthropic
generosity of Henry Shaw she acquired Tower Grove Park, which is perhaps
the finest specimen of the park artificial to be found anywhere. Later, Mr.
Shaw left to the city by will his botanical garden, an institution famous
the world over for its collection of plants of almost every species. The
city paved all its downtown streets with granite, and later its outlying
streets with asphalt, erected a new custom house, a Four Courts Building,
stupendous water-works, and constructed a gigantic extension of the sewer
system. The development of the system of street railway transportation in
St. Louis was more rapid and more perfect than in any other city in the
world. A new mercantile library was built and the public-school library was
made free. Churches increased in great numbers. Schools multiplied and
were overcrowded in places where within twenty years had been quarry ponds
and cow pastures. The growth of business, the multiplication of banks, the
overspreading of the population since 1880, has been bewildering in its
progress, and remains so, in spite of the fact that there has been all this
time in process of building, directly across the river, a sort of overflow
city of sixty thousand people. The city lost its river trade but has made
up for it in utilization of the railroads, and is now preparing again to
use the mighty, free, natural highway for the transportation of products to
the world at large. St. Louis, so often thought of as slow, has really
grown with phenomenal rapidity. It is one of the wealthiest cities in the
country, a city of homes, and a city of perhaps more beautiful homes widely
distributed in different sections than are to be found elsewhere. The
wealthy men of St. Louis are almost all young men. The greater fortunes in
St. Louis, with but few exceptions, have been made within the past twenty
years, and many of them in the last ten years, and these now utterly
eclipse the fortunes that have been handed down from the earlier days. The
city has to-day a population of 575,000. In the suburban territory there
are over 700,000 more people in close relationship daily and almost hourly
with the business and social life of the city. The "slow old town" is not
so slow when it is remembered that within one year after a cyclone swept it
in May, 1896, there was not a trace of the visitation. Its conservatism is
very real, but it is not stagnation. St. Louis has gone on with its work,
even though war and the industrial tendencies consequent on war, and the
political and social drift growing out of war have been in opposition to
the city's progress. The city has built steadily but well, passing through
the panic of 1893 without a single failure. The earlier history of the town
shows how the conservatism so thoughtlessly derided came to be ingrained in
the life of the city. It shows, too, the pertinacity which has made St.
Louis the fourth city in the Union, in defiance of the disaster that befell
its prestige in the great war, and in defiance too of the circumstance that
the new popular national activities generated after that great conflict
found their most congenial field in regions practically out of reach of,
and wholly antipathetic to the interests of the chief city of Missouri. The
new South and the new Southwest mean a new St. Louis. And we shall see
what the new St. Louis means when the city expresses its higher and better
self in the Exposition with which its people purpose to celebrate the
purchase, by the United States, in 1803, of the Louisiana Territory.
[Illustration EADS BRIDGE AT ST. LOUIS.]
[Illustration UNION STATION, ST. LOUIS.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
KANSAS CITY
THE CENTRAL CITY
BY CHARLES S. GLEED
In early literature and in early United States Indian treaties the Indian
word "Kansas" appears as Caucis, Konza, Konseas, Kons, Kanzaw, Kanzau, Kaw,
and Kanzas. Kansas, meaning smoky, was the name of a tribe of Indians still
existing in the Indian Territory and it came to be applied to all the
country west of the Missouri River over which the tribe roamed (the country
which is now largely in the State of Kansas), and also to its chief river.
There are two Kansas Cities, one in Missouri, the other in Kansas. The
Kansas City in Missouri was named after the Kansas Indians, the Kansas
River, the Kansas country, or all of them. The Kansas City in Kansas was
named after the Kansas City in Missouri. The two cities are one except in
law and the line dividing them is not discoverable except by the surveyor.
The Kansas City in Kansas was made up of a number of small towns the chief
of which was Wyandotte. It was thought that the Kansas town would be helped
by adopting the good name belonging to the Missouri town. The Kansas City
in Kansas has about 60,000 people; the Kansas City in Missouri has about
225,000. The former is the largest city in Kansas, while the latter is the
second city in Missouri. In this sketch the two towns are considered as
one.
[Illustration KANSAS CITY FROM THE SOUTH.]
Among large cities Kansas City is central, for the exact centre of the
United States is about two hundred miles west in Kansas. At the point
where Kansas City is located, the Kansas or "Kaw" River coming from the
west empties into the Missouri River coming from the North. The
Kansas-Missouri State line runs south from near the junction of the two
rivers. In the angles formed by this junction are very high hills, almost
mountains. Standing on the high point close in the southern angle, one may
look away for ten to twenty miles to the north and the east along the
valley of the Missouri and to the west along the valley of the Kansas. It
is in these valleys and on these miniature mountains that the city is
built. The parts in the valleys present no special difficulties to the town
builder, but in the higher parts almost every difficulty is presented. The
hills are composed of rocks which must be blasted, and of yellow clay. The
original bluffs are cut by numerous ravines leading towards the rivers, and
those streets running parallel with the rivers and therefore crossing the
ravines are necessarily in many cases very steep. This topographical
situation has required the removal of enormous quantities of earth and
rock, the filling of great ravines, and the artificial establishment of
the grades of streets. This rendered the city unsightly through its earlier
years, but the unsightliness is rapidly giving way to great beauty and
picturesqueness.
The first plat of the "Town of Kansas" was filed in 1839. It included the
land bordering the Missouri River some distance south and east of the mouth
of the Kansas River and bounded by the river, the present Second Street,
the present Delaware Street, and the present Grand Avenue. There was no
technical incorporation, and the common name of the place was at first
Westport Landing--this being the river landing for the trading post called
Westport, four or five miles south of the river.
[Illustration JACKSON COUNTY COURT HOUSE, KANSAS CITY.]
In 1850, the County Court of Jackson County, Missouri, at Independence,
created the "Town of Kansas" as an incorporation governed by a Board of
Trustees. The first board, appointed February 4, 1850, failed to act and on
June 3d of the same year another board was appointed, composed of William
Gillis, Madison Walrond, Lewis Ford, Bennoist Troost, and Henry W. Brice.
This board controlled the town until the Legislature of Missouri, February
22, 1853, granted the right of incorporation to the city of Kansas. From
the small original town, by one addition after another, has grown a city
covering an area of nearly one hundred square miles.
Long before any incorporation or any platting of town sites there was much
activity in this locality. Judge E.P. West, an eminent local geologist,
produces indisputable evidence in the shape of stone arrow-heads and
spear-heads found on the present town site that the place was inhabited at
least 21,000 years ago. The local museum contains a great number of
specimens of flint and stone work indicating to geologists and
archæologists the presence of races dating back many centuries.
In 1825, the Jesuit Fathers penetrated all parts of the wilderness
surrounding what is now Kansas City. They were doubtless the first white
settlers and in all probability they had only the usual purpose, zeal in
propagating the religion of their fathers. They are known to have built a
small log house in the neighborhood of the northern part of what is now
Troost Avenue. It was as much a church as a dwelling, for here the tribes
to whom they had come attended religious service. In 1835 a missionary
named Father Roux established the first actual church in this locality.
There were many trappers and hunters of the French-Canadian type who had
intermarried with the Indians. In 1835 Father Roux purchased of a Canadian
some forty acres on the hill adjoining the present site of the Roman
Catholic Cathedral, almost exactly in the centre of the present city, and
in 1839 was instrumental in having a log church built on a part of the land
situated between what are now Eleventh and Twelfth Streets on Penn Street.
Here for a period of at least twenty years a congregation composed largely
of French Canadians and the children of the French and Indian
intermarriages worshipped together. In 1845 Father Bernard Donnelly was
made pastor of all Western Missouri, and ministered to the Indians and
whites alike. Through his efforts a brick church was erected on the corner
of what are now Eleventh Street and Broadway, and from 1857 to 1880, when
he retired from active work to die a few months later at the age of eighty,
he devoted himself entirely to his priestly duties. The church and the city
owe an unmeasured debt of gratitude to this unselfish and lovable man.
[Illustration CONVENTION HALL, KANSAS CITY.]
Questions of transportation have been of overwhelming interest to the
people of Kansas City from the beginning. The first crossing of the
Missouri River at this point was established in 1836 by the operation of a
flatboat at the mouth of the "Kaw." The Rev. Isaac McCoy and his son
established the ferry and operated it until 1854. Then came the horse-power
ferryboat, and the steam ferryboat. In due time full-fledged steamboats
made their appearance on the Missouri. Westport Landing, by reason of a
rocky bank and deep water in front of it, afforded an excellent landing.
Here were unloaded the goods for the great Indian and Mexican trade of the
West, and from here were shipped eastward wool, furs, buffalo robes, and
other products of the region. Immigration overland to Colorado, Utah,
Nevada, Mexico, and California came to this point in boats and then went
westward by the old Santa Fé trail. From about 1850 to the coming of the
railroads, from six to ten boats daily came to this landing. In 1857,
during the nine months of navigation, no fewer than fifteen hundred boats
arrived and departed. Some of them were palatial structures, judged even
by the standard of to-day, and many of them were magnificently furnished
and equipped to care for passengers.
One of the early features of the travel and traffic between Kansas City and
the West was the old Concord Coach and another was the ox and mule wagon
known as the "Prairie Schooner." The coaches carried from ten to fifteen
passengers, and the passengers as a rule carried from two to a dozen
weapons of defence against the Indians. At one time the fare per passenger
from Westport to Santa Fé, New Mexico, was $175 in gold, and the schedule
time was thirteen days and six hours. The trip involved travelling night
and day, asleep and awake, without stopping except for meals. The "Overland
Mail Express Company" maintained an office for years on the Levee, and for
carrying mails received $172,000 a year. Mail, passengers, and express
matter usually yielded from $5000 to $6000 a trip.
In 1843, the Mexican trade from this point was suspended by Santa Anna, who
closed the northern port of entry. As soon, however, as the embargo was
removed, trade revived and greatly increased. At this time Atchison,
Leavenworth, St. Joseph, and Omaha entered upon the same business, but
until the Civil War commenced Kansas City retained most of the trade. A
book published in 1843 shows the tonnage between Kansas City and Mexico to
have increased from 15,000 tons in 1822, to 150,000 tons in 1837, the
increase being fairly uniform over the entire period. In 1850, 600 wagons
began the overland trip from Kansas City; by 1855 the trade had grown to a
total valuation of at least $5,000,000, and by 1860 had still further
increased to a point which attracted national attention. In that year a
correspondent sent by the _New York Herald_ to study the statistics of the
business, reported that there were shipped from Kansas City in that year
16,439,134 pounds of freight, employing 7084 men, 6147 mules, 27,920 yoke
of oxen and 3033 wagons, to which should be added the statistics of the
trade with the towns of Kansas and Nebraska. This, for that time, enormous
bulk of business, passed over the Santa Fé trail which is now almost
exactly the route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad.
At the close of the Civil War in 1865, during which Kansas City, in common
with all the border towns of Missouri and Kansas, was disturbed by the
conflict, a tremendous immigration began to flow westward through the city.
Railroad enterprises in Kansas and beyond were opening up the country for
settlement, and the families of those who had lately been engaged in war
rushed westward to take up the vacant lands offered them.
The first railroads entering the city were the Hannibal & St. Joseph (which
is now a part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system) and the Missouri
Pacific--the first entering from the direction of Chicago, and the last
from the direction of St. Louis. The first built to the west was the Union
Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, afterwards known as the Kansas Pacific,
now a part of the Union Pacific.
[Illustration THE CITY HALL, KANSAS CITY.]
Railroad building in the country immediately tributary to Kansas City
became active at the close of the Civil War, and has continued until the
present time (1901), when two new main lines are under construction towards
the city. The railway companies with lines entering Kansas City now are the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, the
Wabash, the Chicago & Alton, the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas &
Texas, the St. Louis & San Francisco, the St. Joseph & Grand Island, the
Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis, the Kansas City Southern, the Chicago &
Great Western, the Kansas City & Northern, the Union Pacific, the Suburban
Belt, and the Kansas City Belt.
Nowhere in the United States can be seen a better demonstration of the
wonderful development of the transportation system of the country. Besides
its trunk-line railroads the city has two belt railway systems and numerous
private tracks, so that its equipment for industrial work is unexcelled.
Its street-railway system of nearly two hundred miles is one of the finest
in America. The tracks and the equipment are thoroughly modern in every
respect.
The first newspaper published in Kansas City was a weekly called the
_Kansas Ledger_. It was established in 1851, but was sold in about fifteen
months, and then sold again and removed to Independence. The city after the
death of the _Ledger_ was for eighteen months without a newspaper office.
In September, 1854, the _Kansas City Enterprise_ made its appearance,
edited by W.A. Strong, D.K. Abeel having charge of the publishing
department. In August, 1855, the _Enterprise_ was bought out by R.T. Van
Horn, who assumed editorial control in October. In January, 1857, Mr. Abeel
purchased a half-interest in the paper and in the following October the
_Enterprise_ became the _Western Journal of Commerce_, a larger and greatly
improved sheet. The _Kansas City Journal_ grew out of this and at once
began to assume the high position among the great dailies of the country
which it has since maintained. Theodore Case, in his history of Kansas
City, a volume of some seven hundred pages, says of the _Journal_ in 1888
what may well be repeated to-day:
"There is one feature that has always characterized this paper,
a never-failing devotion to home and local interests, and an
unyielding faith in the destiny of the city, that has made it,
more than any other interest, the builder and architect of the
present City of Kansas. It has furnished more information,
historical, statistical and commercial in regard to Western
Missouri, the great western plains and the mountains, their
trade, resources and capabilities, than any other paper in the
Mississippi Valley, and when the history of the New West comes
to be written, it is to its columns that the historian will
turn for its earliest facts and figures."
Colonel R.T. Van Horn continued to be the chief owner and editor of the
_Journal_ until 1896, besides attending to his duties as Congressman and in
other important relations. As the "Grand Old Man" of Kansas City, he is
to-day quietly enjoying the fruits of his long and honorable labors.
[Illustration THE POST-OFFICE, KANSAS CITY.]
The only other Kansas City newspaper besides the _Journal_ in existence at
the close of the war was the _Daily Kansas City Post_ (German) started in
the latter part of 1858, with August Wuerz, Sr., as its first editor. Mr.
Wuerz was a strong abolitionist and so aroused the antipathy of the
pro-slavery element that he was forced to abandon the city in 1860. He
crossed over to Wyandotte (now Kansas City, Kansas), published the _Post_
there for nine months, and then returned to Kansas City. The first
democratic daily established here after the war was the _Advertiser_, which
appeared in 1865. It was succeeded in 1868 by the _Kansas City Times_,
which was issued by the proprietors, Messrs. R.B. Drury & Co. Varying
fortune marked the paper until 1878, when, under the management of Messrs.
Munford, Munford & Hasbrook, it attained a high standing among the dailies
of the country. Of the papers which at about this time shared the honor of
representing Kansas City should be named the _Kansas City News_, an evening
paper, which suspended after a four years' existence; the _Evening Mail_,
an evening democratic paper, which came into existence in 1875 and which,
after frequently changing its proprietors, became, in 1882, the property of
the owner of the _Kansas City Star_, Mr. W.R. Nelson. The _Kansas City
Star_ achieved remarkable success in the hands of Mr. Nelson, and now
occupies a leading place among the dailies of the city and the country,
giving as it always has its best efforts towards the upbuilding and
expansion of the city. Another evening paper which has shown evidence of
the growth of the city by its own substantial growth, is the _Evening
World_, which, established in 1894, continues to rank well among the papers
of the city. Vicious newspapers have never been permitted to flourish in
Kansas City.
[Illustration A BIT OF GLADSTONE BOULEVARD, KANSAS CITY.]
What may be called the real-estate history of Kansas City is peculiarly
interesting. In the year 1830 James H. McGee built a log cabin for a
residence near what is now the corner of Twentieth and Central Streets. He
made the first kiln of brick west of Independence, built the first brick
residence in Kansas City, and furnished the bricks for Father Donnelly's
chapel chimney. Mr. McGee acquired by purchase nearly all the land between
the towns of Kansas City and Westport, and his name and that of his family
is to-day so associated with the record of the city's development that it
cannot be lost. The first working town company was formed in 1846 and was
composed of men whose names subsequently were conspicuous in the city's
history. They were H.M. Northrup, Jacob Ragan, Henry Jobe, William Gillis,
Robert Campbell, Fry P. McGee, W.B. Evans, W.M. Chick, and J.C. McCoy. It
is said that about 150 lots were then sold at an average price of $55.65
per lot. This was the nucleus of the old town and the beginning of its most
picturesque history as a real-estate market. In the years between 1878 and
1888 (the "boom" period) the city grew extraordinarily, the excitement over
real-estate transactions reaching a point probably unprecedented in this
country. An enormous acreage of what never can be anything but farm land
was platted and sold as city property, and prices for all classes of real
estate reached figures which will probably never be reached again, at least
until the city has a population greater than now seems possible.
[Illustration THE STOCK YARD EXCHANGE, KANSAS CITY.]
At the close of the war in 1865, Kansas City had three banks, one insurance
company, one daily and two weekly English newspapers, one German weekly and
one bi-monthly medical journal. The churches were two Methodist, one
Baptist, two Presbyterian, one Roman Catholic and one Christian. There were
two lodges of Masons, two of Odd Fellows, one of Good Templars, a Turn
Verein, a Shamrock Benevolent Society, a girl's school, a rectory school,
and a German school. The census of 1860 showed a population of 4418. Now
the city stands first among the cities of the land in the agricultural
implement trade, first in the Southern lumber trade, second in the
live-stock trade, first in the horse and mule trade, second as a railroad
centre, second in the meat-packing business, tenth in bank clearings,
nineteenth in the value of its manufactures. It has 50 public-school
buildings, 626 teachers and 34,142 pupils. It has the second largest park
system in the country, having over 2000 acres. It handled in 1900
$130,824,270 worth of live-stock; 32,625,850 bushels of wheat; 7,290,000
bushels of corn; 3,035,600 bushels of oats; 156,000 bushels of rye, and
12,000 bushels of barley. It did a wholesale business of $265,000,000, its
packing houses turned out $100,000,000 worth of products, slaughtering
1,000,000 cattle, 2,900,000 hogs and 650,673 sheep. Its bank clearings were
$698,755,530. Its banking and trust company capital was $8,000,000; it had
two hundred miles of paved streets, twenty-seven grain elevators with a
storage capacity of 6,484,000 bushels.
[Illustration THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, KANSAS CITY.]