A Brief History

From humble beginnings as a trading post in 1821. Legend has it that the new owners held a meeting at which one of the subjects was a name for their new township. After rejecting such ideas as Port Fonda, Rabbitville and Possum Trot, they decided to name it the Town of Kansas, after the Kansa Indians who inhabited the area. The town retained that name when it was incorporated and granted a charter by Jackson County June 1, 1850.

In 1840, the Town of Kansas had 500 residents. The railroads helped make possible one of Kansas City's biggest early-day industries: cattle. From beginnings not long after the Civil War, the city became one of the world's major cattle markets. The Kansas City stockyard was founded in 1870, and the Kansas City Livestock Exchange there, in its heyday early in the 20th century, was the largest building in the world devoted exclusively to livestock interests.

A private construction project by the J.C. Nichols Co. left its mark on Kansas City. Beginning in 1922, the Nichols firm built the nation's first planned shopping center, Country Club Plaza. This Spanish-style district has a wealth of imported statuary and fountains and now covers 55 acres.

Other significant developments in recent years have included completion of the 4,700-acre Kansas City International Airport and the world's only matched set of football and baseball stadiums in 1972, Kemper Arena in 1974, and H. Roe Bartle Exposition Hall in 1976. Kansas City also is known for its foreign trade zone, its underground storage industry and its automobile assembly plants. It is said to have more fountains than any city except Rome, and more boulevards than any city except Paris. One foreign dignitary who visited Kansas City summed up the feeling of many: "It is a city in the right place at the right time."