KANSAS CITY 



3213 



KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 



over 2,600 acres, is famous. There are nine- 

 teen parks, well distributed throughout the 

 city, and linked by sixty miles of continuous 

 boulevards to form a beautiful chain. 



These fine avenues are lined with stately old 

 trees, and with magnificent homes set well back 

 on spacious grounds. Cliff Drive is noted for 

 its beauty, for it is cut in the hillside and winds 

 in and out for four miles; wonderful rock for- 

 mations greet the eye at every turn on the 

 one side, and on the other is a view of the 

 river below. Kersey Coates Drive and the 

 Paseo are also drives of unusual charm. Swope 

 Park (1,380 acres), the largest and the most 

 beautiful of the parks, was given to the cit}- 

 in 1896 by Colonel Thomas H. Swope. There 

 are numerous breathing spots and playgrounds 

 in the more congested districts; even the busi- 

 ness section has its area of green. 



Buildings. Kansas City has great churches, 

 imposing school buildings and splendid modern 

 business buildings, but its finest structure is 

 the new Union Station, which was erected at a 

 cost of $6,000,000. It is one of the largest rail- 

 road terminals in the United States. Other 

 noteworthy buildings are the Federal building, 

 city hall, courthouse, Convention Hall (with a 

 seating capacity of 15,000), the Board of Trade, 

 Y. M. C. A. building, Live Stock Exchange 

 (devoted exclusively to live-stock offices) and 

 City Hospital. The Calvary Baptist, Trinity 

 Episcopal, Christian Science, First Congrega- 



THE UNION STATION 



tional, Roman Catholic Cathedral, Central 

 Methodist Episcopal, First Baptist, Jewish 

 Temple, Redemptorist Fathers (Roman Catho- 

 lic) and Christian churches are all structures of 

 unusual architectural beauty. Kansas City has 

 a United States Weather Bureau Station and a 

 Federal Reserve Bank. 



Education. In addition to over 130 public 

 schools, the city has institutions for special 

 training in medicine, dentistry, law, engineer- 

 ing, music, business and domestic science. 

 There are parochial, private and college-pre- 

 paratory schools and a public library, and 

 within, the radius of a few miles are the Uni- 



versity of Kansas, at Kansas City, Kan. ; Baker 

 University, at Baldwin; William Jewell Col- 

 lege, at Liberty; and Park College, at Park- 

 ville. For neglected and abandoned children, 

 the Juvenile Court provides a girls' industrial 

 home and a farm for boys. 



History. In the beginning Kansas City was 

 a fur-trading post, known as Westport Land- 

 ing. In 1838 the town was organized under 

 the name Kansas, originally spelled Kanzas. 

 It is commonly thought that the city was 



KANSAS CITY IN 1846 

 From an old print 



named for the state of Kansas, but this is an 

 error, as all of the territory west was then 

 known as the Nebraska Territory ; Kansas City 

 and the state of Kansas probably received 

 their names from the same source, the Kanzas 

 tribe of Indians. The town was incorporated 

 as the "Town of Kansas" in 1850; the name 

 was changed to "City of Kansas" in 1857 and 

 to its present name in 1889. Within five years 

 after its settlement, the town had almost the 

 entire trade of New Mexico, traffic being along 

 the highway known as the "Santa Fe Trail;" a 

 huge rock in one of the city's parks now marks 

 the original route. 



The first post office in Kansas City was es- 

 tablished in 1845, and ground for the first rail- 

 road was broken in 1860, by the Pacific Rail- 

 road, now the Missouri Pacific. The first rail- 

 road west of the Missouri River, the Kansas 

 Pacific, was commenced at Kansas City in 

 1863 ; it is now the Union Pacific Railway. The 

 completion of the first bridge across the Mis- 

 souri River in 1869 at this point was an event 

 of importance in the city's history. A flood in 

 1903 caused serious destruction. N.R.R. 



KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL, a bill intro- 

 duced in the American Congress by Stephen 

 A. Douglas in 1854, which divided and organ- 

 ized the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. 

 The original bill contained as an important 



