Jackson County (Mo.)
Historical Society
Portals to the Past by David W. Jackson
Missouri River was once this area’s
superhighway
This holiday season
we’re exploring in four installments a timeline
highlighting local history. The gift of A
River Runs By It: The Story of Jackson County, Missouri (drawn from a
Jackson County Historical Society booklet by the same title) is to unwrap the
wealth of history that transpires in less than one lifetime, and also to present how much history is preserved and made
available to the public. We hope you may be inspired in this season of giving
to support local history and heritage sites of your choice.
The story of
Jackson County, Missouri, starts with its northern boundary, the Missouri River. Before there were towns and cities,
streets and highways, there was the river…a broad, shallow ribbon winding
through towering bluffs and wooded banks. The Missouri River guided travelers as far west as they could go by water passage at
that time to an area that is now Kansas City
in Jackson County.
The Muddy Mo 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 for centuries by Native-Americans, and
newcomers alike.
European-American trappers and
traders traveled along the river, learning its secrets from the Osage Nation
who called this land home. In 1803, a massive expanse of land that today
includes Jackson County became United
States territory in the most advantageous real estate
transaction in history--the Louisiana Purchase.
The next year, Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark, at the initiation of President Thomas Jefferson, traveled
upstream with their Corps of Discovery. They arrived at present-day Jackson County around Independence Day in
1804. Today, a magnificent larger-than-life statue overlooks breathtaking
vantages at Clark’s Point, located at about 8th and Jefferson in
downtown Kansas City.
Clark’s vision for a fort in the
area resulted in the construction of Fort Osage,
which became the westernmost presence of our federal government. (Fort Osage
became one of Jackson
County’s first
properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in the
1960s, and a 21st Century educational center adjacent to the site
will open to the public soon.)
In 1819, the first steamboat
reached our area. Traffic on the great, muddy highway was about to explode.
Two years later in 1821 when the State of Missouri
was admitted to the Union, 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 in Mexico.
Becknell’s route became the Santa Fe Trail, which would become the
thoroughfare for international trade, outfitted in Jackson County,
for years to come. (The National Frontier Trails
Museum in Independence
is dedicated to the western trails, most all of
which funneled through Jackson
County.)
It was 1821, too, that 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 along the banks of the river in what is now Kansas City. (While the nonprofit Chouteau
Society today promotes Kansas City’s French
history, the Jackson County (Mo.)
Historical Society seeks to collect for the public trust, original materials
directly related to the early Chouteau family of Kansas City.)
Much of this early history,
briefly outlined here, transpired in less than one person’s lifetime. Jackson County was yet to be
created, which leads our next installment.
David W.
Jackson is archivist for the Jackson
County (Mo.) Historical Society’s Archives and
Research Library at 112 W.
Lexington Ave. Suite 103, Independence,
MO, 64050.
The society collects and makes available original documents and photographs
to the public. For more information, or to donate historical materials, visit
www.jchs.org, call (816) 252-7454, or e-mail info@jchs.org
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