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.
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