Over the decades the JCHS Journal has been blessed with many fine articles. With the advent of the internet, recent past Journals can now be viewed on the JCHS website. Eventually all past Journals may be read online, but until such time the E-Journal will periodically republish classic articles pulled from the shelf. We hope you will enjoy this article which was originally published in the April – May – June issue of 1982.

Brad Pace, Editor

Old Rail Depots in Independence Represent Important Era of History

By Pat O’Brien
City of Independence, Preservation Officer
(Originally published in 1982)

 The history of the Missouri Pacific Depot in Independence has entered into a new era with the recent establishment of a passenger rail stop as of April 24. Sleek, modern Amtrak liners are now stopping four times a day at the one-story brick station, coasting to a stop in front of the newly constructed passenger platform to allow riders to board and disembark.

This new era is reminiscent of former days when rail travel and transportation was the vital link between municipalities and regions nationwide. It calls to mind the days when this insignificant, neglected little depot site and its aging sister, the old Chicago and Alton Station on South Avenue, were hubs of commercial and transportation activity, not to mention the centers at which much of current news was heard via the telegraph systems that were such a vital part of any railroad operation. If news was worth hearing, you can be sure the station masters and their employees generally had the news first.

Railroads first began to make their impact known on Independence immediately following the Civil War. The town had toyed with the concept as early as 1849 when, in the midst of immigrant traffic and national gold fever, a six mile, mule-drawn rail system with wooden and cast-iron track was established between a warehouse on Rock (Maple) Street and Wayne City Landing (Upper Independence Landing), one of two river ports serving the city.

This venture, funded by substantial businessmen in the community, failed in 1854. Nevertheless, the vision of rail transportation had caught the imagination not only of people in Independence but in the rest of Missouri as well.

St. Louis constructed its first railroad concern in 1851; visionaries, such as Senator Thomas Hart Benton of St. Louis and William Gilpin of Independence, would make speech after speech on the need for transcontinental rail systems – an idea that made many people shake their heads in amazement and disbelief. After all, the first rail system ever introduced in the United States, again a horse-drawn affair at Quincy, Mass., in 1826, was an idea only 24 years old. A steam locomotive and rail line, recently introduced between Charleston and Hamburg, S.C., in the early 1830’s was only four years older than the original concept. Transcontinental rail system? Not possible, chuckled the majority of Americans.

However, by the eve of the Civil War, steam-powered rail systems had snaked their way from the east coast to the Mississippi. With the beginning of the Pacific Railroad in St. Louis in 1851 rail systems had penetrated the interior of Missouri; the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad had, by 1860, spanned the state from the Mississippi to the Missouri River. Transcontinental railroads? Maybe not as farfetched as once was thought, mused the American public.

The Civil War in Missouri temporarily complicated railroad development in Missouri. Existing lines were damaged by Confederate troops and guerrillas to stop shipment of supplies and troops by the Union Army. Independence, a Confederate guerrilla area of operation, would have to wait until after the war before investors would be willing to finance right of way track and rolling stock in the hostile environs of Jackson County.

By 1868 the Pacific Railroad project had reached Independence. A station was built and service initiated. In 1869, Octave Chanute built the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City, thus securing that city’s claim to the western end of Missouri’s rail traffic and commerce. That same year at Promontory Point, Utah, the lines of the Central and Union Pacific Railroad were joined. With the opening of the Eads Bridge in the mid-1870s the transcontinental rail system would finally be a completed fact.

Railroads in Jackson County were to have a stormy beginning. Many landowners felt that the railroads’ heavy-handed right-of-way acquisitions had been handled in a less-than-fair manner. In the years after the Civil War, train robberies in Missouri quickly became national legend with the exploits of the James brothers.

In 1879, the Chicago and Alton Railroad opened for business in Independence in competition with Missouri Pacific and was immediately held up by the James gang at Glendale, MO (present day 39th Street and Selsa Road) in October of that year. The robbery was so successful that the gang repeated the robbery again in 1881 at Blue Cut – just three miles west of the Glendale Station robbery.

The result of these and other robberies in the state of Missouri cut severely into the profits of the railroad financiers. Letters were written by concerned relatives to persons planning trips that railroad transportation through Jackson County was not safe. Indeed, the public was in such a panic that the little Chicago and Alton station town of Glendale was compelled to change its name to Selsa in an attempt to disguise itself and its larcenous past.

The “Cracker Neck” – that area of the Little Blue Valley in the eastern part of Jackson County – became famous for not only the James brothers’ holdups but for two others by Jack “Quail Hunter” Kennedy in 1896 and 1897.

An article in the Kansas City Star in 1916 stated that the “Cracker Neck” area of eastern Jackson County had been for many years a “Jackson County Training School for Train Robbers.” Public sentiment and anger were slow to fade over these occurrences.

In 1912, after the showing of a silent movie at the Electric Theater in Independence, entitled “The James Boys in Missouri,” a group of indignant citizens visited the mayor’s office and forced the removal of the film and closing of the theater. Editorials appeared in the local paper the day after, stating that the city and area wished to forget this part of their past and did not want any further publicity on the matter.

Considering the national publicity that Independence and Jackson County had been subjected to in the past such a reaction was not hard to understand. In September of 1881, Bill Ryan, a member of the James gang, had been brought to trial at the courthouse in Independence by Jackson County Prosecutor William H. Wallace. Many residents of the “Cracker Neck” – sympathizers of the James gang and ex-Confederate guerrillas themselves – crowded into the Square to witness the trial.

Governor Crittenden of Missouri, fearing violence and an attempt of members of the gang to break Ryan out of the Jackson County Jail or court room, came to Independence and, according to Wallace, had two large boxes of rifles sent to the town in case the village was rushed by members of the gang.

Every night, Wallace stated, it was possible to see skyrockets going off on the eastern horizon – gang members and sympathizers signaling to each other in the brush. Wallace received letters threatening his life, as did other members of the prosecution, but the case proceeded and Ryan was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

This action was the beginning of the end for the James brothers. It was the end for such witnesses as Tucker Basham, an ex-James gang participant. While testifying against Ryan, his home in the Cracker Neck area was burned; after the trial, he moved out of the area completely.

After the assassination of Jesse James in St. Joseph in early April of 1882, it would be only a matter of months before the final chapters of the James boys and their railroad exploits in Jackson County would come to a close. The little Missouri Pacific Station at Independence would play a part in that drama.

On Oct. 4, 1882, two men left Independence, on the Missouri Pacific Railroad bound for Jefferson City. They registered at the McCarthy House Hotel in that city as John Edwards, Sedalia, and B.F. Winfred, Marshall, Mo. No one was aware that B.F. Winfred was in fact Frank James and that John N. Edwards, ex-Quantrill guerrilla turned Kansas City newspaperman and a good friend of Frank’s, had made previous arrangements for Frank to surrender to Governor Crittenden. The next day, Oct. 5, the surrender took place. James was turned over to the authorities in the governor’s office.

The next morning on the Missouri Pacific train, Frank James began his trip to Independence. There were crowds at Sedalia, Warrensburg, La Monte and Pleasant Hill, and the train stopped so that the notorious outlaw could step out on the back platform of the train car and greet the crowds.

At the station in Independence, hundreds were on hand to witness the arrival, including Frank’s mother, Zerelda James Samuels, his wife, Annie Ralston James of Independence, and their small son. Frank’s surrender had made the front page of the New York times and was front page material in papers across the nation for days to come.

Upon arriving at the depot, the crowd hushed and fell back as James emerged from the train car – about five foot ten in height and weighing about 125 pounds. His mother began to weep and, according to the newspaper accounts of the day, many in the crowd were visibly moved. The entourage, in tow with the county officials, proceeded to the Merchant’s Hotel in Independence at the corner of Main and Maple streets where approximately 500 persons were waiting to see him. A dinner was given in his honor, during which 200 prominent Jackson County businessmen offered to go his bail. After registering at the hotel and the conclusion of dinner, Marshal Murphy turned his prisoner over to Ky Holland, jailor, and, in the company of Mrs. James, he was taken to the county jail (now Jackson County Historical Society property). James was held in Independence until his trial at Gallatin, Mo., in April of the next year.

The little wooden Missouri Pacific depot soon slipped back into the humdrum of daily existence, the town quickly forgetting that the century’s most celebrated outlaw had returned to justice from its doorways.

Other train robberies continued to take place in the eastern part of the county in the 1890s which still kept the memory of the earlier days alive and made train passengers through Jackson County uncomfortable.

After the turn of the century the Chicago and Alton Station on South Avenue played a minor part in the presidential campaign of 1908.

William Jennings Bryan, Democratic Presidential candidate against William Howard Taft, arrived in Independence, Oct. 8, 1908. He was met by Mayor Llewellyn Jones and other prominent citizens. After a speech, which had to be cut short because of a previous appointment in Kansas City, Bryan promised to return and finish the speech as soon as he was elected.

Taft won the election, but Bryan returned to Independence, in spite of his defeat, for the 1912 Independence Chautauqua sponsored by the White Chautauqua System.

It is interesting to note, in a picture of the assembly gathered in front of the Maple Hotel, that Cole Younger, former member of the James gang, is standing in front of the group – a few people to the right of Mr. Bryan!

The Independence depots, both Missouri Pacific and Chicago and Alton, were to have peaceful but active, existences from this point on. That great promoter of Independence improvements projects, Mayor Llewellyn Jones, who had recently managed to coerce the city into finally building its first bona fide City Hall in 1910, was ultimately successful in getting Missouri Pacific to build a new railroad station at its depot in 1913.

Today’s depot was hailed as a great public improvement and served the city and its citizens through World War I and on into the postwar years. The old wooden station was moved to a site just northwest of the present day structure; it was demolished in the 1960s.

The year 1948 proved to be another landmark year for the Missouri Pacific depot in Independence.

President Harry S. Truman, after having been “on the road” by rail for 38 days making over 200 separate speeches in his bid for the presidency against Thomas Dewey of New York, ended his “Whistle Stop Campaign” at the depot where he was met by hundreds of cheering fellow citizens. Truman proceeded to his home on Delaware Street where, on election eve, Nov. 1, 1948, he made the last speech in his monumental campaign for the presidency. The next day Truman and his family went to the Memorial Building to vote. Then the wait began.

Word came early Nov. 3, 1948, that Truman had been re-elected President over Dewey in one of the biggest election upsets. President Truman and his wife, Bess, boarded the train at the Missouri Pacific depot in Independence for his triumphal return to Washington.

Perhaps more impressive was President Truman’s return to his hometown upon leaving the presidency in 1953. Truman refers in his book, Mr. Citizen, to his homecoming by train – again to the little Missouri Station – that January.

“I was completely unprepared for what was to happen when we arrived in Independence. I expected that there would probably be a reaction of some kind, perhaps a hundred people or so. When we stepped off the train, the hundred had multiplied. There were people as far as you could see in every direction, shouting and waving. A band was playing the ‘Missouri Waltz’ and everybody was yelling his head off. I noticed a billboard beside the tract. It read: ‘Independence, Home of President Truman.’ Someone had chalked in a big ‘EX’ before the word President, and for some reason that seemed the only sensible, down to earth thing in sight.”

Truman was the last president to travel by rail as a matter of usual course.

Truman’s return from the presidency in 1953 caused a commotion, the likes of which the Missouri Pacific depot had never seen before and most likely will never see again.

So the stories go. Rail travel may not be as glamorous as it once was but the thrill of events long gone can still be experienced when one waits for the “Ann Rutletge” or the “Kansas City Mule” to pull to a stop at the site of Frank James’s return and the presidential triumphs of Harry S. Truman; it can still be imagined as one looks at the weather-beaten siding of the old C and A Station on South Avenue.

Both rail station sites represent important eras in American history that will not be repeated. They are valuable resources that should be protected and preserved by the citizens of this community whose history and heritage in development of the American West constitutes one of Independence’s most important resources.

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