Local History Blog

What’s the saying? One man’s trash is another’s treasure? Lucinda Adams recalls the day, five years ago, when she and a couple of members of the Library’s facilities staff were led into a converted storage room in the old Kansas City Livestock…

Perhaps you've spotted Google's Street View car cruising through Kansas City, making a photographic record of whatever it happens to pass by. It's easy to spot. In addition to the Google decal on the side of the vehicle, you can't miss the big 360-…

One hundred and two years ago, on Saturday February 9, 1861, the fervent abolitionist Charles Robinson was sworn into office as Kansas' first state governor. As a long-time supporter of the Free-State cause in Kansas, Robinson was no stranger to…

As parking lots fill to capacity with frazzled shoppers during this holiday season, and lighted decorations appear in every corner, we may do well to remember that not so long ago Missouri and Kansas looked remarkably different, and Christmas…

A massive, collaborative digitization project underway at the Kansas City Public Library has brought together a unique collection of documents from 25 institutions scattered across Kansas and Missouri. Among the 6,000 pages of digitized materials (…

As All-Star fever rushes over Kansas City, the Library is presenting a rich look into KC’s 146-year baseball history in the exhibit Amateurs to All-Stars: The Rise of Baseball in Kansas City, open through the 2012 World Series at the Central Library…

As a crisis in law and order unfolded, Northerners and Southerners villainized each other by "blackening" the identity of their foe. When Abraham Lincoln set foot on Kansas soil in December 1859, Missouri women were hard at work sewing "guerrilla…

My first foray into the world of digitizing Civil War-era sources took me not into the hills of Missouri or trekking across the plains of Kansas. Instead, I found myself not far from the desk at which I write this post. Only five floors up, at the…

During the Mexican Revolution of 1910, thousands of Mexicans left their homeland in pursuit of a better life in the United States. Many who traveled north to Kansas City found work in packing houses and factories and settled in the Westside…

Fires, a hazard of the industrial revolution, often caused uninsured property owners to suffer great financial loss. To protect against such calamity, fire insurance companies sprang up all over the U.S. Policy writers, however, could not always…