This Week in KC History
Gettysburg of the West
October 23, 1864: The Battle in Westport pitted Confederate General Sterling Price against Union General Samuel Curtis in the largest Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi River. General Price had begun the invasion of…
"The Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City"
July 1, 1865: Louis Curtiss, a Kansas City architect best known for his innovation in the "curtain wall" construction of buildings, was born in Belleville, Ontario. During a 37-year career in Kansas City, he left his mark with…
Bridge to the Future
July 3, 1869: Hannibal Bridge officially opened as an anxious crowd of 40,000 people looked on from the shores of the Missouri River. It was a spectacular turnout for a town that just four years before only had a population of 4,…
Muffin Man
September 13, 1870: Fred Wolferman, who will lead the family Kansas City grocery store to a successful purveyor of luxury food goods (especially Wolferman's English muffins), is born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thirteen years later…
A Myth is Born
September 26, 1872: The Kansas City Industrial Exposition attracted nearly 60,000 visitors each day, twice the population of Kansas City itself. The four-day exposition presented innovative industrial machines, fine art, floral…
Bottoms Up
April 7, 1878: Kansas City's Union Depot opened near the stockyards and meat packers in the West Bottoms. Many observers initially considered the $410,028 building (the largest west of New York) to be excessive compared to the…
The Annexation That Wasn't
January 21, 1879: Kansas Senate passed a resolution that approved the annexation of Kansas City, Missouri. The Missouri legislature refused to adopt a corresponding resolution, however, and this attempt to incorporate Kansas City…
Katz in the Cradle
March 8, 1879: Isaac "Ike" Katz, who would go on to found the Katz Drug Co. in Kansas City and become a pioneer in the modern pharmacy business, was born in the town of Husiatin in western Ukraine (then a part of Russia) on March…
Exodusters Mark the Spot
April 25, 1879: The Wyandotte Commercial Gazette reported that more than 1,000 destitute African Americans had arrived in Wyandotte City (present-day Kansas City, Kansas) in just two weeks. With a total population of…
The Wight Stuff
January 22, 1882: Future architect William Drewin Wight was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1911, he joined his older brother, Thomas, in Kansas City, where they created the architectural firm of Wight & Wight. The firm went…