History of the Kansas City metropolitan area

Before the arrival of European explorers, the area was inhabited at various times by peoples of the Hopewell tradition and later the Mississippian culture, as well as the Kansa, Osage, Otoe and Missouri tribes.

The area was acquired by the United States from France in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and Americans began settling there in greater numbers after the organization of the Missouri Territory in 1812.

In 1724, Bourgmont led a group of Native Americans probably up the Kansas River en route to the southwest to set up an alliance with the Comanche to fight the Spanish, thereby creating a New France empire extending from Montreal through Missouri to New Mexico.

During their stay there, they met French fur traders and mapped the area of Quality Hill in what would eventually become Kansas City, Missouri, calling it "a fine place for a fort".

Throughout the 1840s, the population and importance of Kansas swelled as it and nearby Independence and Westport became starting points on the Oregon, Santa Fe, and California trails for settlers heading west.

It was bordered by Bluff Road (about the location of what became Interstate 35) on the west, Independence Avenue on the south, Holmes Street on the east, and the Missouri River on the north.

In 1858, however, the local violence had grown so fierce that the Kansas Territorial Governor and the State of Missouri both asked U.S. President James Buchanan to send in federal troops.

The First Battle of Independence resulted in a Confederate victory, but the Southerners were not able to follow it up in any meaningful way, as the City of Kansas was occupied by Union troops and proved too heavily fortified for them to assault.

The initial meeting of tracks occurred in the West Bottoms an area that had previously been used to outfit travellers on the Oregon and Santa Fe trails who had followed the Kansas River.

[14] When prohibition finally was imposed on Missouri in 1919 by means of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the subsequent Volstead Act, Kansas City remained essentially unaffected, mostly due to the Pendergast machine.

Tom succeeded Jim in the council too, but left after three terms and assumed a more powerful position as chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Club with its headquarters at 1908 Main Street.

Also during this time, Kansas City also became a center for nightlife and music, with jazz by musicians such as Count Basie and Charlie Parker, and blues flourishing in areas such as 18th and Vine.

His biographers have summed up Pendergast's uniqueness: Pendergast may bear comparison to various big-city bosses, but his open alliance with hardened criminals, his cynical subversion of the democratic process, his monarchistic style of living, his increasingly insatiable gambling habit, his grasping for a business empire, and his promotion of Kansas City as a wide-open town with every kind of vice imaginable, combined with his professed compassion for the poor and very real role as city builder, made him bigger than life, difficult to characterize.

Beginning in 1906, developer J. C. Nichols created a planned upscale community called the Country Club District, located south of Brush Creek.

[7] Nichols is responsible for "redlining" and residential covenants that kept Blacks, Jews, and other marginalized people from purchasing homes and living in the more desirable areas of Kansas City, like the neighborhoods around the Plaza that he developed.

Long – who was born in Shelby County, Kentucky in 1850 – moved to Columbus, Kansas and with a friend and a cousin, Victor Bell and Robert White, started a hay business.

After Charlie Finley moved the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland, California, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington threatened to remove professional baseball's antitrust exemption.

Ironically the Chiefs football franchise, who had defined Kansas City in the 1960s and those heady days at Municipal Stadium, went into a decline, having only two winning seasons between 1974 and 1988 and participating in only one playoff game from 1972 through 1989.

Following a series of court battles, Kansas City eventually annexed the airport and selected architectural firm Kivett and Myers to design it, which was dedicated in 1972.

On September 12, 1977, following a soggy summer, 16 inches (410 millimetres) of rain fell on Kansas City, causing severe flooding across the entire region.

However, an investigation later revealed that heavy rain from the storm had collected on the arena's roof, to the point where the supports were unable to handle the weight of the pooled water coupled with high winds that rocked its exterior skeleton.

The Kansas City Scouts were unable to create the same buzz as fellow NHL franchise, the St. Louis Blues, and relocated to Denver in 1976 to become the Colorado Rockies (which later became the New Jersey Devils in 1982).

The single most divisive issue in Kansas City in the 1980s and 1990s was a school desegregation case that spanned three decades, cost millions of dollars, be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and be featured in a profile on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes about good intentions gone awry.

By 1970 the Kansas City school district had experienced massive white and middle-class black flight that left it with a smaller tax base and a severe money shortage.

Teacher salaries skyrocketed, teacher-student ratios were 12 or 13 to 1 and some schools were equipped with Olympic-size swimming pools, wildlife sanctuaries and model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability.

One of the biggest showcases of Kansas City metropolitan area's rebirth in this era was Crown Center, which was being built by Hallmark Cards, itself headquartered in the complex by Union Station.

The newest addition to the complex was the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where on July 17, 1981, the building's walkway collapsed during a tea dance, which had been set up to bring back the magic of Kansas City jazz.

The Kansas City Star, which had been caught flat-footed after the Kemper Arena collapse, hired a structural engineer following the Hyatt disaster and won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the story.

[26] Downtown Kansas City, Missouri has had $6 billion in improvements, with main goals including to attract convention and tourist money, office workers, and residents.

[33] In 2013, construction began on the first two-mile KC Streetcar line in downtown Kansas City (funded by a $102 million ballot initiative that was passed in 2012) that runs between the River Market and Union Station.