A legacy of lawsuits and public campaigns from the 1910s through the 1930s led by bereaved families, including survivors of area settlers and boosters, created new leadership and city park status with accorded maintenance.

In the 1850s, the area had been settled by the two small boomtowns of West Port to the south and the town of Kansas 4 miles north and bordering the Missouri River.

The association reportedly intended the cemetery to become one of the "most attractive resorts to be found near this city" for rich and poor alike, with miniature lakes, cool springs, streetcar, walking paths, and roads.

A nominal fee for burial plots funded the damming of several living springs from north to south, to create cascades and lakes including water lilies.

[7] In August 1889, the cemetery sexton's cottage burned, including the major loss of all historical burial records, leaving hundreds of weathered wooden and limestone grave markers unidentifiable.

Political leaders decried the decrepit cemetery as "the most narrow and obstructive institution the city has to contend with" in building better roads, especially as alternates to the steep Main Street.

Past decades of newspaper coverage about the cemetery's deterioration was then accentuated by more lawsuits discovering a long history of haphazard mass graves.

In 1911, city counselor H. S. Conrad displayed in court "a sackful of bones – those of men, women, children, picked up at random in a walk through the cemetery".

In 1924, a lawsuit by bereaved families including descendants of Kansas City's pioneers accused the association of "collusion, fraud, and conspiracy" while violating its charter of dedicated land purpose.