Kansas City, in the very beginning

Kansas City… Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City, Kansas. 

There had been a few different beginnings for what we now know to be Kansas City. The very first one?  

In the 1830s, we had the first one – Westport Landing. 

Westport Landing was established on a section of 257 acres which would evolve into what would become Kansas City, Missouri. 

The 257 acres had been sold by the federal government to a man of French ancestry…Gabriel Prudhomme. This land sale took place in 1831. 

Whereas the land Gabriel Prudhomme purchased from the federal government would go on to become Kansas City, Missouri, Westport Landing was the early, pre-Kansas City, Kansas City development.

Westport Landing – strategically set up alongside the heavily-trafficked Santa Fe Trail – was an unincorporated collection of merchants. These were merchants who established their businesses in Westport Landing to provide Santa Fe Trail travelers with supplies. 

The merchants were inland. And the Westport Landing merchants figured out they could reduce their costs by receiving supplies by way of the Missouri River. Rather than by land. And they did.

The waterway entry point at which Westport Landing merchants were able to receive supplies shipped to them on the Missouri River was located where what is now Grand Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri intersects with the Missouri River. And it is at this intersection – where Grand Boulevard meets the “Big Muddy” – where we found Westport Landing. 

Twenty years later – in 1850 – Westport Landing was incorporated as the Town of Kansas. 

Three years after that – in 1853 – the Town of Kansas was reincorporated and renamed. The new name for the Town of Kansas? The City of Kansas. And this renaming – as the City of Kansas – took place eight years before the State of Kansas became the 34th state of the United States. In 1861. 

In 1889, the name for the city – the City of Kansas – was changed. Changed to Kansas City. The very, very first Kansas City – that first Kansas City being, Westport – was annexed by Kansas City, Missouri eight years later. In 1897.

All the while, on the other side of the Missouri River – in the new Kansas Territory – small Kansas settlements were forming. And growing. Growing into small Kansas towns.

In 1872, a consortium of small Kansas towns – on the other side of the river – merged. And incorporated. Therein – in 1872 – we have the origin for Kansas City, Kansas.

Wherein the larger Kansas City – and the older Kansas City, too – is the one which is located in Missouri, and not in Kansas, the “Kansas” in Kansas City is not derived from the State of Kansas.

The name of the city – Kansas City, Missouri – was named after a river. Not a state. Not Kansas. That river being…the Kanza River. 

The Kanza River would go on to become the Kansas River. The Kansas River provided the name – “Kansas” – for the city – Kansas City, Missouri.

So the city – Kansas City – which originally formed as Westport Landing, which would later go on to become the Town of Kansas, which would later go on to become the City of Kansas, which would later go on to become Kansas City…does not derive its name from its neighbor to the west – the State of Kansas.