Kansas City’s French Bottoms was a lowland riverfront area located at the confluence of the Missouri River and the Kansas River; the first permanent European settlement in Kansas City.
Founded in 1821 by a community of French-Indian trappers, the first homes built in the French Bottoms were French-style cabins.
The same year the French Bottoms took hold, William Bucknell established an international highway connecting the United States to Mexico. Bucknell’s “highway” was the Santa Fe Trail. Kansas City became the “Gateway to the Southwest.”
The French Bottoms would become the West Bottoms. Those early French settlements were wiped out by the Great Flood of 1844. While at the same time, by mid-century, Kansas City’s economy was fast-industrializing.
With the advent of freight trains by 1865, coupled to the opening of the Hannibal Branch in 1869 – the Hannibal Bridge enabled trains pulling into Kansas City to cross the Missouri River for the first time -an agrarian French Bottoms evolved into the industrial West Bottoms.
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