We have J.C. Hall – a one time door-to-door Avon salesman from Norfolk, Nebraska – to thank for Kansas City’s Crown Center.
J.C. Hall went from selling makeup door-to-door in Nebraska to selling postcards in Kansas City.
To sell more of his postcards, J.C. Hall opened a small store. From that small store, he next opened a grand department in Kansas City.
Hall’s department store evolved into one Halls Department Store in Crown Center.
Tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills covers roughly four million acres. The majority of those acres are in Kansas. The Flint Hills is the largest tall grass prairie in the United States.
Tallgrass prairie once blanketed 170 million acres of North America, extending from Kansas to Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Illinois and Canada.
Golden in autumn and greenish-blue in the spring, Flint Hills switchgrass is a favorite among ranchers. The optimal grazing height of switchgrass is one-and-a-half to two feet.
In the summer as traditional grasses stop producing, switchgrass remains rich in protein. Perfect for cattle.
The cattle-to-person ratio in Kansas is two-to-one. There are, give or take, six million head of cattle in Kansas. The cattle business is a $10 billion annual industry in Kansas.
In 1854 Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Congress. When President Franklin Pierce signed Senator Douglas’s bill into law, the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery north of the 36°30′ line established through the Louisiana Purchase was replaced with “popular sovereignty.”
Two new territories were established: the Nebraska Territory and the Kansas Territory. Settlers in each Territory were free to determine the future of slavery for themselves.
Abolitionists arriving in the Kansas Territory from Boston saw potential for a town alongside the Big Blue River and the Kansas River. Two rivers touched this settlement. Maritime trade would anchor commerce.
Acreage was acquired. A river landing was constructed. They’d build ferries. A town constitution was adopted.
The origin of “free state” Manhattan, Kansas.
Lawrence, Kansas was founded by The New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854.
The New England Emigrant Aid Company was an antislavery organization established in Boston by Eli Thayer. The New England Emigrant Aid Company transported settlers from New England to the new Kansas Territory. Their goal was for anti-slavery settlers to populate the Kansas Territory and influence the Territory’s politics. The New England Emigrant Aid Company intended for Kansas to enter the Union as a free state.
Kansas became a state in 1861, a free state.
The town New England Emigrant Aid Conpany settled is named after Massachusetts native and Harvard graduate, Amos Lawrence. An abolitionist, Amos Lawrence financed the founding of the University of Kansas.
The “4th City” has taken possession of thousands of vacant, abandoned and foreclosed properties over the past eighteen years. St. Louis is able to convey those properties to buyers through the Land Reutilization Authority. Property conveyances such as these are governed by Title 1 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974.
In order to facilitate processes which convey higher numbers of nonperforming city-owned homes to those who can rehab them, Congress passed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Underpinnings for the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 were brought on by The Financial Crisis. The Housing And Economic Recovery Act of 2008 later became the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (“NSP”).
The NSP provides framework cities rely upon to determine the most effective ways to get city-owned homes to buyers who can rehab them. In St. Louis, property conveyances are enacted through the Land Reutilization Authority.
To acquire Land Reutilization Authority properties buyers submit their Offer To Purchase along with pay stubs, their prior year’s tax return, bank statements and their funding source.
The “4th City” has an estimated 9,000 vacant properties. The majority of those 9,000 vacant properties in the “4th City” are residential homes.
You’ve read the Request For Proposals. You see the cut-off date for submissions. You are considering drafting your Proposal. Ideally, a Proposal which positions you for a conversation pertaining to the conveyance of city-owned properties.
The submission of your proposal will enter you in a selection process. There is a lot that goes into writing a good proposal. Build plans. Architectural plans. Design plans. Financing. Marketing. Keep it simple. Align your Response to each component prioritized in the RFP-Q.
Salina, Kansas owes its founding to an expedition. Or rather, to a tour. Or rather, to be more specific, to a foot tour.
In 1857 a Scottish-born journalist, Free-State abolitionist, Civil War colonel for the Union army and future Kansas Congressman headed up a group that ventured west – by foot – from Fort Riley. Their goal? Find a new townsite.
That Colonel who led the foot tour was William A. Phillips. Colonel Phillips commanded the Indian Home Guard regiments during the Civil War.
To find his new townsite, Colonel Phillips led his men along the Smokey Hill River’s course. The Smokey Hill extends all the way to eastern Colorado. In Kansas, the Smokey Hill connects with the Republican River to form the Kansas River, just a tad east of Fort Riley in Junction City.
On their 35-mile foot tour, running low on supplies, Colonel Phillips and his men restocked in Manhattan. Then followed the bends of Blue River from Manhattan to Saline County.
Upon their arrival, on the banks of the Smoky Hill River, Colonel Phillips found an ideal setting. And what Colonel Phillips found would go on to become the very first settlement in the future Saline County.
Prior to Colonel Phillips arrival in today’s Saline County, the region had been claimed as hunting grounds by High Plains tribes. The High Plains tribes were hostile to American settlers. Attacks on settlers was commonplace. By 1858, the threat of those High Plains tribes attacks had been put to rest. Enabling Colonel Phillips to establish his settlement.
That same year, Colonel Phillips along with the group he led – David Phillips, Alexander M. Campbell Sr., A.C. Spillman, and James Muir – chartered the Salina Town Company with the Kansas territory legislature.
The following year Phillips, Phillips, Campbell, Spillman and Muir organized the surrounding area as Saline County.
The Kansas territory legislature approved the formation of five new Kansas territory counties. Saline County was one of the five.
Saline County was incorporated in 1860. Salina, Kansas – incorporated ten years later – would go on to become the county seat.
William A. Phillips was elected to the United States House of Representatives 1872. He served from 1873 through 1879.
Founded in Salina by Henry David Lee as the H.D. Lee Mercantile Company – originally, a grocery store – H.D. Lee Mercantile Company would go on to become Lee Jeans.
Lee Jeans opened their first garment factory in 1889. In Salina. Twenty-nine years after Salina was incorporated.
Kansas City is the home of the Ford F-150.
Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant employs nearly 10,000 auto workers and sprawls over 1,200 acres in Claycomo, Missouri.
Ford builds their F-Series pickup truck in Kansas City. Since 1948 over 40 million F-Series pickups have been built in Kansas City.
In 1863 Kansas Governor Thomas Carney signed a bill into law creating the second state university in Kansas. The university was to be built on 40 acres – the University of Kansas, KU. KU was founded in 1864.
This second university in the Sunflower State was constructed on Hogback Ridge in Lawrence. Hogback Ridge, later becoming, Mount Oread.
The relevance to Mount Oread and to Mount Oread’s role in that which Lawrence is most famous for is found under our feet.
Three years after Governor Carney signed into law the bill which would establish a Kansas university in Lawrence KU classrooms opened. KU started out as preparatory school fewer than 100 students.
Mount Oread sits on a bed of limestone.
Limestone is chalk rock. Chalk rock transposed becomes rock chalk.
Hence, our famous, Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
Rock chalk. Chalk rock. Chalk rock sits below KU’s classrooms as the foundation of the university.
The Rock Chalk chant comes from the chalk rock of limestone found in Mount Oread.
Rock Chalk was originally a KU science club slogan.
Belleville, New Jersey is the birthplace of America’s Industrial Revolution. And it was a newcomer to Belleville – coming from Great Britain – that got the Revolution off the ground.
In 1753 Josiah Hornblower was commissioned to build what would become the first steam engine assembled in the New World. Josiah Hornblower left Great Britain, headed to New Jersey and built that first steam engine for the owners of the oldest copper mine in the British Colonies – Schuyler Copper Mine.
Schuyler Copper Mine was located in Belleville, which is where Josiah Hornblower’s steam engine was built.
Hornblower building that first steam engine in Belleville marked the birth of America’s Industrial Revolution.
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