In 1825 a treaty was entered into between the United States and the Osage Indians which extended the Santa Fe Trail through the Territory of Kansas. This treaty enabled Santa Fe Trail travelers to reach the Grove.
At the Grove frontiersmen would get shoes for their horses, load up on supplies, enjoy some bourbon and form wagon trains before embarking on their journeys west.
This Grove alongside the Santa Fe Trail would go on to become Council Grove. Council Grove was incorporated in 1887…62 years after first becoming a tree’d Santa Fe Trail settlement.
Between 1916 and 1978 Donnelly Garment Company manufactured over 75 million dresses. Donnelly Garment Company was the largest dress manufacturer in the country.
In 1950, nearly 5,000 women went to work each day in Kansas City’s Garment District. One-out-of-five of those women made dresses at Donnelly.
In 1857, William A. Phillips, a Scottish-born journalist, Free-State abolitionist and Civil War colonel, started out in Fort Riley and headed west. On the banks of the Smoky Hill River, Colonel Phillips laid the groundwork for the first settlement in what would become Saline County, Kansas.
Colonel Phillips chartered Salina Town Company with the Kansas legislature, then organized the area surrounding his settlement.
In 1860, the legislature approved the formation of five new territories. Saline County was one of those five.
Saline County was incorporated in 1860. Salina, Kansas was incorporated ten years later.
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.
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.
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.
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.
