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Understanding Kansas City
Crossroad for new beginnings
By ViaMei Staff |
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Kansas City is the financial capital of American agriculture, the country's biggest business. American agricultural income and power dwarf the money made by Saudi Arabia selling oil.
This quiet, non-flamboyant agricultural financial hub sets the world price for Red Wheat at the Kansas City Board of Trade. Kansas City's agricultural finance power is money born from years of plenty and years of destitution. This seesaw existence and way of life breeds a quiet strength in its people found nowhere else in America.
The great American prairie humbles the people who live on it. For you may think your life is perfect on Monday, heaven on earth. On Tuesday a tornado, a wild fire, an early snow or a mighty swarm of bugs wipe you out. Life changes here in a heart beat.
The heirs of these humble farm people filled Kansas City over the last 100 years. Here they built an oasis on the prairie. They developed a culture of music, art, sculpture, prose, every variety of businesses and mighty mob bosses.
This land spawned enough character in its people to send two men to the White House ！ Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It also birthed several of America's most winning generals of World War I and II ！ Generals Pershing, Bradley, Eisenhower and MacArthur. All lived 30 minutes up the river in Fort Leavenworth.
Kansas City sits on the cliffs of the mighty Missouri River. The Mighty Mo stretches from the Bitter Root Mountains of Montana to the port of New Orleans.
Here the Osage Sioux ruled the land from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains for 7000 years. The first American fur trappers traveled up the Missouri for beaver pelts to meet the demand for the popular beaver hats and coats of the late 17 and early 1800s. Seventy-seven mountain men set out on the Missouri, seven made it back alive. These mountain men became legends even while they lived ！ Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Jim Beckwith and Jeremiah Johnson.
The mountain men were followed by the wagon trains that stretched from Kansas City to San Francisco. Millions of pioneers, men, women, and children filled wagons that left from Kansas City. Before these bold men and women left to cross the prairie, the desert, and then the mountains, these pioneer families built, fixed and filled their wagons with supplies to make the trip. Thousands died along the trail before they made it to San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean.
Buffalo hunters followed the wagon trains, who later followed cattle ranchers who drove their thousands of cattle into the Kansas City stock yards where this city became known for great steaks.
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From cattle and farming Kansas City transformed into a manufacturing hub where airplanes, cars, trucks, navigation equipment, pharmaceuticals, oil and natural gas refineries and piping stations, banking, hardwood lumber and trucking, international cargo and railroads established themselves here to distribute goods and services of all kinds to the center of the nation.
Today Kansas City continues to be banking, automobile, agricultural, transportation, navigation equipment, communication and service hub for the nation.
Kansas City is always a pleasant surprise to people who come here for the first time. It has more fountains than any other city in the world, except maybe Rome. The exact number of fountains is not known, however, the City of Fountains Foundation, which keeps the only known database of Kansas City fountains, currently lists more than 200 fountains that flow in Kansas City.
Kansas City's love affair with fountains is due to the importance of water in the city's historic development. Located at the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, many early settlers arrived in Kansas City by steamboat to begin their overland journeys west. Once here settlers crossed the river in wagons. Over the river they picked their trail！the Santa Fe or The Oregon Trail. One crossed the desert. One crossed the mountains. Neither journey was easy. You could die of thirst or be trapped in a late spring or early fall storm in a mountain pass then freeze to death. Death without water death with frozen water. Water. It's important to Kansas City.
The city's first fountains date back to the late 1800s and had a purely practical purpose. They were erected over springs by the Humane Society to provide clean drinking water for animals (In 1910, the horse population of Kansas City was estimated at 70,000!).
Over the years, Kansas City's fountains became a cherished public art form, erupting with magnificent symphonies of water, light and |
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sculpture. Today, it's sort of an unwritten policy that a fountain is designed in all new public or commercial building projects.
There is Kansas City Fountains and then there is Kansas City Jazz.
Kansas City is world renowned for its rich jazz and blues legacy. Born in the 1920s, Jazz, continues to this day in clubs and events held throughout the city. More than |
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20 area nightclubs feature jazz. Dance halls, cabarets and speakeasies fostered the development of this new musical style. In the early days, many jazz groups were smaller dance bands with three to six pieces. By the mid-1920s, the big band became the norm.
Territory bands also had an influential development on jazz. Many great musicians got their start in these bands, traveling up to 1,000 miles between jobs.
While jazz began with a bang in the 1920's, it flourished in the 1930s, mainly as a result of political boss Tom Pendergast. During prohibition, he allowed alcohol to flow in Kansas City. As an entertainment center, Kansas City had no equal during these dry times. This "wide-open" town image attracted displaced musicians from everywhere in mid-America. Throughout the Depression, Kansas City bands continued to play while other bands across the nation folded. The city was shielded rom the worst of the Depression due to an early form of New Deal-style public works projects that provided jobs and affluence that kept the dance-oriented nightlife in town swinging.
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Only in Kansas City did jazz continue to flourish. At one time, there were more than 100 nightclubs, dance halls and vaudeville houses in Kansas City regularly featuring jazz music. Legends like Count Basie, Andy Kirk, Joe Turner, Hot Lips Page and Jay McShann all played in Kansas City. A saxophone player named Charlie Parker began his ascent to fame here in his
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hometown in the 1930s.
Kansas City's 12th Street became nationally known for its jazz clubs, gambling parlors and brothels, earning the city the moniker, "The Paris of the Plains". At its height, 12th Street was home to more than 50 jazz clubs. Just six blocks to the north, jazz also flourished at 18th & Vine, which became nationally respected as the epicenter of the city's African-American community.
Another great outcome of Kansas City jazz was the jam session. After performances, musicians would get together to exchange ideas and experiment with new methods of playing. The best local and out of town musicians would take part in these jam sessions that lasted all night and well into the next day. Many downtown clubs were the scene of jam activity as well as the Mutual Musicians Foundation. This union hall, which still stands today as a National Historic Landmark, remains open on weekends for all-night jam sessions.
The Pendergast political machine collapsed after Tom Pendergast was indicted on tax evasion. Reform elements took over and nightclubs and cabarets shut down. Jobs for musicians dried up and the bands took to the road. By 1942, with the turmoil of World War II, many of the musicians had been drafted. Finally, by 1944, the great Kansas City jazz era slowed down. Jay Mcshann said, "The chicks left, the Cats left and it became a jazz ghost town".
But it didn't totally die out. Today, jazz still thrives in Kansas City. Fountains, jazz, and world-class barbecue.
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In the early 20's a man named Henry Perry, now known as the "Father of K.C. Barbecue," moved inside a streetcar barn at 19th & Highland and started barbecuing in an outdoor pit. Perry served up slabs of barbecue wrapped in newspaper. The nationally-renowned Charlie and Arthur Bryant, George Gates, Otis Boyd, John Harris and Sherman Thompson
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learned Perry's technique and style, then each went on to create their own unique blend of Kansas City barbecue.
One of Kansas City's most famous barbecue joints began with the efforts of the Bryant family. When Charlie Bryant retired in 1946, his brother Arthur bought the business, operating first out of the original 18th & Euclid location and then moved to its present location at 18th & Brooklyn. The legend of "King Arthur" has now risen to new heights. Renowned food critic and New Yorker columnist Calvin Trillin wrote that Bryant's is "the single best restaurant in the world."
Today there are over 100 area barbecue establishments, each boasting its personal house specialty！ ribs, pork, ham, mutton, sausage and even fish.
Kansas City barbecue is always slow smoked over wood, usually hickory. Some is smoked up to 18 hours to obtain that one-of-a-kind flavor. Each restaurant has developed its own recipe for sauce, too, which is added right before serving. And while barbecue restaurants abound in Kansas City, there are also amateur enthusiasts who prefer to make their own in smoke ovens.
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Many of these chefs enter one of Kansas City's many barbecue competitions in hopes of becoming the next Kansas City BBQ legend. The American Royal BBQ Contest, held the first weekend in October, is the largest such competition in the world. Thousands of amateur chefs compete in this two-day festival of BBQ competition, sauce competition and entertainment. It's easy to find ！ just follow the smoke, which can be seen (and smelled) for blocks.
The Kansas City Barbecue Society, with over 2,500 members from all 50 states, Canada, England and other countries around the world, is the world's largest organization of barbecue and grilling enthusiasts. Each weekend from early spring through fall, their members stoke up their fires in their cookers for a weekend of heated barbecue competitions. No matter how you cook it up, Kansas City barbecue is as special and unique as the people who live in this spicy, thriving city.
There is something in Kansas City for everyone. For lovers of shopping there are the shops of the Country Club Plaza. For Sports enthusiasts there is professional baseball, football, wrestling, boxing and dog tracks. There are gambling casinos with slots and table games.
For those who love the culinary arts, cuisines from China to Ethiopia to Kansas City's own world famous steaks and barbeque will satisfy your heart, soul and stomach.
Kansas City's Truman Library and Nelson Atkins Art Museum are must see destinations for world travelers. From its history to its cultural arts, you will love Kansas City no matter where you are from -- Xi'an, Paris, London or Moscow.
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