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 CHAPTER XII

THE STORY OF KANSAS CITY

The Gate City of the Great West in the War—If K. C. Ever was Wild and Woolly, That was Long Ago—Let Us Have Peace, if We Have to Get It With a Gun—All Quiet Along the Missouri.

Kansas City claims and has claimed for a long time the title of Gate City to the Great West. This is hers by legitimate right and has been ever since wheel-power first went west of the Missouri River. Independence, Missouri, which we may call the mother of the modern Kansas City, was for years, early in the last century, the jumping-off place for all the great western transcontinental trails. That way lay Oregon, on the upper fork. The left fork of the main traveled road led to Santa Fé. The men bound for the Arkansas Valley passed by here, and the old fur hunters said good-bye to civilization at this point even before the wagon had replaced the pack saddle on the Santa Fé trail. Here began the wagon-road that later was railroad, and all the time, from the wildest to the tamest days, whether in staid 1842, or in wild 1882, Kansas City was the Gate of the West, letting in and passing out a wild and tempestuous life in the days of the Homeric West.

Time was when Kansas City was bad, and had her man for breakfast with the best of them. But always the worst was farther West, and Kansas City sat tight. She did not care for the movies of the future, but quickly went in for law, order and business. So she has grown up, by very virtue of her geography, her situation, and her history, into an immense commercial center, solid, law-abiding and prosperous.

There was no reason to expect any great outbreaks of violence in Kansas City at this date of her history, nor do we find any; but the A. P. L. was there as it has been in every