Northeast News
March 27, 2013

It’s Kansas City’s 160th birthday, and you can celebrate it on March 28 in the City Hall Rotunda, 414 E. 12th St.

Cake and other refreshments will be served following remarks from the mayor, city manager and members of the city council.
All are invited to attend the celebration, which will be held from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Kansas City, Mo., has a dynamic history, tracing its beginnings to the early 1800s when French fur traders, including Francois Chouteau, followed the Missouri River from St. Louis to the area now known as the Northeast Industrial District, where they established trading posts on the waterway. Another young trader, John Calvin McCoy, opened a store inland on the Santa Fe Trail. He considered his land a portal to the West and thus named it Westport.

McCoy and 13 other men purchased a farm in the area and formed the town/company that later became Kansas City’s downtown district. The new owners named the township the Town of Kansas after the Kansa Indians, or Kaws, who inhabited the area. The Town of Kansas was incorporated and granted a charter by the county court in Independence on June 3, 1850.

The State of Missouri then officially incorporated the area as the “City of Kansas” on Feb. 22, 1853. The City of Kansas’ boundaries extended from the middle of the Missouri River south to Ninth Street, and from Bluff Street east to a point between Holmes and Charlotte streets.