By Joshua Phillips
Northeast News
May 23, 2013

Kansas City is known for many different things: from its world famous barbeque to the historic Union Station, the 18th and Vine Jazz district to the official World War I memorial. However, Kansas City has another thing to celebrate, the fountains.

Kansas Citians who love the City of Fountains can enjoy the KC Festival of Fountains Sunday, June 9, at the Henry W. Bloch Fountain in front of the Union Station from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The City of Fountains Foundation will celebrate its 40th anniversary with this first ever festival.

“The City of Fountains Foundation has this festival to kick off the campaign to raise money for the fountains needing repair work,” Festival of Fountains Chair Joanie Shields said. “Kansas City is the ‘City of Fountains’. This festival is to raise money for the fountains, but there will be other activities over the summer to raise more money and awareness.”

Shields said there are eight fountains in particular that need repair work. The fountains are J.C. Nichols fountain, the Seville Light fountain, the Volker fountain, the Spirit of Freedom fountain, the Westside fountain, the Delbert Haff fountain, the Seahorse Fountain and the Children’s Fountain.

Festivities will include face painting, the Zoomobile, animals from Lakeside Nature Center, a Legoland exhibit, a PowerPoint show of the Kansas City fountains, food and drink vendors and trolley tours of the fountains excluding the Delbert Haff and Children’s fountains. The Marching Cobras will open the festivities at 1:30 p.m. with their performance.

“We hope to have around 5,000 people attending with about 500 bicyclists,” Shields said.

Preceeding the festival will be the Ride the Fountains Bicycle Tour that will begin at Union Station at 8 a.m. and is expected to end around 11 a.m. Part of the route takes bicyclists through Historic Northeast, winding along Cliff Drive, Gladstone Boulevard, St. John Avenue and other key streets. The Kansas City Metro Bicycle Club will lead the tours for the Ride the Fountains Bicycle Tour.

“It will be a leisurely tour of the fountains of Kansas City, the tour of fountains people are familiar with and the fountains people are not so familiar with,” said Kansas City Metro Bicycle Club Vice President Mitchell Williams. “We hope everyone can come out to enjoy the ride and guarantee that they will like it.”

The Kansas City Metro Bicycle Club will take bicycle riders on three different tour routes: 10-mile, 24-mile and 46-mile routes. Williams said there will be rest areas for the riders along the way where they will provide beverages and snacks; however, all participants in the tours must provide their own bicycle and helmet.

“I would like to say we want 1,000 people participating in the Ride the Fountains event, but it is hard to tell the numbers because we have never had (an adjoining event),” Williams said. “We normally average 400 riders. The fountain I enjoy most is the Firefighter’s Fountain off 31st and Broadway.”

Williams said he hopes to show Kansas Citians not only the fountains they recognize, but also the ones that are obscure and that people never notice or hear about.

For more information about the Ride the Fountains Bicycle Tour, visit http://ridethefountains.com/