The New International Encyclopædia/Kansas City (Kansas)

KANSAS CITY. The largest and most important city of Kansas, and the county-seat of Wyandotte County, on both sides of the Kansas River, at its confluence with the Missouri; opposite and adjoining Kansas City, Mo. (Map: Kansas, H 2). It is usually called Kansas City, Kansas. It is an important railroad centre, a number of great trunk lines entering the city. Among them are the Missouri Pacific; the Union Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; the Mexico and Orient; and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. The city covers an area of ten and a half square miles, and is built partly on bluffs and partly on the river bottoms. Several bridges across the Kansas River unite the east and west sections of the city, which is closely connected also with Kansas City, Mo., by elevated, electric, and cable roads. Of a total street mileage of 160 miles, more than 25 per cent. is paved, principally with brick and asphalt. There are over fourteen acres of public parks. The city is the seat of the State Institution for the Blind, and of Kansas City University (Methodist Protestant), opened in 1896. The high school is one of the largest and best equipped in the State; and a fine library building which will cost $75,000, the gift of Andrew Carnegie, is in course of construction (1903). Kansas City, Kan., is noted for its important live-stock, slaughtering, and meat-packing interests, in all of which it is allied with the adjacent city—the stock yards and packing-house plants on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri boundary forming the second largest live-stock centre in the United States. (See Kansas City, Missouri.) It is also an important grain and flour market. There are several large grain-elevators and flour-mills, railroad car and machine shops, and extensive manufactures of soap and candles, foundry and machine-shop products, boxes, barrels, cooperage products, etc. The manufacturing interests represent a production valued at about $85,000,000, the slaughtering and meat-packing industry, with a capital of $15,000,000, alone having an output equal to $75,000,000. Kansas City spends annually, in maintenance and operation, about $515,000, the principal items of expenditure being: $145,000 for schools, $125,000 for interest on debt, $40,000 for the police department, $35,000 for the fire department, $32,000 for municipal lighting, $30,000 for the health department, and $25,000 for streets. Kansas City, Kan., known also as Wyandotte, was chartered in 1886, when the former municipalities Armourdale, Kansas City, Wyandotte, and Armstrong were consolidated under the present name. Its subsequent growth has been rapid. Population, in 1890, 38,316; in 1900, 51,418, including 6400 persons of foreign birth and 6500 of negro descent.