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In the Kansas City region, the name "Quantrill" is largely associated with William Clarke Quantrill, the infamous Missouri guerrilla who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and led a violent raid on the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863. The Quantrill name came up in a recent What’s Your KC Q? submission by Star reader Tony Rome. Rome’s mother attended the old Benjamin Harrison School (now the Kansas City International Academy) near Interstate 435 and East Wilson Road. He recalls her mentioning a “Quantrill Park” just east of the school and asks, “Who was that Quantrill?” At the risk of reviving old border war animosities, historians in the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections searched the department’s newspaper, map, and photograph collections for the answer.
Robert Felix, a Kansas City native who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, and now lives in Shawnee, has always known about the old cable car tunnel that runs below Eighth Street from downtown to the West Bottoms. As the new Kansas City Streetcar system gains popularity he wondered: Could the Eighth Street Tunnel/streetcar line be restored and used to link the two parts of the city?
Reader Wayne Moots recently asked us how people used to travel up and down the rocky bluffs that separate downtown from the West Bottoms. Moots works at the revitalized Golden Ox restaurant, and has had plenty of time to ponder this KC Q during his commute.
It’s summer in Kansas City, so it’s time for “What’s Your KCQ?” to take a swing at a baseball question. Ashley Tebbe recently submitted her question to The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Public Library about some local baseball history: "What is the history of Negro Leagues baseball trading cards?"
In October 1953, three brief articles appeared in The Kansas City Times (the morning edition of The Star), detailing the exhibition of a 40-ton, 42-foot, embalmed gray whale named Winnie. Winnie had met an untimely end a year earlier, when she encountered a U.S. Navy destroyer off the coast of San Diego and lost her tail. The DuPont Company built and attached a new plastic tail, and Winnie’s preserved remains were sent on a nationwide tour.
The name of Kansas City’s Trolley Trail – a six-mile path now populated by walkers, runners, and bikers – offers some indication of its original purpose. The route is one of the last pieces of the city’s original streetcar system.
Opened April 12, 2004, the new Central Library wasn’t merely a triumph for merely the Library. The restoration of the century-old First National Bank building also lent momentum to then-nascent efforts to revitalize Kansas City’s downtown.
A recent What’s Your KC Q? submission asked us to explain the odd, seemingly arbitrary state line between Kansas and Missouri as it passes through the West Bottoms. The asker describes himself as a geography nerd with an interest in maps who’s always wondered why the Missouri border doesn’t extend to the Kansas River. When you look at it, the line does seem strange. Just to the north, the state line begins following the more obvious Missouri River. Why not just push the line a few hundred yards west to make things nice and neat? Seems like a no-brainer.