Kansas City Audio Tour

Highlights

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  Independence — Trail Departure Point

  Independence, Missouri, was for roughly three decades in the mid-19th century the most important departure point on the North American continent. The Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, and the California Trail all began here — or within a few miles of where you are standing.

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  Olathe — Bleeding Kansas Border Town

  Olathe, Kansas, sits in the heart of what historians call Bleeding Kansas — the violent frontier conflict that served as the opening act of the American Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened the question of slavery in new territories to popular vote, a concept called 'popular sovereignty.' The result was not a peaceful democratic process but a territorial civil war.

• Kansas Speedway

  Kansas Speedway, the 1.5-mile oval superspeedway in front of you, opened in 2001 and became the anchor of a massive sports and entertainment complex on the western edge of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The speedway seats approximately 75,000 fans and hosts NASCAR Cup Series and IndyCar races that draw visitors from across the Midwest.

• 
  Union Station

  Union Station rose here in 1914 as a Beaux-Arts masterpiece and was, at its peak, the second busiest railroad station in the United States. The grand hall stretches 95 feet overhead, and the waiting room once held ten thousand people at a time.

• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

  Ahead of you is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, one of the finest encyclopedic art museums in the United States — and one that punches well above its weight for a Midwestern city of Kansas City's size. The building itself opened in 1933, funded by the estates of newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson and Mary Atkins, a local schoolteacher.

All 40 stops

• 18th & Vine Jazz District (18th & Vine)

  Notice the corner of 18th and Vine, one of the most consequential corners in the history of American music.

• Vine Street Blues History (18th & Vine)

  Vine Street is where the blues seeped into Kansas City jazz and changed it forever.

• American Jazz Museum (18th & Vine)

  Here in front of you is the American Jazz Museum, one of only two museums in the country dedicated entirely to jazz — and the…

• Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (18th & Vine)

  Inside the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum waits a story that is both a triumph and an indictment.

• Tom Pendergast Political Machine (Downtown)

  Your walk through downtown passes through the shadow of one of the most powerful and corrupt political machines in American history.

• Union Station (Downtown)

  Union Station rose here in 1914 as a Beaux-Arts masterpiece and was, at its peak, the second busiest railroad station in the United States.

• Liberty Memorial / National WWI Museum (Downtown)

  Above you rises Liberty Memorial, a 217-foot tower visible from miles across the Kansas City skyline and home to the largest collection of World War…

• Country Club Plaza (Plaza)

  Country Club Plaza opened in 1922 as the first outdoor shopping center in the United States designed specifically for the automobile.

• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Midtown)

  Ahead of you is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, one of the finest encyclopedic art museums in the United States — and one that punches…

• Shuttlecocks at Nelson-Atkins (Midtown)

  Look at the south lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, where four giant badminton shuttlecocks — each nearly 18 feet tall and weighing 5,500 pounds …

• Westport Neighborhood (Westport)

  Westport, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the Kansas City area, is the place where the American West effectively began.

• Kelly's Westport Inn (Westport)

  Kelly's Westport Inn, in front of you, is genuinely old — one of the oldest commercial structures in the Kansas City area still in continuous…

• Brookside Neighborhood (Brookside)

  Tree-lined streets like these make Brookside one of Kansas City's most charming residential neighborhoods and a textbook example of the 1920s-era planned streetcar suburb.

• J.C. Nichols Fountain (Plaza)

  Beside you is the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, one of the most photographed landmarks in Kansas City and a fitting centerpiece for a city that…

• Country Club Plaza Spanish Architecture (Plaza)

  Look closely at the Spanish-inspired architecture of Country Club Plaza around you.

• Power & Light District (Downtown)

  Bars, restaurants, and live music venues fill the Power and Light District, Kansas City's most ambitious downtown revitalization project of the 21st century.

• Crossroads Arts District (Crossroads)

  Murals and warehouses mark the Crossroads Arts District, the area between Union Station and downtown that transformed from a warehouse district into Kansas City's creative…

• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Midtown)

  Angular forms and a dramatic entrance canopy announce the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, a gem of a museum that opened in 1994 and has…

• River Market Neighborhood (River Market)

  Steamboats once landed daily near the River Market, the oldest commercial neighborhood in Kansas City and the place where the city's story begins.

• Arabia Steamboat Museum (River Market)

  Near you, the Arabia Steamboat Museum houses one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries in American history.

• Independence — Trail Departure Point (Independence)

  Independence, Missouri, was for roughly three decades in the mid-19th century the most important departure point on the North American continent.

• Harry S. Truman Home (Independence)

  What strikes you first about the home of the 33rd President of the United States is how modest it is.

• Truman Presidential Library (Independence)

  Harry S. Truman's Presidential Library and Museum was the first presidential library built under the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955 — a law that Truman…

• City Market / 5th Street Public Market (River Market)

  Since 1857 the City Market has traded on this ground, already in business when the Civil War began and still selling produce to you through…

• Clay County Savings Bank — Jesse James Robbery 1866 (Liberty, MO)

  On February 13, 1866, the Clay County Savings Bank here saw what historians call the first successful daylight peacetime bank robbery in United States history.

• Olathe — Bleeding Kansas Border Town (Olathe, KS)

  Olathe, Kansas, sits in the heart of what historians call Bleeding Kansas — the violent frontier conflict that served as the opening act of the…

• Quality Hill (Quality Hill)

  Quality Hill is one of the oldest and most historically layered neighborhoods in Kansas City.

• Gates Bar-B-Q (Midtown)

  Gates Bar-B-Q is one of the twin pillars of Kansas City's barbecue tradition, and the greeting shouted at its door is one of the most…

• Arthur Bryant's BBQ (18th & Vine)

  Arthur Bryant's Barbecue is the place writer Calvin Trillin of The New Yorker declared, without irony or qualification, the single greatest restaurant in the world.

• Joe's Kansas City BBQ (Westport)

  Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, founded in 1996, is the youngest of Kansas City's BBQ institutions — and the one with perhaps the most devoted national…

• Kansas City City Hall (Downtown)

  Limestone and ziggurat setbacks climb 29 stories in front of you: Kansas City City Hall, an Art Deco tower completed in 1937 that remains one…

• Municipal Auditorium (Downtown)

  Municipal Auditorium, the massive Art Deco complex in front of you, was completed in 1934 and has hosted some of the most significant events in…

• City of Fountains (Downtown)

  Few nicknames in American municipal geography are as distinctive as the one this city carries: the City of Fountains.

• Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Downtown)

  Rising in front of you is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and one…

• Linwood Boulevard — Historic Black Neighborhood (Linwood)

  Linwood Boulevard runs through the heart of what was once one of Kansas City's most vibrant African American residential neighborhoods.

• Troost Avenue — Historic Racial Dividing Line (Midtown)

  Troost Avenue, under your feet, is one of the most historically significant streets in Kansas City — and one whose history the city has only…

• The Paseo Boulevard (18th & Vine)

  The Paseo, stretching away from you, is one of Kansas City's grand boulevards and a centerpiece of the park-and-boulevard system that planner George Kessler designed…

• Bonner Springs — Native American History (Bonner Springs, KS)

  Bonner Springs, Kansas, sits near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, in territory that was home to Native American peoples for thousands of…

• Kansas Speedway (Kansas Speedway)

  Kansas Speedway, the 1.5-mile oval superspeedway in front of you, opened in 2001 and became the anchor of a massive sports and entertainment complex on…

• Crown Center / Hallmark Cards (Crown Center)

  Crown Center is a mixed-use development built and still owned by Hallmark Cards — one of the more unusual facts about Kansas City's built environment.

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