​Looking Back: Jackson County & Kansas City

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society

      Among the artifacts at the Historical Society is a notebook about Jackson County in the early 1920s. Two years ago it came into our possession as a gift from JoAnne McAlister, the great-niece of Margaret Tate.  Miss Tate was the daughter of Arthur Owen Tate, the Chicago and Alton station manager in Grain Valley, according to the 1920, 1930 & 1940 United States census.
     Marjorie Tate was the second of six children born to Arthur and Sarah Tate in 1894. She was attending Central Missouri State Teachers College when she complied this extensive notebook for Miss Humphreys, her Rural Sociology instructor.  While I will share other information about Grain Valley and Jackson County contained in her work, this week I will focus on information about Kansas City. Although it’s not Grain Valley, in the 1920s it certainly played a huge roll in our town.
 
Do you know
Kansas City is the largest distributing point for lumber in the United States.
Kansas City is the largest primary wheat market in the world.
Kansas City is the largest hay market in the world.
Kansas City is the largest distributing point in the world for farm tractors and agricultural implements.
Kansas City has the largest connected park and boulevard system in the world.
Kansas City is the largest market in the world for cattle that go back to the country for feeding and breeding.
Kansas City is the largest Hereford cattle center.
Kansas City is the largest manufacturing center for black walnut lumber.
Kansas City is the largest market for kafir corn, milo maize and other grain sorghums.
Kansas City is the largest center for training of automobile and tractor mechanics, with 20,000 students.
Kansas City led in Pullman business in 1920.
Kansas City is one of the largest distributing points for seeds in the United States.
Kansas City is a contestant for leadership in the manufacturing of work clothing.
Kansas City has the finest residential section of any city in the United States.
Kansas City is second in the shipping of carloads of meat.
Kansas City is second as a horse and mule market.
Kansas City is third in the distribution of motor cars and accessories.
Kansas City is third in the manufacture and distribution of soap.
Kansas City is third in the manufacture and distribution of crackers and similar bakery products.
Kansas City is third in the telegraph business handled.
Kansas City is third in the market of butter, eggs and poultry.
Kansas City is third in flour milling capacity and production.
Kansas City is fifth in bank clearings.
Kansas City is fifth in grain elevator capacity.
Kansas City is tenth in manufacturing.
Kansas City has twenty-six per cent od the total railroad mileage in the United States in its territory.
Kansas City is entered by fourteen trunk lines of railroad, with thirty-two subsidiary branches.
Kansas City is the capital of the largest high-grade oil district in the world.
Kansas City now has more than a half million people living in the city and its immediate suburbs.
Kansas City is just next door to the great coal fields of the Southwest.
Kansas City has in its immediate territory the largest zinc and second largest lead field in the United States.
Kansas City has seventy-six national and state banks, with a total capital, including surplus and undivided profits, of $38,030,103.
Kansas City has no waste territory—no deserts, lakes, oceans, mountains or international boundary lines to restrict its trade opportunities.
Kansas City’s Street railway company handled 190,000,000 passengers in 1920.
Kansas City’s steam and electric railroad handled 28,956,025 tons of incoming and outgoing freight during 1920, and 8,953,876 passengers.
 
     If you read through all of these interesting facts, did you, like me, wonder how much influence they had on our small community? Did you also wonder what role Sni-A-Bar and other large farms in Jackson County played in making Kansas City a major transportation hub in the 1920s?
            Next week, I will see what else we can learn from Miss Tate’s notebook!