​Looking Back: Results of County Planning

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society 

            In my musings a couple of weeks ago you saw a photograph looking north on Main Street in Grain Valley. It was published in a book called “Results of County Planning.” The book contained photographs taken throughout Jackson County, where the roads were built at a cost of $10,000,000. Looking through the book, as I have done many times, prompted me to recall a couple of newspaper articles my mother had saved about the Celebration of Roads which occurred at Sni-A-Bar Farms in Grain Valley.

The photograph above shows one of the articles published in The Kansas City Star on October 9, 1932. As you can see, my mother and later I did not preserve the page very well so the nearly 91-year-old paper is not in good shape. The photos, clockwise from the top, included an unidentified road with a great view, Sni-A-Bar, the location for the Celebration, the Blue River Road as it winds north of Red Bridge Road, the Prenatal Home for Girls on Noland Road ½ mile north of Independence, the Blue Springs Road between U. S. 24 and Spring Branch (Truman) Road, and Lake Tarsney. Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society

A close-up reveals the 166 miles of concrete roads and 52 miles of secondary roads ranked second to only one other county in the nation.  Nowhere have I found what county in which state had better roads! For a look at the entire photo collection in the book visit the Historical Society Museum any Wednesday from 10 AM to 3 PM. Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society 
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