When the City was completing the Waukomis Drive/Green Hills Road study in 2005, a Reconnaissance Survey for potential historical resources was prepared for the City by Historic Preservation Services, LLC in conjunction with TranSystems Corporation. This report was available and discussed during the public meetings held for the project. Below is an excerpt from the report about the Historical Context for the report:
HISTORIC CONTEXT
The Northwest Waukomis Drive/North Green Hills Road project is located in the townships of May and Pettis in southeastern Platte County, Missouri. Platte County was part of an area in northwestern Missouri known as the Platte Purchase. Partitioned from Clay County in 1839, Platte County officially opened for settlement in 1843 after the United States government completed a survey of county lands. Some individuals had begun settling Platte County prior to this and had improved land holdings by the time the county land office opened in Plattsburg in 1843. Homesteading began in earnest after the opening of the land office, and the county boasted eighteen thousand inhabitants by 1870. While most were emigrants from the Upland South states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, German settlers also founded communities in the county.1
Early histories note that the land was fertile and well watered. Stands of timber interspersed with small areas of prairie originally covered Pettis and May Townships, and numerous natural springs as well as Line Creek provided fresh water. Early settlers, described as “industrious and energetic,” cleared the timber to open land for cultivation. Key crops were wheat, oats, tree fruits, and feed corn. Although the land was generally rich, portions of Pettis and May Township were described as rocky and ill suited for cultivation. This land provided valuable acreage for pasturing livestock.2
During the 1840s, Platte County farmers became key suppliers in provisioning commercial travelers, homesteaders, and military expeditions. Westward travelers purchased provisions in nearby Independence and, later, Westport (now Kansas City) before heading west on the Santa Fe, Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. The emigrants’ demand for freight cattle encouraged many Platte County residents to raise livestock. Similarly, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas was a key outfitting point for the military’s western outposts. During the Mexican-American War, Platte County supplied the “Army of the West” with horses, freight cattle, and other livestock.3
With roots in the South, many early Platte County settlers were slave owners and initially raised tobacco as a cash crop. By the mid-1840s, hemp replaced tobacco as the predominant local crop, ranking Platte County among the nation’s leading hemp producers. The economic benefits of hemp made Platte County the second most populace and second most wealthy county in Missouri by 1848. The crop dominated the local agricultural economy through the Civil War. Production of hemp nearly ceased by 1875 due to the near “impossibility of getting labor capable and willing [sic] to harvest it, and care for it afterwards.”4
Like much of western Missouri, Platte County was economically devastated during the 1850s and 1860s by the Kansas Border Wars and the Civil War. Thousands of families left the county for the duration of the conflicts. Most of the men that remained enlisted for military duty. Few local residents made improvements to their homesteads.
Following the war, Platte County residents returned to raising hogs, cattle, horses, and mules. They also grew wheat, although the topography was not always conducive to this crop and made it less profitable than wheat crops grown elsewhere. By 1877, railroads connected Platte County directly to Chicago and St. Louis. Locally, Kansas City, Missouri and Leavenworth and Atchison, Kansas provided markets for Platte County’s agricultural goods and manufactured products as well as railroad connections to other markets in the region.5
1 Edwards Brothers of Missouri, An Illustrated Atlas of Platte County, Missouri, 1877, reprint (Platte City, MO: Platte County Historical Society, 1989), Platte County Historical Society, Platte City, MO.
2 National Historical Society, History of Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri (St. Louis, MO: National Historical Company, 1885), 838-839, 872-873, Genealogy and Local History Library, Mid-Continent Public Library, Independence, MO.
3 Ibid., 590-591.
4 Ibid., 586-589.
5 Ibid., 784.
Comments