Nineth Street Elevated

Junction at 9th & Main, 1890The neigborhoods, districts and outlying communities of Kansas City were once laced together by a comprehensive system of trolleys (electrified and horse-drawn), interurban railways and the Worlds third oldest cable car line. These people movers all led to the West Bottoms, the business heart of the city. Some of these lines were running into the fifites but almost every trace of them are gone now unless you know where to look.

Country Club Line near 66th Street and Wornall Road, 1955.

Troost Line, 1955

Anyone in my generation will remember the tracks in the streets downtown until the early sixties. The furniture store in old downtown Overland Park was the car barn of the Strang Line interurban that connected Westport with Olathe and ran into the fifties. Until very recently, the tracks were still in place on the old Country Club Line thru Waldo and much of that line has been preserved as a pedestrian parkway. Other lines went down Troost and Holmes Road, to Inedependence Avenue, to North Kansas City, to Kansas City, Kansas. Southwest Boulivard was served by a horse-drawn street car into the twentieth century.