The Founding of Westport (1833)

John Calvin McCoy — a young surveyor and son of the Baptist missionary and federal survey agent Isaac McCoy — built a two-story log cabin at the northeast corner of what are now Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue and opened it as a store for travellers on the Santa Fe and Oregon trails.¹² In 1834, after buying land from Dr. Johnston Lykins, he platted the surrounding lots and named the settlement “West Port,” for its role as a gateway to the West.²³ The town’s advantage over Independence was logistical: a better river landing, and one fewer river to cross — the Blue — cutting a full day off the westward journey.³ Westport became the region’s principal outfitting town from the mid-1840s to the mid-1850s and the direct ancestor of Kansas City.

Summary

John Calvin McCoy (born October 28, 1811 in Vincennes, Indiana; died October 2, 1889 in Kansas City, and buried in Union Cemetery) studied land surveying at Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky in 1826-27.¹ He arrived in the region with his father’s party in December 1831 and built a two-story log building at the corner of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, opening it as a store and residence.²³

Sources differ on the year the cabin went up. The 1982 Missouri historic-survey report on Old Westport states “In 1832 John McCoy build a long [log] cabin at the northeast corner of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue.”³ Wikipedia, the Westport Historical Society and Legends of America all give 1833.¹²⁴ This page’s title and frontmatter carry 1833, the conventional date; the 1832 variant is recorded here rather than suppressed.

In 1834 McCoy purchased land from Dr. Johnston Lykins, platted the land around his store into lots, and named the settlement “West Port.”²³ He filed the plat at the Jackson County courthouse in Independence on February 13, 1835, and became Westport’s first postmaster in 1834.⁴

The site’s commercial logic was river-to-trail transfer. McCoy persuaded a steamboat captain to continue upriver and deposit supplies on a limestone ledge near the foot of what is now Grand Avenue — the landing that would become the Town of Kansas.³ West Port was both more convenient to that landing than Independence and “cut a good day off the journey westward from Independence due to the fact that there was one less river to cross, namely The Blue River.”³

Background

The trail economy

The Santa Fe Trail was opened in 1821, when William Becknell left Franklin, Missouri “with a small group of men and mules packed with $300 worth of trade goods”; the earliest wagon trains left Franklin and Arrow Rock.⁵ Fort Leavenworth opened in 1827.⁵

The eastern end of the trail migrated west over three decades. “By the early 1830s, most traffic on the Trail began at Independence, MO, which remained the major outfitting point until the 1840s, when Westport and Fort Leavenworth became the primary points for departure.”⁵ The Missouri survey report puts it more directly for Westport: the new settlement “gained the advantage over Independence as the transfer point river to trail.”³

(Earlier versions of this page stated that “by 1850 Westport was the largest western-outfitting town in the United States.” No source consulted supports that superlative. What the sources support is that Westport displaced Independence as the primary departure point during the 1840s.)

The Mexican War of 1846-48 and the discovery of gold in California in 1849 “generated a tremendous flow of traffic along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails,” and Westport “grew in wealth and importance” with it.³

The National Park Service’s account of the trailhead towns records what the outfitting economy was like on the ground — “bustling places, with huge crowds, loud noises, and outlandish prices,” with “hotels, stores, blacksmiths, livery stables, and other businesses for outfitting westward expeditions” — and insists on a fact often omitted from founding narratives: these were slave-market towns. Missouri “was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1821”; Independence “regularly hosted public slave auctions,” held “on the steps of its courthouse”; state laws in 1835, 1843 and 1847 prohibited free Black people from entering Missouri, so that “essentially, Black people were presumed to be enslaved unless they could prove otherwise.” Enslaved people “simply accompanied their enslavers westward, often leaving their family and friends behind.”⁶

John Calvin McCoy and Isaac McCoy

McCoy came west with his father Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary commissioned to mark the boundaries of land for Native nations being removed from the east; between 1830 and 1834 Calvin assisted his father in ten separate surveys of Native lands west of Missouri.⁴ The Westport Historical Society dates the family’s arrival to December 1831.²

The characterization of Isaac McCoy as “one of the more sympathetic federal Indian-agent figures of the era,” carried on earlier versions of this page, is a contested judgment about a removal-era official and is not asserted here.

The pre-1833 Indigenous history of the immediate site — the Kanza (Kaw) presence, the 1825 treaty, the Wyandot relocation of 1843, and the Delaware and Shawnee removals of the 1820s-1830s — was carried on this page without citation and is not asserted here in the vault’s own voice.

The town

Street plan

Westport’s street grid is “a diagonal skew from the rest of Kansas City,” reflecting an original orientation “most likely, determined by the path of a small stream.” The two streets that crossed at the heart of West Port still cross today: Westport Road, originally called Main Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue, originally called Main Cross.³

Growth and peak

Westport “became a big outfitter for this migration from the mid-1840s to mid-1850s” and was “a center for the manufacturing of wagons, plows, harnesses and ox yokes.”³

Sources differ on the population peak. The 1982 Missouri survey report states “The population peaked at 5,000 in 1855 and in 1857 Westport incorporated.”³ The Westport Historical Society gives “around 2,000 by 1858.”² Both are recorded.

The claim that early Westport’s population was 500-800 in the early 1840s, and the description of its ethnic composition (French-Canadian traders, Mexican traders, freedmen and enslaved Black workers, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee and Kanza individuals), were carried on earlier versions of this page without citation. The NPS account at ⁶ establishes that enslaved labour was present in the trailhead towns generally; the specific Westport composition is unsourced.

The Albert G. Boone Store

The surviving commercial building most closely associated with the founding era is the Albert G. Boone Store at 500-504 Westport Road, now Kelly’s Westport Inn.

Sources differ on the construction date and builder. The 1982 Missouri survey report says the Boone Store was “built in the late 1840s.”³ The National Trust for Historic Preservation states it was “built in 1850 by traders George and William Ewing,” and that Albert Gallatin Boone — grandson of Daniel Boone — purchased it in 1854 and ran it “as a provisioning and outfitting operation until 1859.”⁷ Wikipedia gives “constructed around 1850.”⁸

⚠ This is not McCoy’s store site. Earlier versions of this page identified the Kelly’s building as “the direct historical descendant of the corner where McCoy opened his 1833 store.” McCoy’s two-story cabin stood at what became 444 Westport Road, on the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue;¹ the Boone Store is at 500-504 Westport Road. They are different addresses on the same street, and the Boone Store post-dates McCoy’s cabin by roughly fifteen years.

After Boone the building “continued functioning for a number of years under various owners as various businesses — a mercantile and trading business, a grocery store, a hardware store, a drug store”; around 1900 the Wiedenmann family ran a grocery there catering to Kansas City’s elite, and it later became a saloon.⁷⁸ After Prohibition’s repeal Phil Taggart opened the “Wrestlers Inn”; Randal Kelly, a native of County Clare, became a bartender and then a partner, and the bar took his name in 1977.⁷⁸ The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 7, 1972 (reference number 72000718).⁸

Two qualifications on the “oldest building in Kansas City” claim: the National Trust says the building “is believed to be the oldest building in Kansas City,”⁷ while Wikipedia notes that Mabry Hall at 4112 Pennsylvania Avenue is seven years older than Kelly’s.⁸ Wikipedia also records that the long-told story of an Underground Railroad tunnel beneath the building “proved false — the tunnel only connects two basements and there was no Underground Railroad association.”⁸

The Town of Kansas

After Gabriel Prudhomme’s property at the river landing was auctioned in 1838, McCoy and thirteen others formed the Town of Kansas Company; McCoy platted the site into 318 lots for sale.¹ Legends of America dates the company’s purchase of 257 acres at Westport’s landing to 1839.⁴ The town was chartered by the State of Missouri in 1853 and later renamed Kansas City.¹

For a period Westport and the river landing operated as complementary settlements — the outfitting town inland, the steamboat landing on the river. “In the mean time, the City of Kansas had been established and also growing.”³

A Kansas City Public Library historian has said McCoy “single-handedly had the greatest effect on the development of early Kansas City”; he is commonly called “the father of Kansas City.”¹⁴

Decline, war and annexation

Border violence reached Westport before the war did. The Missouri survey report records that “In 1857 border skirmishes heralding the Civil War infiltrated into Westport,” that the war “curtailed the Santa Fe trade” — “In the spring of 1861 trade had fallen off one-fourth and by autumn ceased all together” — and that “for sometime the town of Westport was occupied by Union armies during the war.”³ See bleeding-kansas-and-the-border-war.

The Battle of Westport was fought across what is now Westport, the Country Club Plaza and Loose Park in October 1864. Its date range and its standing as the largest Civil War engagement west of the Mississippi were carried on this page without citation.

“Postwar growth came to Kansas City which now dominated business and commerce, and it superseded Westport as the primary outfitting depot. As Kansas City grew it expanded southward encompassing more and more territory.”³

Annexation date. The 1982 survey report states “In 1897 Westport was annexed by Kansas City.”³ The Westport Historical Society gives the same year and adds that the annexation was “legally settled by the Missouri Supreme Court in 1899.”² Earlier versions of this page gave 1899 alone.

The claim that the 1869 Hannibal Bridge — the first permanent bridge across the lower Missouri — gave the City of Kansas its decisive advantage over Westport is standard in local histories but was not confirmed against a source in this pass.

Modern Westport

By the time of annexation “the surrounding areas of what is today Westport Square had developed as residential suburbs with a variety of housing.”³ In 1972 the block at the heart of old Westport “was recycled into a district of restaurants and specialty shops,” with exterior changes “limited to basic upgrading of building facades” while interiors were gutted for modern use.³

The survey report’s own assessment of the district’s significance is worth quoting because it is more modest than the usual claim: “In and of themselves each of these buildings may not be historically or architecturally significant, but there is a homogeneity in the streetscape and Westport legend that makes this area unique among K.C. retail districts.”³

What is called Westport today “is a broader area than what the original ‘West Port’ consisted of”; Westport Square is one square block of old Westport’s downtown.³ The boundary description carried on earlier versions of this page — 39th Street north, 43rd Street south, Broadway east, Southwest Trafficway west — was unsourced. See the Westport neighborhood page.

Long-term significance

Founding sequence of Kansas City. McCoy platted West Port in 1834 and then, from 1838-39, the Town of Kansas at the river landing he had promoted — the same man, the same commercial logic, four miles apart.¹³⁴
A trail-era anchor. Westport displaced Independence as the primary Santa Fe and Oregon trail departure point during the 1840s, and outfitted the traffic generated by the Mexican War and the California gold rush.³⁵
Physical inheritance. The Albert G. Boone Store survives at 500-504 Westport Road, on the National Register since 1972; the diagonal street grid of Westport Square still records McCoy’s original orientation.³⁸
A founding that included slavery. The trailhead-town economy Westport belonged to was built in a slave state whose statutes presumed Black people enslaved unless they could prove otherwise.⁶

Sites in KC associated with the founding

444 Westport Road, northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue — the site of McCoy’s 1832/1833 two-story log cabin and store¹³
Kelly’s Westport Inn / Albert G. Boone Store, 500-504 Westport Road — on the National Register of Historic Places since September 7, 1972⁷⁸
Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue — originally Main Street and Main Cross, the crossroads of old West Port³
Westport Square — one square block of old Westport’s downtown, redeveloped as a restaurant and shop district in 1972³
Union Cemetery, midtown Kansas City — John Calvin McCoy’s burial place¹
Santa Fe National Historic Trail — administered by the National Park Service⁹
Independence — the earlier outfitting town Westport displaced⁵⁶

Historiography

The foundational scholarly account of this period is A. Theodore Brown’s Frontier Community: Kansas City to 1870 (1963), which treats the Westport-versus-river-landing rivalry and the landing’s eventual dominance at length.¹⁰

A caution on a citation carried by earlier versions of this page: William S. Worley was listed as a general source for the founding, but his J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City concerns early-20th-century suburban development, roughly eighty years after the events described here, and no Worley title covering the founding era was identified in this pass.¹¹

Cultural memory

The 1833 founding of Westport is the conventional Kansas City founding date in local historical writing, though the city’s formal incorporation dates are later — the Town of Kansas chartered by the state in 1853.¹ The Westport Historical Society maintains the local interpretive record.² The phrase “Westport, Mother of Kansas City,” and the description of McCoy’s grave marker as honouring him as the city’s founder, were carried on this page without citation.

Sources

Wikipedia — “John Calvin McCoy.” — [Class A fallback] asserts: born October 28, 1811 in Vincennes, Indiana; died October 2, 1889 in Kansas City, Missouri; buried in Union Cemetery, Kansas City; son of Isaac McCoy; studied land surveying at Transylvania College, Lexington, Kentucky, 1826-1827; “In 1833, John McCoy built a two-story cabin at what became 444 Westport Road on the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue. He opened a store for travelers” on the Santa Fe and Oregon trails; after Gabriel Prudhomme’s property was auctioned in 1838, McCoy and thirteen others formed the Town of Kansas Company and McCoy “platted it into 318 lots for sale”; the town was officially chartered by Missouri in 1853 and later renamed Kansas City; a Kansas City Public Library historian said McCoy “single-handedly had the greatest effect on the development of early Kansas City” and he is regarded as “the father of Kansas City.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
Westport Historical Society — “History of Westport.” — asserts: Reverend Isaac McCoy and family arrived in December 1831; his son John Calvin McCoy, then age 19, “constructed a two-story log building at the corner of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue” by 1833, establishing a commercial operation with partners; “In 1834, after purchasing land from Dr. Johnston Lykins, McCoy platted the town and named it Westport, reflecting its role as a gateway to the West”; Westport was a hub where the Oregon, California and Santa Fe Trails converged, with a strategic river location, proximity to Indian Territory and a convenient rock landing; “The town’s population reached around 2,000 by 1858”; “Westport was… annexed by Kansas City in 1897, a decision legally settled by the Missouri Supreme Court in 1899.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Missouri Department of Natural Resources / Missouri State Parks — “Old Westport” historic survey report (1982), 2 pp — asserts: “In 1832 John McCoy build a long [log] cabin at the northeast corner of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. He used this as a store as well as his residence. In 1834 McCoy platted the land around his store into lots and called this settlement the town of ‘West Port’”; the Santa Fe Trail “began in Franklin, Mo. and ran through Westport”; “This new settlement gained the advantage over Independence as the transfer point river to trail”; McCoy “was able to persuade a steamboat captain to continue up river and deposit supplies on a limestone ledge near the foot of [what] is now Grand Avenue”; West Port “cut a good day off the journey westward from Independence due to the fact that there was one less river to cross, namely The Blue River”; “The Mexican War of 1846-48 and the discovery of gold in California in 1849 generated a tremendous flow of traffic”; “Westport became a big outfitter for this migration from the mid-1840s to mid-1850s. It was a center for the manufacturing of wagons, plows, harnesses and ox yokes”; “The population peaked at 5,000 in 1855 and in 1857 Westport incorporated”; “In 1857 border skirmishes heralding the Civil War infiltrated into Westport”; “In the spring of 1861 trade had fallen off one-fourth and by autumn ceased all together”; “For sometime the town of Westport was occupied by Union armies during the war”; “Postwar growth came to Kansas City which now dominated business and commerce, and it superseded Westport as the primary outfitting depot”; “In 1897 Westport was annexed by Kansas City”; the street grid is “a diagonal skew from the rest of Kansas City… most likely, determined by the path of a small stream”; Westport Road was “originally called Main Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue, originally called Main Cross”; “The Albert G. Boone Store, built in the late 1840s, still stands (now Kelly’s Lounge)”; “In 1972 this area was recycled into a district of restaurants and specialty shops,” with exterior changes “limited to basic upgrading of building facades”; and the district’s own significance statement quoted in the text above. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷
Legends of America — “John C. McCoy: Founder of Westport, Missouri.” — [Class A popular-history site, used here only for details the institutional sources omit; treat with caution] asserts: in 1833 the 22-year-old McCoy built a two-story cabin on the northeast corner of Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue and opened a store for Santa Fe and Oregon trail travellers; in 1834 he purchased acreage from Johnston Lykins and platted the town, filing the plat at the courthouse in Independence on February 13, 1835, calling it “West Port,” and becoming first postmaster in 1834; McCoy came west with his father Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary commissioned to mark boundaries of land for tribes being moved from the east, and between 1830 and 1834 assisted in ten surveys of Native lands west of Missouri; in 1839, as a member of the Town Company which bought 257 acres at Westport’s landing on the Missouri River, he platted the Town of Kansas; historians have called him “the father of Kansas City.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Santa Fe Trail Association — “Timeline of the Santa Fe Trail.” — asserts: in 1821 William Becknell “left Franklin MO with a small group of men and mules packed with $300 worth of trade goods”; “The earliest wagon trains left Franklin and Arrow Rock, MO”; Fort Leavenworth, Kansas opened in 1827; “By the early 1830s, most traffic on the Trail began at Independence, MO, which remained the major outfitting point until the 1840s, when Westport and Fort Leavenworth became the primary points for departure.” The timeline gives no specific year for Westport’s ascendancy beyond “the 1840s.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
National Park Service — “Captivity and Independence: Race and Enslavement in the Trailhead Towns Along the Missouri.” — asserts: trailhead towns were “bustling places, with huge crowds, loud noises, and outlandish prices,” with “hotels, stores, blacksmiths, livery stables, and other businesses for outfitting westward expeditions”; these towns hosted slave markets, with Independence holding auctions “on the steps of its courthouse” and Independence and St. Joseph “regularly host[ing] public slave auctions”; Missouri “was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1821”; state laws in 1835, 1843 and 1847 prohibited free Black people from entering Missouri, so that “essentially, Black people were presumed to be enslaved unless they could prove otherwise”; enslaved people “simply accompanied their enslavers westward, often leaving their family and friends behind.” The article gives no founding dates for Independence or Westport and does not date Westport’s ascendancy. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
National Trust for Historic Preservation — “Kelly’s Westport Inn in Kansas City, Missouri” (published November 10, 2016) — asserts: the building at 500 Westport Road was “built in 1850 by traders George and William Ewing” and “is believed to be the oldest building in Kansas City”; Albert Gallatin Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone, purchased it in 1854 and operated it “as a provisioning and outfitting operation until 1859”; it then “continued functioning for a number of years under various owners as various businesses — a mercantile and trading business, a grocery store, a hardware store, a drug store”; in 1947 “three retired Kansas City police captains took over the space and began serving provisions of the alcoholic variety”; it became known as Kelly’s Westport Inn in 1977 and remains family-owned; address 500 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO 64111. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Wikipedia — “Kelly’s Westport Inn.” — [Class A fallback; retained because it qualifies the “oldest building” claim and supplies the National Register data] asserts: the building was “constructed around 1850” at 500-504 Westport Road; it and the adjoining Chouteau Store are among the oldest structures standing in Kansas City, but “Mabry Hall at 4112 Pennsylvania Avenue is seven years older than Kelly’s”; Albert Gallatin Boone, grandson of Daniel Boone, operated a grocery store there; around 1900 the Wiedenmann family ran a grocery catering to Kansas City’s elite and the space later became a saloon; after Prohibition’s repeal Phil Taggart rented the building and opened the “Wrestlers Inn,” and Randal Kelly of County Clare, Ireland became a bartender and partner and gave the establishment his name; registered as a historic building in 1969 and added to the National Register on September 7, 1972, reference number 72000718; the alleged Underground Railroad tunnel “proved false — the tunnel only connects two basements and there was no Underground Railroad association.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
National Park Service — Santa Fe National Historic Trail — asserts: the Santa Fe Trail is administered as a National Historic Trail by the National Park Service. Cited here as the administering-agency pointer for the trail whose eastern outfitting points this page describes. ↩
A. Theodore Brown — Frontier Community: Kansas City to 1870 (University of Missouri Press, 1963). Internet Archive [Class B — book] — asserts: the foundational scholarly history of Kansas City from the trail era to 1870, including the Westport-versus-Town-of-Kansas commercial rivalry and the river landing’s rise. ↩
William S. Worley — J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City (University of Missouri Press, 1990). ISBN 978-0-8262-0744-9. Open Library work record [Class B — book] — asserts: the standard study of Kansas City’s early-20th-century suburban development. Noted here because earlier versions of this page cited Worley as a general source for the 1833 founding; the Nichols book concerns a much later period, and no Worley title covering the founding era was identified in this pass. ↩