Case Park occupies the limestone bluffs of quality-hill at the western edge of downtown Kansas City, overlooking the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers — the precise vantage point where the Lewis and Clark Expedition paused on its homeward journey in September 1806. The park holds two commemorative installations: a bronze sculpture group dedicated in April 2000 and a granite-mounted historical marker placed in 1957.

The expedition at Kansas City

The Corps of Discovery, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, passed through the Kansas City area twice during their 1803–1806 journey to the Pacific Ocean and back.

On the outbound leg, the expedition reached the mouth of the Kansas River — present-day Kaw Point, across the river from the Case Park bluffs — on June 26, 1804. The thirty-three-member corps halted there for three days. Clark recorded in his journal that the party camped “in the Point above the Kansas River.” During the layover the men dried powder, repaired pirogues, dressed deer skins, and built a temporary log redoubt. Lewis weighed water from both rivers, finding the Missouri heavier with suspended sediment. Celestial observations were taken on the morning of June 27 to fix the latitude and longitude of the Kansas-Missouri confluence.

On the return journey, September 15, 1806, the expedition passed the mouth of the Kansas River and landed at the foot of the hill where Case Park now stands. Clark noted that he and Lewis climbed the bluff and surveyed the countryside while the men gathered wild fruit below. Lewis recorded the site’s bluff-top elevation and panoramic command of both rivers, describing it as “a commanding situation for a fort.” The expedition did not linger; pressing downstream, the corps reached St. Louis five days later.

The area would remain largely unsettled by Euro-Americans for nearly three more decades, until Westport’s founding in 1833. The Kanza (Kaw) Nation, whose territory encompassed the Kansas-Missouri confluence, had occupied and traveled this landscape long before and after the expedition’s passage.

Case Park and the monument

Case Park sits on the bluff edge of the quality-hill neighborhood, roughly at W. 10th Street and Jefferson Street, with the northern end of the park at 7th and Jefferson. The bluff rises approximately 200 feet above the west-bottoms and the Missouri River floodplain, providing an unobstructed view north and east across the river to the Berkley Riverfront and the river-market area.

Corps of Discovery sculpture. The park’s primary commemorative installation is a bronze-and-granite sculpture titled Corps of Discovery, created by sculptor Eugene Daub and dedicated in April 2000. The work stands 21 feet tall and approximately 18 feet wide. It depicts six figures from the expedition: Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the enslaved man York (Clark’s body servant), Sacagawea holding her infant son Jean Baptiste, and Seaman, Lewis’s Newfoundland dog. The inclusion of York makes this one of the few — and, at the time of its dedication, the only — monuments in Missouri to include a figure of an enslaved person. KC Parks manages the site, which includes benches, a picnic area, an information kiosk, and parking.

1957 historical marker. At the northern end of the park, a plaque mounted on a large boulder was installed in 1957 through a collaboration between the American Pioneer Trails Association and the Kansas City Board of Park Commissioners. The marker predates the sculpture by more than four decades and was among the earlier public acknowledgments of the expedition’s passage through the Kansas City area.

Lewis and Clark Trail designation

Case Park is an affiliated site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, a congressionally designated trail established in 1978 under the National Trails System Act. The trail traces the expedition’s outbound and inbound routes — nearly 4,900 miles in total — through the homelands of more than sixty tribal nations across sixteen states, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the Pacific coast. Kansas City sits near the trail’s midpoint, at the confluence that Lewis and Clark identified as one of the Missouri River’s most significant landmarks. The National Park Service coordinates interpretive programming and signage along the trail corridor, including at Case Park.

See also

Sources

See also

Categories
  • Wiki Page
  • Monument
  • Quality Hill