The Kansas River (the Kaw)

The Kansas River — known throughout the region simply as the Kaw — is the river that gives Kansas City the second half of its name. It runs about 148 miles east across northeastern Kansas from the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers at Junction City to its mouth at the Missouri River at Kaw Point in Kansas City, Kansas.¹² That confluence is the metro’s founding geographic fact: the Lewis & Clark Expedition camped there for three days in June 1804,² the river bottoms it formed became the West Bottoms industrial flat, and the river and its people — the Kanza (Kaw) — supplied the name carried by the river, the state, and both Kansas Cities.¹² Never reliably navigable and twice declared nonnavigable by the State of Kansas, the Kaw’s modern civic role is recreational: in 2012 it became one of the first federally designated National Water Trails.³

Geography

The Kansas River is formed at Junction City, Kansas (elevation 1,041 feet), where the Republican River and the Smoky Hill River converge, and flows generally eastward to join the Missouri River at Kaw Point (elevation 718 feet) in Kansas City, Kansas.¹ Its principal tributaries are the Republican, Big Blue, and Delaware rivers from the left bank and the Smoky Hill and Wakarusa rivers from the right.¹

Two different lengths are in common circulation and both are correct in context. Measured as its own channel below Junction City, the river runs 148 miles (238 km).¹ The Kansas River Water Trail, the paddling route promoted by Friends of the Kaw, is described as 173 miles — a figure that reflects the navigated river course rather than the mapped channel length.³ Counted through the Republican River system, the whole watercourse extends 743 miles (1,196 km), ranking it among the longer river systems in the United States.¹

The drainage basin covers roughly 60,000 square miles across three states — approximately 34,423 square miles in Kansas, 16,916 in Nebraska, and 8,775 in Colorado.¹² Moving upstream from the mouth, the river’s major cities are Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, and Junction City.¹

Kaw Point and the confluence

Kaw Point is the tongue of land between the Kansas and Missouri rivers, on the Kansas side of the state line at the western edge of the West Bottoms floodplain. It is the point at which the metro’s two rivers meet and, functionally, the geographic origin of Kansas City: the low bottomland the two rivers deposited became the stockyards-and-packing district on which the city’s nineteenth-century economy was built, while the bluffs above it became Downtown. The site is today a Kansas City, Kansas city park with riverside trails along both rivers.³

History

The Kanza and the naming of a state

Both the river and the State of Kansas take their name from the Kanza (Kaw) people who lived along the river; the state’s name honors both the nation and its river.² The short form “the Kaw” remains the ordinary local name for the river in both Kansas Cities, and it is the form most often heard in Kansas City speech.³

Exploration and mapping (1718–1804)

French explorers began mapping the river around 1718, and Spanish agents documented it in the late 1700s.² The Corps of Discovery under Lewis and Clark camped at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers for three days beginning June 26, 1804, recording the rivers’ features, the surrounding wildlife, and the local geography.²

Steamboats and the navigability question (1854–1913)

Steamboat service operated on the Kansas River from 1854 through the 1860s, but the river proved too shallow and too seasonal for dependable commercial traffic.¹ Early accounts disagreed sharply on how far boats could get: one held that the river was “navigable for canoes for more than 60 leagues at all times; but not for more than 20 leagues for large boats in the autumn when waters are low,” while another claimed it was “navigable at all seasons to the extent of 500 miles.”² The State of Kansas declared the river nonnavigable in 1864, and restored that status in 1913.¹ The practical consequence was decisive: unlike the Missouri, the Kaw never became a freight corridor, and Kansas City’s commerce moved to the railroads instead.

Flooding

The Kansas River is a central actor in Kansas City’s flood history. In the Great Flood of 1951, the Kaw and the Missouri together inundated the industrial bottomlands on both sides of the state line, and the flood is the event that ended the West Bottoms as the metro’s industrial center. The river had also breached its banks in the flood of 1903. Detailed treatment of both events, including crest heights and damage figures, is on the 1951-flood and missouri-river pages. — the Kaw-specific crest and levee-failure record for 1903 and 1951 wants a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or USGS source attached here rather than being inherited from the Missouri River page.

National Water Trail designation (2012)

In 2012 the Kansas River was designated a National Water Trail — at the time only the second in the nation.³ The trail runs the length of the river from Junction City to its mouth in Kansas City, Kansas, and carries 19 public boat ramps; sandbar camping is permitted between the high-water marks.³ The designation is organized and promoted by Friends of the Kaw, which also holds the Kansas Riverkeeper role.³

Cultural significance

The Kaw is the quieter of Kansas City’s two rivers and the more consequential to its name. The Missouri built the city’s commerce; the Kansas River supplied its identity — the word Kansas reaching the state, both cities, and the river itself from the Kanza people who lived on its banks.² Its persistent unnavigability is a piece of negative history worth stating plainly: the fact that boats could not reliably ascend the Kaw is part of why Kansas City became a rail city rather than a river-freight city, and why the decisive infrastructure of the 1860s was the Hannibal Bridge across the Missouri rather than a channel improvement on the Kansas.

Related places & features

• missouri-river — the river the Kaw joins at Kaw Point
• kansas-city-kansas — the city at the mouth of the river
• west-bottoms — the floodplain formed by the two rivers’ junction
• kanza-kaw-nation — the people for whom the river and the state are named
• argentine-kck, strawberry-hill — Kansas City, Kansas neighborhoods on and above the Kaw valley
• 1951-flood — the flood that reshaped the bottomlands on both rivers

Sources

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia — “Kansas River.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. Kansas Historical Society, Kansapedia — “Kansas River.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. Friends of the Kaw / Kansas Riverkeeper — “KAW 173: Kansas River Water Trail.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷