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Kansas City’s name tells its history much as its public buildings do. Before the squat brick structures were the warehouses of the fur traders on the flats and the French-Canadian little dormer-window cottages on the upper levels, of which only three remain today. The Indians who used to come padding in their moccasins up from the river flats where canoes lay beached called themselves Kon-zas. The French-Canadian voyageur had a trick of slurring his ins and awns and ons and called these Indians Kahns. Then when the Americans came, the Indians were known as the Kansas, and the Kaw River as the Kansas.

Or better still than the causeway as a look-out on the Kansas world, motor over to the Soldiers’ Memorial Column above the bluffs. You can ascend inside by an elevator. From its dome where flashes the most beautiful dark rose-red light each night, you see an empire fading on the horizon in the distance on all sides—literally an ocean of what was but yesterday sage brush and buffalo grass; but what is even more interesting than the marvelous growth of the city in its brief past is what may be its future.