Westport

ABOVE: Landing at Westport, Missouri.

Kansas City today embraces the early town of Westport, which was built just east of the Missouri Line, not far from Independence. Yet, while Independence boomed in the 1840s, Westport did not. It wasn't until the 1850s that this river community became an outfitter's boomtown.

Emigrant/Author Francis Parkman:
"Whiskey, by the way, circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe in a place where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket."