Kansas City, Missouri-The City of Fountains and Heart of America

We resided in Platte Woods, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri from 1964 to 1969. This was the place where we purchased our first home here in US. Platte Woods is North of downtown Kansas City and close to the International Airport. At that time, the airport has not been built but was still on the planning stage. Platte Woods is adjacent to Lake Waukomis, another suburb as well as North Kansas City-a smaller town. Our favorite place to shop was in the Plaza Area and downtown Kansas City. Kansas City, Kansas is a much smaller town- a typical example of a mid western small city.

When we first move to Missouri from Chicago, we thought Kansas City was just a small cowboy town, but we were surprise to see skyscrapers, shopping malls and a sport stadium that could compare to Chicago. There were a couple of colleges and of course the University of Missouri, Kansas City branch and also the Midwest Research Institute that employed more than a hundred chemists, physicists and other natural scientists with Ph.D and master degrees. At that time, I was employed as as an Analytical Research Chemist for a private corporation, a subsidiary of Bayer Corporation, a German conglomerate. Here's a short video of the sights of Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas.

Kansas City is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metro area in Missouri. It encompasses 318 square miles (820 km2) in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties. It is one of two county seats of Jackson County, the other being Independence, which is to the city's east. As of February 6, 2009, it was revealed that the US census had underestimated Kansas City's population, and re-released it to be 475,830, with a metro area of over two million. Kansas City was founded in 1838 as the "Town of Kansas" at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers and was incorporated in its present form in 1850. Situated opposite Kansas City, Kansas, the city was the location of several battles during the Civil War, including the Battle of Westport. The city is well known for its contributions to the musical styles of jazz and blues as well as to cuisine (Kansas City-style barbecue).
Downtown Kansas City at Night

Kansas City, Missouri, is often abbreviated as "KCMO", or simply "KC" (both abbreviations often refer to the metro area). It is officially nicknamed the City of Fountains. With over 200 fountains, the city claims to have the second most in the world, just behind Rome. The fountains at Kauffman Stadium, commissioned by original Kansas City Royals owner Ewing Kauffman, are the largest privately-funded fountains in the world. The city also has more boulevards than any city except Paris and has been called "Paris of the Plains." Residents are known as Kansas Citians. It is sometimes referred to colloquially as the Heart of America as it is near both the population center of the United States and the geographic center of the 48 contiguous states.
One of the more than 200 Fountains in the City

Note: This is No.5 ( Part 1) of a series of articles on places that we have resided or visited in the US from 1960 to the present.( #1. New York City, #2 Washington, DC, #3 Sacramento, CA, and #4, Chicago, Illinois)