Modern Archeology

KC topics that don't fit anywhere else.
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PumpkinStalker
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by PumpkinStalker »

staubio wrote: By the way, if any of you can point me to other interesting staircases or closed intact roads for this series, that'd be awesome. I'm headed for the stairs along Cliff Drive next.
There are some that may or may not be abandoned on the Westside, somewhere around the 17th/Madison area west of Bluebird.  They are huge, go up the hillside...not sure where to.  They are along a north/south street in that area, possibly behind that school building.
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by loftguy »

Good call Pumpkinstalker.  There are a couple at 18th & Madison.

Staubio, while on the Westside you should also look along Cesar Chavez (22nd) at Holly and either side of it.

In the Cliff Drive area there are a lot of stairs hidden away in the growth.  As foliage drops off in the coming weeks they should start to present themselves.  I remember an especially long set that was on the east side of Chestnut Trwy that brings you all the way up from the bottom of the canyou to the top of the bluffs at Scarritt Point.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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Stabio:
Did you actually climb any of those longer staircases? A video with some atmospheric music would be cool- those are some mysterious looking structures what with the jungle over growing them. More, please.
Last edited by DeadendLafayette on Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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DeadendLafayette wrote: Stabio:
Did actually climb any of those longer staircases? A video with some atmospheric music would be cool- those are some mysterious looking structures what with the jungle over growing them. More, please.
I did delve into the stairs a bit. Unfortunately, my video capabilities are quite limited, but I like that idea.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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Agreed, love the idea.  And I love atmospheric music as well, who could do something like this?  Cyclops!
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Re: Modern Archeology

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PumpkinStalker wrote: Agreed, love the idea.  And I love atmospheric music as well, who could do something like this?  Cyclops!
Perhaps he could kidnap ramsym and take him along. 
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Re: Modern Archeology

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I thought about Ramsey, love his stuff but he's more of a people person, blogger type video than what I was imagining.  A bit too high energy maybe?
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by LenexatoKCMO »

PumpkinStalker wrote: I thought about Ramsey, love his stuff but he's more of a people person, blogger type video than what I was imagining.  A bit too high energy maybe?
So what you are saying is Staubs just needs to work on his dialog - ham it up a bit.  :lol:  Cinematic masterpiece in the making!
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Re: Modern Archeology

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LenexatoKCMO wrote: So what you are saying is Staubs just needs to work on his dialog - ham it up a bit.   :lol:  Cinematic masterpiece in the making!
I assure you, I'd be the best abandoned staircase climbing video blogger this world has ever seen. Unfortunately, Mazuma Credit Union cheated me out of a camera.
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by blackbird »

There are several small but abandoned staircases on Pennsylvania between 12th and 13th.  Both sides of the road.  The ones on the east side are taller than on the west side of the street, but they all lead up to empty lots.  They're actually pretty interesting for itty bitty ones.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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blackbird wrote: There are several small but abandoned staircases on Pennsylvania between 12th and 13th.  Both sides of the road.  The ones on the east side are taller than on the west side of the street, but they all lead up to empty lots.  They're actually pretty interesting for itty bitty ones.
I checked those out on Streetview- someone should superimpose ghost houses behind those stairs.
I wonder who parks at all those parking meters out front- doesn't appear to be anything around there.
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by mlind »

grovester wrote: what a waste.  kck would have an unmistakable allure if those things had survived.
Back in the dark ages, when I was growing up, we used to ice skate on Big Eleven.  We read the Kansas City Kansan daily, waiting for the announcement that it had frozen hard enough.  We always went at night and there would be a fire in a barrel to warm us up.  It was always something to look forward to.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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mlind wrote: Back in the dark ages, when I was growing up, we used to ice skate on Big Eleven.  We read the Kansas City Kansan daily, waiting for the announcement that it had frozen hard enough.  We always went at night and there would be a fire in a barrel to warm us up.  It was always something to look forward to.
The Pitch did an article called "Postcards from State Avenue". They interviewed a gentleman named Milton Cole who had some interesting recallections about Big 11, and KCK in general.
I wish they would have asked him more.

http://www.pitch.com/2005-09-01/news/po ... e-avenue/4
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Re: Modern Archeology

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DeadendLafayette wrote: The Pitch did an article called "Postcards from State Avenue". They interviewed a gentleman named Milton Cole who had some interesting recallections about Big 11, and KCK in general.
I wish they would have asked him more.

http://www.pitch.com/2005-09-01/news/po ... e-avenue/4
Interesting interview, but I'm puzzled by his saying that "the lake is at the center of the city's black community and has been since Cole moved to Kansas City, Kansas, in 1939."  I lived in KCK until 1965 and never saw any blacks in that area and, believe me, I would have noticed and heard people talking about it since there was de facto segregation at the time. 

There was a black girl (one of the very, very few) who sat behind me in most of my 'smart kids track' classes at Wyandotte HS in 1959-60.  We walked together from class to class.  I didn't think anything about it at the time, but I must have stood by doing this.  She transferred to Sumner (the black HS) the next year to be with her friends.

It's also interesting about his moving to Parkwood in 1960.  It's off Quindaro and across the street from a large park.  My grandmother lived in the Quindaro area and sold her house to a black family around that same time.  The neighbors were quite upset, but my father (her son) said that's the way the neighborhood was going.  She moved to an apartment on the 'other' (as he says) side of 18th where they were no blacks either, so I'm not sure what's he talking about.

My mother, her sisters, and an aunt had a black woman who cleaned for all of them.  She owned a house on S.4th St and it was damaged in the 1951 flood that he mentions.  The Red Cross was difficult about helping her and my father had to go and straighten them out.  He was really angry and said he'd never give them another dime.

It was a very different time.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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mlind wrote: Interesting interview, but I'm puzzled by his saying that "the lake is at the center of the city's black community and has been since Cole moved to Kansas City, Kansas, in 1939."  I lived in KCK until 1965 and never saw any blacks in that area and, believe me, I would have noticed and heard people talking about it since there was de facto segregation at the time. 

There was a black girl (one of the very, very few) who sat behind me in most of my 'smart kids track' classes at Wyandotte HS in 1959-60.  We walked together from class to class.  I didn't think anything about it at the time, but I must have stood by doing this.  She transferred to Sumner (the black HS) the next year to be with her friends.

It's also interesting about his moving to Parkwood in 1960.  It's off Quindaro and across the street from a large park.  My grandmother lived in the Quindaro area and sold her house to a black family around that same time.  The neighbors were quite upset, but my father (her son) said that's the way the neighborhood was going.  She moved to an apartment on the 'other' (as he says) side of 18th where they were no blacks either, so I'm not sure what's he talking about.

My mother, her sisters, and an aunt had a black woman who cleaned for all of them.  She owned a house on S.4th St and it was damaged in the 1951 flood that he mentions.  The Red Cross was difficult about helping her and my father had to go and straighten them out.  He was really angry and said he'd never give them another dime.

It was a very different time.
Yeah, his description of the boundries between the black and white neighborhoods doesn't quite match up with my (foggy) recollections either.Got any idea where those Parkwood guard shacks were?
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Re: Modern Archeology

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Parents moved the family from 10th and Lafayette back in 1957.  There were a few black families around at the time and went to school with some at the school at 11th and Waverly.
I may be right.  I may be wrong.  But there is a lot of gray area in-between.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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DeadendLafayette wrote: Yeah, his description of the boundries between the black and white neighborhoods doesn't quite match up with my (foggy) recollections either.Got any idea where those Parkwood guard shacks were?
I only went to Parkwood a couple of times to visit a friend who was staying with her grandmother.  I don't remember any guard shacks, but my mother would have been driving.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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aknowledgeableperson wrote: Parents moved the family from 10th and Lafayette back in 1957.  There were a few black families around at the time and went to school with some at the school at 11th and Waverly.
My sisters went to Roosevelt grade school and there was one black family that I remember.  I recently moved and came across my West JHS yearbooks (1956-59).  There were a few black faces, more than I remembered, but still not very many.

I also don't remember seeing any Latinos and I think all the Jews lived in JoCo or KCMO.  Lots of Catholics with roots in Eastern Europe (we had Croatian neighbors on N.25th), so they were the ones who were looked down upon by Protestants.  I remember hearing a weird rumor that there were guns in the basements of Catholic churches. There were discussions with my Catholic friend who lived across the street about how it was a sin to French kiss.  It all seemed very strange to Presbyterian me.

As I said - different times.
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Re: Modern Archeology

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I'm posting this link, partly because it's an interesting book, and partly because I don't want this thread to disappear:
http://books.google.com/books?id=tpJw0r ... q=&f=false
It's  the History of Wyandotte County, Kansas: and its people, Volume 1 By Perl Wilbur Morgan from 1911. It touches on not only Wyandotte County, but also KCMO. There are a lot of interesting anecdotes but you have to do a bunch of scrolling to find the nuggets- it has a Biblesque way of listing everybody who was anybody in old Kansas.
One tidbit: according to the book, Kansas the state could have extended all the way to the Rockies, but the bigshots couldn't see any advantage in that.
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Re: Modern Archeology

Post by staubio »

I wanted to make sure I had a good repository for this kind of information and I want to keep doing regular posts, so I thought I'd start blogging about it. Check out the first attempt on the KC-Clay County-St Jo Interurban Railroad:

http://staubio.blogspot.com/2010/05/mod ... -clay.html

My next one will likely outline the impressive old staircases up the bluff in Argentine in KCK. Does anyone know anything more about the history of those?
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