Every mile of the MR340 tells a story before the race ever gets there. We’re running this course mile by mile over the next two weeks, starting at the beginning: Kaw Point, where the Kansas River meets the Missouri River in Kansas City, Kansas.
Kaw Point sits right at that confluence, and it’s held that vantage point in American history for more than two centuries. According to the National Park Service (nps.gov), the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped near the mouth of the Kansas River in late June 1804, on their way upriver toward what would become Missouri’s western edge and beyond. It’s one of the earliest documented American stops at what’s now Kaw Point, and it’s part of why the site carries a marker on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail today, per NPS.
Long before that, the confluence was a crossroads for the region’s Native nations, and it stayed one after Lewis and Clark passed through — the meeting of two major rivers made it a natural landing and trading point as Missouri and Kansas filled in with settlers. The State Historical Society of Missouri (shsmo.org) holds photograph and manuscript collections documenting the growth of Kansas City around that river junction through the 19th and 20th centuries, from steamboat landings to the rail and stockyard era that turned the confluence into an industrial hub.
Today Kaw Point is a public park on the Kansas side of the confluence, with a view straight across the water to the Kansas City, Missouri skyline — which is exactly why the MR340 starts there. Two rivers becoming one, and from there, 340 miles of the Missouri River all the way to St. Charles, though the river will continue till it empties into the Mississippi.
Kaw Point connects into the broader story Missouri State Parks (mostateparks.com) tells about the Missouri River corridor — the same river system the Katy Trail parallels for much of its length downstream, including right past Rocheport. Paddlers who launch at Kaw Point on race morning are, in a sense, starting at the headwaters of a story that ends, nearly 340 miles and a couple of sleepless nights later, in our own backyard.
Next in this series: Part 2 heads downstream to Lexington and Waverly, where the river runs past Civil War history and old steamboat towns before the fleet ever reaches Missouri’s midsection.
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