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Plan seeks to restore Civil War battlefield
The Monnett Battle of Westport Fund has been working to keep the history of the land alive.
By MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star
Garvey Scott | The Kansas City Star
Daniel L. Smith (left) and Shirley Christian of the Monnett Fund are raising money to preserve the site of the Civil War’s Big Blue Battlefield. The area, near 63rd Street and Manchester Trafficway, is shown behind them.
The significance of the real estate near 63rd Street and Manchester Trafficway goes beyond the handful of light industrial buildings that sit on it.
Few motorists who zip by are aware they are passing Bloody Hill, the site of a pivotal Civil War battle.
But a group of history buffs has been working to change that, accumulating parcel after parcel with the aim of restoring the Big Blue Battlefield.
“You can go to Gettysburg or Chickamauga or Wilson’s Creek and see the battlefields, but here it’s as if it never existed,” said Daniel L. Smith, chairman of the Monnett Battle of Westport Fund Inc.
The Big Blue battle was so named because it occurred at the Byram’s Ford crossing of the Big Blue River. It was part of the larger, three-day Battle of Westport, among the largest Civil War engagements west of the Mississippi.
The 1864 struggle ended Confederate hopes of securing Missouri and it was a final chapter in the long saga of guerilla warfare between Missouri and Kansas.
Today the Kansas City Water Services Department occupies the crown of the hill. The remains of a small industrial park occupy the meadow below. Just to the north is a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant.
The only reminders of the war are a Civil War replica cannon and some historical markers, such as one pointing to Byram’s Ford, which remains pristine and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
About 240 acres, or 80 percent of the property, has come into the public domain over the years, either by city acquisition or through purchase and donation by the Monnett Fund.
One building in the meadow has been razed, and another is scheduled to be.
The Monnett Fund, a local nonprofit organization named for the late Civil War historian Howard N. Monnett, hopes to acquire and raze at least one other empty warehouse and possibly two or three more buildings.
“The plan seeks to open and restore the vistas across the battlefield to conditions existing in 1864 to provide a sense and feeling to the visitor of the historic context of the site,” the group’s development plan says.
The group hopes to raise $300,000 in private donations, $300,000 to $500,000 in city capital-improvement dollars and $1 million to $1.5 million in federal money.
Shirley Christian, a board member of the Monnett Fund, said the group hopes to realize its plans in time for the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War in 2011.
Land already in the public domain is maintained by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department and is considered an extension of Swope Park.
The Monett group also hopes to negotiate a lease agreement with the park department to use part of the Swope Interpretive Center for a battlefield visitors center. The towers of the historic structure in Swope Park offer a good view of the landscape on which the battle was fought.
Park Commissioner Bob Lewellen said the interpretive center, which most recently housed the ticket office for Starlight Theatre, should be put to some historical use.
“It fits right in,” Lewellen said in October when the Monnett Fund briefed the park board on its plans.
Christian said the project would help Kansas City connect to its past.
“In this area, we’ve sort of ignored our history,” she said, “and our Civil War history is particularly important.”
According to the Monnett Fund:
There were two successive battles at the Big Blue, on Oct. 22 and 23, 1864. The Confederates won the first, one but the Union won the second one.
They were part of the larger campaign by Confederate Gen. Sterling Price, a former governor of Missouri, to rally the state to the rebel cause. He moved his army westward up the Missouri River valley toward Independence and Westport. Based in Kansas City was Union Gen. Samuel R. Curtis. Meanwhile, a second Union force was advancing at Price’s rear from St. Louis.
One point of contact was at Byram’s Ford, a crossing point at the Big Blue. The Confederates forced the crossing after three hours of intense combat Oct. 22. But late that night the second Union force arrived from the east. The next day, those Union forces made their own crossing of the Big Blue.
The ridge west of the river was held by the Confederate line.
After several hours of furious fighting, the Confederates were forced to withdraw.
In all, there were about 3,000 combined casualties during the Battle of Westport, with equal losses on both sides.
The battle tied Missouri to the Union once and for all and served to snuff out the border war, Smith said.
“The happier, take-away message from this story is that, despite very deep partisan divisions along the Missouri-Kansas border over a decade, we were able to overcome those divisions,” Smith said.
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The Monnett Battle of Westport Fund Inc.
Address: 6900 College Blvd. Suite 510, Overland Park KS 66211
Phone: (913) 345-2000
E-mail: battleofwestport1864@ yahoo.com
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