Kansas and Missouri in 1897 - Kansas City, Topeka, Independence, Jefferson City

This map of Kansas City was engraved and published by Rand, McNally & Company of Chicago, first copyrighted in 1893 and issued in this form in 1897 as part of Rand, McNally & Co.'s Indexed Atlas of the World, the firm's two-volume flagship reference covering the United States and the nations of the world. Rand McNally considered this 1897 edition the high-water mark of its nineteenth-century atlas production, and this sheet is printed in full color with the Kansas and Missouri sides of the metropolis rendered in distinct yellow and pink tints, a deliberate device to make the city's divided jurisdiction legible at a glance. The map covers the twin city of Kansas City, split across the Kansas-Missouri state line, at a moment when its position astride two converging rivers and a growing tangle of railroads was turning it into one of the Midwest's busiest transfer points for grain, cattle, and freight.

Kansas City, Kansas occupies the western portion of the sheet, mapped as an independent municipality with its own street grid rather than a mere suburb of its larger neighbor. Kansas City, Missouri, the larger eastern section, is shown down to individual buildings and civic grounds, including Troost Park, one of the young city's showcase green spaces during its 1890s parks movement. A separate inset details the northeast portion of the Missouri side, evidence of how quickly that quarter of the city was filling in with new streets. Binding the two halves together are the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, whose confluence first gave the settlement its reason for being and, by the 1890s, still carried the barge and rail traffic on which both sides of the state line depended.

This map makes a distinctive gift for anyone with roots on either side of the Kansas-Missouri state line, a Kansas City transplant, or a collector assembling the era's great Midwestern rail-hub cities. Its dual-city format, with two separate municipalities pictured under one title and one color key, sets it apart from a typical single-city map of the period, and it pairs naturally with other Missouri or Kansas maps in a regional collection. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.