Missouri Valley Sundays

Drawing from some two decades of interviews and conversations, chronicled in his recently released book John “Buck” O’Neil: The Rookie, His Words, His Voice, author and baseball historian Phil S. Dixon discusses the Kansas City and Negro Leagues icon – from O’Neil’s upbring...

Joy Poole, the retired deputy state librarian for the New Mexico State Library and co-founder of the Santa Fe Trail Association, examines the challenges, exploits, and adventures of three 19th-century merchants who made the trip from Independence or Kansas City, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New...

In a discussion of her book Beneath Missouri Skies, Carolyn Glenn Brewer chronicles the musical life of influential jazz guitarist Pat Metheny – a native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri – during his formative teenage years. B...

Dan Desko, founder and CEO of the B-25 History Project, recounts the value of America’s B-25 bomber to Allied efforts in World War II. Manufactured in Kansas City, Kansas, the aircraft saw perhaps its most notable action in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and other...

In a discussion of his book Mount Washington Cemetery: In Search of Lost Time, local historian Bruce Mathews spotlights the contributions of those buried in the historic cemetery – including mountain man Jim Bridger and newspaper mogul William Rockhill Nelson – and examines efforts to preserve...

Sitting at the nation’s crossroads, Kansas City has satisfied the appetites of hungry travelers since the days when it was a western outpost on the Santa Fe Trail. From perfectly grilled KC Strip steaks and barbecued burnt ends to steaming bowls of chili and fried chicken dinners, generations of families and restaur...

There was no greater boon to Kansas City’s early development than the opening of the Hannibal Bridge in 1869. Designed by civil engineer Octave Chanute, it was the first railway to span the Missouri River and transformed a Western frontier town into a commercial hub. Most notably, it gave rise to the West Bottoms’ s...

The infamous Missouri Executive Order 44 – known as the Extermination Order – was issued by Gov. Lilburn W. Boggs on October 27, 1838, forcing thousands of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to flee western Missouri and seek refuge in Illinois. Many LDS families suffered through the harsh win...

Before the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers in 1804 and a young St. Louis couple, Francois and Berenice Chouteau, established a trading post in what would become of the Town of Kansas, the region was the domain of the Osage. The vast Osage Nation stretched from t...

Carmaletta Williams, chief executive officer of the Black Archives of Mid-America, discusses her work with the Equal Justice Initiative to memorialize victims of lynchings and other racial violence in Missouri. She talks, too, about how those memorials can promote community healing.  ...