Independence

Independence, famed as the City of the Trails, served for two decades as the starting point for the great western trade and travel routes to Santa Fe, Oregon, and California. Settled mainly by Southerners on land ceded to the U.S. by the Osage Indians in 1825, it was built on the site chosen in 1827 for the seat of Jackson County, organized in 1826 and named for Andrew Jackson, seventh U.S. President. Traders, settlers, and gold seekers traveling overland or by boat to the nearby Wayne City or Blue Mills landings outfitted there. Washington Irving called Independence the utmost verge of civilization in 1832, but by 1849 it was losing to Westport, up the trail. More than 1,200 Latter Day Saints settled there in 1831-33 under Joseph Smith, who declared the region the new Zion, but anti-Mormon hostility led to conflict and their expulsion from the county. During the Mexican War of 1846-48, the county supplied Company A of Doniphan's regiment of Missouri volunteers, with William Gilpin, later the first governor of Colorado Territory, then serving from the town as regimental major. Early settlers called the region the Blue Country, a name reflected in local place names inspired by clear springs, bright sky, and prairie haze. Although within the orbit of Union control during the Civil War, Independence was twice held by Confederate troops. In 1863 Union General Thomas Ewing evicted rural residents of this and other border counties by military order to curb guerrilla warfare, an action whose devastating cruelty was later reflected in George Caleb Bingham's painting Order No. 11, which he began there in 1865. Independence was also the home of Harry S. Truman, U.S. President from 1945 to 1953, the first from Missouri and the second born west of the Mississippi. Josiah Gregg, author of The Commerce of the Prairies, lived there, as did Lilburn W. Boggs, lieutenant governor of Missouri from 1832 to 1836 and governor from 1836 to 1840.

Independence, Missouri · United States