Quindaro was founded in 1856 near this site as a port of entry for free-soil immigrants into Kansas. Its principal founder was Abelard Guthrie, who named the town for his Wyandotte Indian wife, Nancy Quindaro Brown, and other proprietors included Joel Walker, S.N. Simpson, Vincent J. Lane, Charles Robinson, and Sylvester Storrs. The townsite stretched from 17th Street to 42nd Street and from Parallel Parkway to the Missouri River, which then lay west of its present location and exposed a rock ledge that formed a natural levee for steamboat landings. Kansas Avenue, now 27th Street, was intended to be the main street but was never cut through to the river. Quindaro boomed for three years, with much of its building in the valley leading to the levee. It became a station on the Underground Railway, where enslaved people escaping from Platte County crossed the river in small boats and on secret runs of the Parkville-Quindaro Ferry, hid with local farmers, and then made the long trek to Nebraska and freedom. With the outbreak of the Civil War, most inhabitants abandoned the town as young men enlisted and their families moved to Wyandotte City for safety. The Kansas State Legislature revoked the town's incorporation in 1862, and the site was never fully revitalized.
