Landmark Status coming for Historic Quindaro, KS, Townsite

The U.S. Park Service is preparing plans to preserve 25 to 30 remaining structures among the ruins of Old Quindaro Townsite. The pre-Civil War town was a Freestate port on the Missouri River providing supplies to abolitionists in Kansas and a western station on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping from Missouri. In the 1880s it became the site of Western University, the first Black college west of the Mississippi River. U.S. Representatives Sharice Davids and Jake LaTurner of Kansas, and Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, have introduced the Quindaro Townsite National Historic Landmark Act, which authorizes the Secretary of Interior to provide funding and technical assistance to preserve the historic site, in what is now Kansas City, KS.