Case Park in Kansas City

 

Ermine Case, Jr., Park (N39⁰6’11” W94⁰35’34”) is 2 acres and part of the 31-acre West Terrace Park. The park extends from 7^th Street south to 11^th Street, west of Pennsylvania Avenue, Jefferson Street, and Summit Street. The traffic circle and overlook at 8^th Street and Jefferson Street is known as Clark’s Point. This is one of only a handful of locations along the lower Missouri River that can be documented as a place that Lewis and Clark stood. It is a site on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. The explorers climbed this bluff in 1806 on the return journey from the Pacific and noted that it would be a good place to build a fort. They also gathered pawpaw fruits here. In 1804, on the western journey, they saw an immense flock of Carolina parakeets near here. In the center of the traffic circle is the Corps of Discovery statue by Eugene Daub, depicting William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, York, Sacagawea, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau (her baby), and Seaman (Lewis’ dog). The statue contains an inscription, “of courage undaunted and a fidelity to truth,” along with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, “I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him.” A rock wall at Clark’s point was constructed by the Works Progress Administration in 1941.

Also at Clark’s Point are markers erected by the Chouteau Society, describing the French settlement and heritage of the area. The Missouri River from St. Louis to north of Kansas City was initially mapped by Etienne Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, in 1713. He noted the low range of hills on the south side of the river near the confluence with the Kansas River. In 1724, Bourgmont visited a Kansa village site near present-day Fort Leavenworth and also journeyed toward Santa Fe. In 1742, Verendryes explored the Missouri River to near its headwaters in Montana. Fort de Cavagnial (1744 to 1764) was a French trading post at the village of the Kansa. Le Page du Pratz published a 1758 map and narrative which described the river, and Indians told the French of the Great Salt Lake, Bitterroot Mountains, and the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The Kansa later moved to the mouth of the Kansas River, and Francois Choteau set up a trading post, Chez Les Canses, at what was called Kawsmouth. Because news of the Louisiana purchase from France may not have reached throughout the Louisiana territory, Lewis carried a French passport.

At 10^th and Jefferson Street within the park is a Choteau Society marker describing Chez Les Canses, or Chouteauville settlement. In 1799, French-speaking traders and farmers moved from the French Colonial area of present-day Illinois to the present-day Kansas City area. One settlement was at Randolph Bluffs, near the Missouri River confluence with Rock Creek (Chouteau Bridge-State Route 210 area) on the north side of the Missouri River, and a second was at French Bottoms, now called the West Bottoms. The West Bottoms settlement was French speaking until at least 1840; and consisted of strip farms on either side of Turkey Creek. The community was served by a French Catholic church of St. Francis Regis near the present-day intersection of 11^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The settlement  was eradicated by the flood of 1844.

Within Case Park is the James Pendergast Memorial statue, erected in 1913 in Mulkey Square Park and moved later to this location. It is surrounded by picnic tables. The monument was erected by his younger brother, Thomas Pendergast, who ran county politics at the time. It overlooks the West Bottoms, where he operated a saloon and began the Pendergast political machine.

A plaque by the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project was located in the park until 2020, when it was vandalized. The historic marker memorialized the 1882 lynching of Levi Harrington by a mob of several hundred white people in Kansas City, for the crime of shooting a police officer. The next day another man was arrested for the killing. No one was held accountable for the lynching.

Case Park includes the off-leash West Terrace Dog Park at the north end. Adjacent to the dog park near the corner of 8^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue is a sculpture by Stacey Sharpe, called Air Play. Near 10^th Street is a playground, including a structure called the Bamboo Jungle. West Terrace Park from 7^th Street south to 17^th Street was part of the original George Kessler 1906 Parks and Boulevard System plan. Case Park is crossed by the Riverfront Heritage Trail, which enters the park at 9^th and Jefferson Streets and leaves at 10^th and Summit Streets. The park adjoins the Quality Hill Historic District and Quality Hill Center Historic District.