Spanning the Missouri River with a rail line was the problem, and Leavenworth, Kansas 35 miles upriver of Kansas City were the city booster’s biggest competitor for these rights. In 1866 through slick maneuvering by Kearney with eastern railroad investors, and even slighter of hand by Van Horn in Congress to secure federal authorization, Kansas City would outdo Leavenworth. Now all the city leadership had to do was secure the design and capital required to span the river that many predicted could not be crossed.They persisted and construction of the Hannibal Bridge started in 1867 and its quarter mile span was completed in 1869. The bridge, the only one crossing the Missouri until 1870, was designed by the French engineer Octave Chanute who would also go on to design the Kansas City Stockyards and later become a pioneer in aviation. Considered at the time state of the art engineering, the rail and pedestrian bridge was a swing configuration that could open in under two minutes to allow steamboat traffic to pass. Construction cost $1 million (equivalent to $21.8 million in today’s dollars). Severely damaged in a tornado in 1886, a second Hannibal was built near the first. Despite the construction of many other bridges across the Missouri, the lower deck of the second Hannibal Bridge is still used today for railroad traffic and is the first bridge visible downstream from the site of the Riverfront Streetcar Station. At the bridge's opening booster Kersey Coates bragged, “One day Kansas City is going to home of the most important industrial and shipping centers in the nation …. because that is what we are going to make her.”

Welcome to the Jackson County Historical Society’s walking tour of Kansas City’s historic riverfront. Here the streetcar line begins at the base of Grand Avenue. Looking north to the river is the original rocky ledge landing that was called Westport Landing. Here between 1837 and 1865 steamboats would pull up to the levee and offload the people and goods heading westward overland on the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon Trails. The starting point of this combined trail system of more than 5000 miles, was the town of Westport, three miles to the south of this point. (For more on the period, read the historic markers located along Riverfront Park beginning in front of you at the station.)