This updated version of Missouri's U.S. Highway 71 includes improved formatting and maps, additional points of interest in Kansas City, and GPS Coordinates for listed sites.
The opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the subsequent growth of steamboat traffic attracted public attention to western Missouri. This installment in the American Auto Trails series follows the route of U.S. Highway 71 south from the Iowa State Line, intersecting with the Missouri River at Kansas City. The conflict of ideas, religious, moral, and economic, became a war of retaliation, and after the outbreak of the Civil War no portion of the Nation suffered more heavily. Whole towns were razed, and great numbers of citizens were killed or driven from their farms. The difficulties of social and economic readjustment after the war were reflected in the careers of the Younger brothers, Belle Starr, and others of the outlaw era. The almost perfect north-south path of U.S. 71, south of Kansas City, explores the often violent history of this section of Missouri.
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