The West Bottoms was founded as a livestock and meatpacking district in 1871.[2] It was home to the Kansas City Live Stock Exchange, Kansas City Stockyards, and the city's first Union railway depot.[3] The stockyards occupied more than two hundred acres and were surrounded by hotels, offices, shops, and banks for cattle buyers and cowboys.[4] As the industrial center of Kansas City, the West Bottoms attracted unskilled laborers seeking employment. Recent European immigrants, native-born white and African Americans arrived to work in West Bottoms factories and settled in tenements and boarding houses there. The area became known as a red-light district, with numerous saloons, gambling dens, and brothels catering to the high volume of railway passengers passing through Kansas City daily.[5]
In 1876, James "Jim" Pendergast, son of Irish immigrants who had settled in St. Joseph, Missouri, moved to the West Bottoms to find employment. Pendergast lived in boarding houses and worked in meatpacking and then in several iron foundries in the neighborhood. In 1881, Pendergast purchased the American House saloon and hotel on St. Louis Avenue. This West Bottoms establishment served as a gambling den, informal bank, and headquarters for political organizing for Jim and his brother Tom Pendergast, architects of the Pendergast political machine that controlled Kansas City for the next four decades.[6]
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe were recruited to work in West Bottoms meatpacking facilities due to strikes by local workers. These immigrants first settled in an area known as the "Strawberry Patch" near the meatpacking plants. Then, after the flood of 1903, they founded the nearby historic neighborhood of Strawberry Hill uphill from the "Strawberry Patch."[7] Serbs founded St. George Serbian Orthodox Church on April 18, 1906. The community purchased two houses on North 1st Street. One was converted to a church and the other used as a parish home. The parish stayed in the West Bottoms until 1925.[8]
During World War II, Darby Steel Corporation built most of the landing craft tanks (LCTs) for various amphibious invasions. The plant built one craft per day and floated them more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, Louisiana, prompting their "Prairie Ships" nickname. Darby's plant at the mouth of the Kansas River could hold eight 135í LCTs and 16 LCMs in various stages of construction. The American Royal livestock show at Kemper Arena was the site of the 1976 Republican National Convention.[9]
The low-lying area of the West Bottoms, close to the Missouri River, has always been prone to floods. In 1903, a major flood damaged West Bottoms businesses, shut down water and power in the city, and persuaded developers to choose a new location for the Union station railway depot. In 1946, construction began on a $1.5 billion flood wall to protect the meatpacking and livestock business, as part of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program.[10] However, the Great Flood of 1951 severely damaged the West Bottoms stockyards, and the meatpacking industry in Kansas City never fully recovered.[11]
