In 1901, the Fourth was hot

Our last installment piqued interest with the mention of Fairmount Park. Here’s another story about the park as it relates to the Fourth of July, 1901.

First, let’s commemorate the earliest local celebration of Independence Day when the Lewis & Clark Expedition camped just north of here along the Missouri River in 1804 and, “ussered in the day by a discharge of one shot from our Bow piece” – likely a swivel cannon. According to Clark’s journal, they also “saluted the departing day with another gun, an extra Gill of whiskey.”

With the exception of an issue here or there, newspapers from Eastern Jackson County and Independence do not survive prior to 1898. The Jackson Examiner’s first coverage of the Fourth of July in 1898 reported a successful celebration with a bandstand erected on the courthouse lawn; speeches; a costumed “Goddess of Liberty; reading of the Declaration of Independence; etc. The first Independence Examiner newspaper coverage available in 1906 provided a reminiscence from “an old soldier” titled, “A Submerged War Story,” where he relayed the events of the “battle of Gettysburg and siege of Vicksburg culminating on the fourth day of July, 1863.” The Kansas City Star’s earliest coverage of July 4th was in 1882. Other papers predate this, but that’s as far as my fuse has yet burned.

Streamers about July 4th in Kansas City were more elaborate, judging from the 1901 festivities celebrating the quasquicentennial (or 125th Anniversary) of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Imagine scorching weather in a time long before the invention of air conditioning – and when women and men of the Victorian era dressed in smothering layers from neck to wrist to toe, no exceptions.

The mercury broke all records on this day in 1901 since the weather bureau’s establishment 13 years prior. A squelching 103.3 degrees was “recorded by a very conservative government thermometer.” In fact, “Kansas and Missouri afforded the highest temperature readings in the country” on July 4, 1901; Harrisonville, Mo., registered 106 degrees. The highest previous temperature in the bureau’s statistics up to that point had been 103 degrees in 1897.

Though there was little relief trying to catch a breeze on the streetcars, Kansas Citians enjoyed outdoor public entertainments at local parks, fair and exposition grounds.

Fairmount Park – once located along today’s Independence Avenue/U.S. 24 just east of Mount Washington Cemetery between Willow and Harris Avenues – had the largest crowd in its history. The lake was alive with boats, and the beach was thronged. You couldn’t get near the big, cool spring. And, at the café, hotel and counters where refreshments were sold, “one had to wait his turn.” All over the expansive lawns, tired humanity rested. Picnic parties were too numerous to be accommodated in the picnic grounds and they were scattered about the entire park.

That night, a magnificent show in the sky was seen through and above the big trees. Band concerts were the most widely enjoyed entertainment for the thousands of people in attendance; and, the “arrangement of national airs” were particularly moving. In short, “The Fourth was celebrated noisily, continually and elaborately.”

This anniversary celebration was so well attended that there weren’t enough streetcars in operation to take everyone home from the park, despite the Metropolitan Railway Company having run all of the cars that its powerhouse could pull on the Independence and Fairmount lines. The last streetcar left Fairmount Park at midnight. Many who missed late-night connections in Kansas City had to walk home.

This 1901 Fourth of July celebration is a snapshot of life before radio, television, TiVo, movies, computers, iPods, etc. In fact, electricity was so new that most homes weren’t yet wired. The automobile had not yet replaced the horse and wagon. Our Kansas City predecessors were on the verge of industrial and technological revolution and didn’t even know it!

What will people in 2058 or 2108 look back and find about us?