The heyday of the trails had come and gone by the time William B. Strang Jr. platted out a residential development in this area in 1905. To promote his real estate plans and bring people out from Kansas City, he developed a trolley car railroad, the Missouri and Kansas Interurban Railway, which followed near the route of the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California trails from Westport to here until 1940.
Strang was not only a real estate developer and railway entrepreneur, he was also an aviation pioneer. He developed Aviation Park a couple of miles east of here. The park gained national attention during the early years of aviation with its biplane barnstorming exhibitions. Those aerial acrobatics took place right over the old trail routes.
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In Strang Park, a remnant of the railway bed still exists, just a few feet from the historic route of the Santa Fe Trail.
Courtesy of Lenexa Historical Society
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Traders and freight wagons passed through here as early as the 1820s. Emigrants and their [C]onestoga wagons came through as early as the 1840s.
Painting by Charles M. Russell
From the 1850s to 1870s, the stagecoach — icon of the American West — rumbled through this trail junction.Library
of Congress
Crowds gathered to watch the aerial acrobatics of the planes hosted at Aviation Park.
Johnson County Museum
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