The US city that’s the true heartland of America
Tales of the Wild West, vast quantities of barbecued fare and red-hot jazz music make Kansas City a great travel destination.
Not in Kansas any more? That’s a shame because KC, as it’s affectionately known, has plenty to recommend it as a travel destination.
1 Where it is
The first thing to know about Kansas City – affectionately known as KC – is that it’s mostly not in Kansas. Set on the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, the bulk of the city lies on the Missouri side. Culturally and geographically, KC lies somewhere between the West, the Midwest and the South: the true heartland of America. While not a traditional tourism destination, its strategic location on road, river and rail thoroughfares means travellers are constantly funnelling through. Billions of dollars have been spent in recent years on liveability improvements to the downtown area, with the redeveloped Power & Light District now a vibrant retail and entertainment hub. Entertainment features year round on the KC Live! outdoor concert stage, and office workers spill out into dozens of neon-lit restaurants. Head there first to get oriented with the city and its people.
2 Jazz and baseball
Jazz might have been born in New Orleans but it grew up in Kansas City during the 1920s and 30s, thanks largely to the city’s rather lax interpretation of America’s prohibition laws. See and hear how at the interactive American Jazz Museum, located in the historic 18th and Vine district. Catch a live set at the attached jazz club, the Blue Room, on Friday and Saturday nights. The same building also houses the Negro League Baseball Museum, which chronicles the history of racially segregated sport, and how an unwavering passion for baseball brought social inclusion and advanced the struggle for equality for black America. Established in 1920 here in KC, the league fledged players who would go on to become legends of the game, including Buck O’Neil, manager of the Kansas City Monarchs. See the original uniforms, hear the players’ stories, and step up to the plate among life-sized bronze statues of the stars themselves in the Field of Dreams.
3 Where to eat
You’re unlikely to lose weight on a visit to KC, where more than 100 restaurants specialise in Kansas City barbecue – slow-cooked, wood-smoked meats smothered in a sweet and sticky molasses sauce. Your arteries might argue, but it has to be tried at least once. Fourth-generation family-owned Jack Stack restaurant is dimly lit and oozes atmosphere, the brick walls flaring orange with reflections from the kitchen wood fire. Chunks of meat drop off a rotating, hickory-smoked beef brisket into a dish of barbecued beans, served alongside jalapeno cornbread, pulled pork mac ’n’ cheese and a towering stack of deep-fried onion rings – just for starters, of course. You’ll hear much cooing about “burnt ends”, the crispy but fatty bark of a brisket, carved and caramelised into bite-sized nuggets, once discarded but now coveted by barbecue aficionados as jewels in the coronary-clogging crown. If you’re in a hurry call in to Joe’s Kansas City BBQ to guzzle a sauce-slathered brisket and a slab of ribs in an authentic gas station restaurant. Because you don’t make friends with salad.
4 Catch a game
KC is sports mad, and is one of just 16 cities across North America and Mexico chosen to host games at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, to be played at the open-air Arrowhead Stadium, home of NFL Super Bowl champions the Kansas City Chiefs. March this year saw the opening of the 11,000-capacity CPKC Stadium, home ground for the women’s soccer team, Kansas City Current, and the first stadium in the world built exclusively for women’s professional sport (catch a game if you’re visiting between March and November). If Major League Baseball is more your thing, the Kansas City Royals have played at Kauffman Stadium since 1973. Go behind the scenes at the venue on a guided tour.
5 Whiskey city
While the state of Kansas embraced the 19th-century temperance movement, Missouri did not, enticing thousands of thirsty drinkers to flood across the state border to the West Bottoms neighbourhood of KC, a den of debauchery that became known as the “wettest block in the world”. J. Reiger & Co whiskey distillery is a legacy of those days, founded in 1887 before closing in 1919 when prohibition arrived. In 2014 the distillery was resurrected by a descendant of its founder, this time in the East Bottoms neighbourhood. Inside, it’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for grown-ups, with bubbling cauldrons of bourbon mash, cartoonish copper pot stills and even a 12m-high spiral slide (for fun, not whiskey production). Take a guided tour, enjoy a tasting and have lunch in the expansive Electric Park garden bar, named after a famous amusement park that ran from 1899-1906.
6 Visit the crossroads
KC is full of eclectic neighbourhoods, each with its own character. Crossroads is the creative arts district, with more than 100 independent galleries and studios filling once vacant warehouses, plus fashion boutiques, hip bars, restaurants, theatres and performing arts venues. You’ll find eight breweries within walking distance (there are more than 160 craft breweries in Missouri) and casual evening haunts such as King G, serving cocktails and gourmet, deli-style sandwiches. Stroll afterwards to the Green Lady Lounge, a romantic and refined jazz club with velvet curtains, scarlet decor and top jazz musicians playing seven nights a week. Go record shopping at Joesy Records or catch a show at the Kauffman Centre for the Performing Arts.
7 Out of town
Escape the city and drive an hour north to the historic city of St Joseph, where the Pony Express started and the life of outlaw Jesse James ended. The house where James was shot and killed in 1883 was trucked a block south to Patee House Museum, an 1850s-built former luxury hotel that became headquarters for the Pony Express (a 3200km-long relay service of horse-mounted posties that has its own museum a few doors down). Slightly more disturbing is the Glore Psychiatric Museum, which takes an unfiltered look at the history of treatment for mental illnesses . Rural America is full of weird but compelling museums like this. Return to KC via the town of Kearney to see the log cabin farmhouse, set among peaceful gardens, where Jesse James – a killer who like Ned Kelly somehow became a folk hero – was born.
8 Weird and wonderful wine
What do the words Norton, Starkstar, Traminette, Munson or Wetumka mean to you? Likely nothing, unless you’re already acquainted with native, North American wine grapes. TerraVox Winery has been making wine from more than 50 of these obscure varieties since 1996, although the history of winemaking in Missouri goes back to the mid-1800s and for a time it was the second-largest wine-producing state in the country. The wines taste like nothing you’ve ever tried before – mostly dry, and with fruit flavours never encountered by most palates (definitely polarising, and worth bringing a bottle home for debate). Book a tour and tasting at the vineyard and winery 20 minutes northwest of KC, or visit the tasting room shared with Green Dirt Farm, a small-scale dairy farm that churns out creamy, award-winning sheep’s milk cheeses and cows’ milk ice cream.
9 Sunken steamboats
The story of a great American adventure is told in vivid detail by the protagonist himself at an unexpectedly engrossing museum in the historic City Market. In 1988 a family of local airconditioning repairmen began a quest to unearth a sunken steamboat that had lain buried under a farmer’s corn field for 132 years. Not only did they dig up the ship, but they retrieved from it the country’s largest collection of pre-Civil War artefacts, now on display at the Arabia Steamboat Museum. The man at the centre of it all, David Hawley, recounts the scarcely believable tale as visitors wander wide-eyed through the collection. Another hidden KC gem is the home and studio of landscape painter Thomas Hart Benton (the mentor of Jackson Pollock), preserved exactly as it was when the artist died at his canvas in 1975 and open for guided tours.
10 Where to stay
Exposed brick and weathered timber are hallmarks of the boutique Crossroads Hotel, which began life in 1911 as a beer depot. The arts-focused hotel has an excellent Italian restaurant, a lively lobby cocktail bar, a rooftop beer garden and 131 stylish guestrooms, including the palatial Pendergast Suite, named after KC’s mobster-associating political operative, Tom Pendergast. He effectively ruled the city alongside his crime boss mates in the 1920s and 30s, and is the man to thank for all the jazz, alcohol and general debauchery. From about $US150 $226) a night.
Ricky French was a guest of Travel South,Visit Missouri and Visit KC.
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