Parks Spotlight: Daniel Morgan Boone Park

HISTORY 

Daniel Morgan Boone was the seventh child and third son of frontiersman Daniel Boone and his wife, Rebecca. He was born what is now North Carolina in 1769. It is believed that Daniel Morgan first came to the area of what became Jackson County before 1800 for fishing and trapping beaver. Daniel Morgan encouraged his father, Daniel Boone and several of his brothers and sisters to move to areas near St. Louis in the late 1700s which at that time belonged to Spain.  

 

Over the next several years, Daniel Morgan continued to hunt, trap, explore. He married Sarah Griffin Lewis in 1800. He and his brother Nathan worked with others to establish a salt producing business using salt springs at what became Boone Salt Lick. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the St. Charles district near St. Louis. He helped establish forts in eastern Missouri as war approached in 1811 with the British and Indians. He was an officer with the U.S. Rangers and Louisiana Territory Militia during the War of 1812. He later worked on surveying areas in the Missouri Territory for the United States government.

 

Daniel Morgan Boone, his wife Sarah and their ten children (one other child died in 1822) first came to live in the area of what is now Kansas City in 1825 through Daniel Morgan's position with the United States government as a farm instructor and agent for the Kaw Indians.   The family moved then north of Lawrence, Kansas when the Kaw Indian agency was relocated. An additional child, Napoleon, was born in that area in 1828.

 

In June 1831 Daniel Morgan Boone, then 62 years old, purchased a large tract of land in the present Kansas City area from the U.S. Land Office. He established a farm south of Westport and built a log house for his family near the present intersection of 63rd and Holmes. In 1836, Daniel Morgan Boone sold part of his land to his nephew, Boone Hays. Boone Hays was the eldest son of Williams Hays and Susannah Boone Hays, Daniel Morgan Boone's sister.

 

Daniel Morgan Boone died in 1839 of cholera and was buried in a small cemetery on his farm property. His wife Sarah died in 1850 and was buried beside him, as were other family members. The cemetery became known as the Boone-Hays Cemetery after the Boone and Hays family members buried there. The cemetery was mostly forgotten until the 1920s when street construction for 63rd Street unearthed some bones. At that time, some of the bodies were reinterred at Forest Hill Cemetery but Daniel Morgan Boone, his wife, and several others remained buried there. The ground at this time was the property of the Blue Hills Golf Course which was located north and east of the cemetery.

 

In the 1932 teacher Ada MacLoughlin and her students cleared the growth around the graves and continue doing that for several years. In 1935, Kansas City Mayor Bryce Smith proposed naming the tract of property between 63rd Street and Meyer Boulevard and the two-way stretch of the Paseo there "Daniel Boone Square" but it did not pass. In the late 1970s when the Blue Hills Golf Course vacated the property located north of 63rd Street, the Kansas City Parks and Recreation wanted to purchase 78 acres of the property around 63rd and Brooklyn, including the cemetery using a grant from the United States government with the intention of the property becoming a park called "Daniel Morgan Boone Park." Objections were raised by some members of the community who did not feel that a park was necessary at that location and the sale did not go through. 
 

In 2002, the Native Sons of Kansas City donated the 4-acre cemetery property to the City for park purposes. In 2004, additional property for the park was purchased. The Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners approved the change of name from Boone-Hays Park to Daniel Morgan Boone Park in August 2005. Additional property for the park is pending.

 

LOCATION

East 63rd & Euclid Avenue, 14.64 acres