‘Nationally significant’: KCK leaders unveil hopes for preserving Quindaro Ruins
Stakeholders discussed their hopes for the future of the Quindaro Ruins as the site, one Kansas City, Kansas, official said Thursday, gets closer to receiving a National Historic Landmark designation.
LaVert Murray, economic development adviser for Mayor Tyrone Garner, laid out a framework for the Unified Government’s vision for the site of the Civil War era boomtown and outpost along the Underground Railroad, which moved enslaved people to freedom.
That “renaissance” of the historical area, Murray told Wyandotte County’s governing body, would include restoring and preserving the ruins’ structures, creating access to the site from Interstate 635, building a signage system with interactive “holograms and talking features” and building a “Smithsonian-style” museum and visitor center that would house artifacts.
“We have got to move the Quindaro Ruins out of ruin,” Garner said.
Advocates for preserving the long-vanished town, an important part of Black and Indigenous Kansas history, have spent decades fighting for resources. Earlier this year, The Star interviewed nearly 20 advocates, descendants of Quindaro’s first residents, politicians and historians who pointed to missed opportunities and racism as playing a role in the lack of political will to provide funding.
At Thursday’s meeting, stakeholders said they believed restoring and preserving the area would make the site a national and international tourist destination.
“The Quindaro Ruins are not just a Kansas City, Kansas, or a Kansas treasure,” said Lucinda Adams, executive director of Freedom’s Frontier, a national heritage area in Kansas and Missouri, but a “nationally significant site that must be preserved.”
State Rep. Marvin Robinson, a Kansas City Democrat who has spent decades advocating for Quindaro, called the area the Pompeii of Kansas, comparing it to the archaeological site in Italy. Like other advocates, Robinson said the project would bring jobs to an area that is one of the most economically disadvantaged in Kansas.
Garner hopes it could function as a significant economic driver to the region.
“It could be, if it’s done right, a positive economic driver for an area that has too long been disinvested, disenfranchised and redlined intentionally over decades,” the mayor said.
Murray, the economic adviser, said the city is “very close” to getting the National Historic Landmark designation, which is determined by the U.S. Department of the Interior. That would help bring federal funding to the project.
That designation, Murray said, is one step below what should be “everyone’s” objective for the project: the designation of a national historic park or site. Near the top of the Unified Government’s goals, he added, is to improve the Old Quindaro Cemetery.
Among those buried there are the relatives of Nakia Hope, of the Concerned Citizens For Old Quindaro Museum. Hope often reports illegal dumping at the site, which may occur because litterers do not believe the area is cared about.
“We constantly see a general disrespect of the area by new community members,” said Hope, who added that providing upkeep should be a priority.
County Administrator David Johnston said those who love the area must work together to come up with a common vision. Without one, state and federal officials with money don’t know what to fund, he said.
“This idea of using this forum as a start of collaboration for an important part of our history, our identity and our beacon to the future is imperative,” Johnston said, but later adding: “There’s not going to be any fundings until we have something to show.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2023 at 12:54 PM.
