David Hayes

Freelance reporter

Stories by David Hayes

overgrown site

Resurrecting Quindaro

As Americans north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line debated slavery, a boomtown that sprouted from the scrub along the Missouri River emerged as one of the most unlikely bellwethers of the national mood in the run-up to the Civil War. That community was Quindaro, Kansas, and virtually overnight it became something of a prototype…

building foundation from quindaro

The Rise and Fall of a Boomtown

Get a deeper history of the port town of Quindaro and hear from a local woman who used our curiousKC initiative to ask why excavations had not been finished for the important site.