The Fairfax Industrial District is a manufacturing area of Kansas City, Kansas, on the Goose Island river bend of the Missouri River. The US 69 Missouri River Bridge provides access to the district from Missouri’s Platte County and Riverside community. The district’s General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant is a current facility in the district which has remnants of the runways used by the defunct Fairfax Municipal Airport and Fairfax Air Force Base.
The district is on the Goose Island river bend (inner concave bank of a meander loop) that had been an island created by an 1880 flood that moved the Missouri River’s “main current and the main and principal channel” from around the north, east, and south of the site to a low elevation on the west (Goose Island Chute). By 1907 the state of Kansas had answered a Missouri petition and filed for ownership of the island, which was declared part of Kansas on March 22, 1909, by the United States Supreme Court (in 1940, the USGS mapped the state boundary as a straight north-south line demarcating a small eastern portion of “Fairfax Airport” in Missouri). When flow into the chute was stopped by the Goose Island closing dike, the island became a river bend landform. Bed Bug Exterminator Kansas City
Industrial Development
“In late 1923, the Kansas City Industrial Land Company, a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, purchased nearly 1,300 acres of Missouri River bottomland and launched over $3.7 million of infrastructure improvements to create a modern industrial district.” In 1924 the UPRR had railyards in the district and by March 1926, the district had “four miles of paved streets…six miles of railroad spur track…an iron and steel foundry, an oil refinery, a thresher assembly plant, two construction companies, a lumber mill, and an aviation school and a small airfield.” The airfield was named the 1925 Sweeney Airport then the 1928 Fairfax Airport—the latter had a natural gas field with 14 wells for extra revenue.
Nearby Attractions
- Fairfax Diamond Railroad Crossing is located at Kansas City, KS
- World’s Largest Cap Gun is located at 1219 Union Ave, Kansas City, MO
- Strawberry Hill Museum & Center is located at 720 N 4th St, Kansas City, KS
Nearby Restaurants and Pubs
- Anna’s BLD Bistro is located at 2959 N 7th St Trfy, Kansas City, KS
- Wilson’s Pizza & Grill is located at 1801 Quindaro Blvd, Kansas City, KS
- 99 Hops House is located at 777 NW Argosy Casino Pkwy, Riverside, MO
Check out other neighborhoods like Hanover Heights