The Fairfax Industrial District is a manufacturing area of

Kansas City, Kansas Kansas City (commonly known as KCK) is the third-most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is an inner suburb of the older and more populous Kansas City, Missouri, after which it is named. As ...

, on the Goose Island river bend of the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

. 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.

History

Early history

The district is on the Goose Island river bend (inner concave bank of a

meander A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the Channel (geography), channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erosion, erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank (cut bank, cut bank or river cl ...

loop) that had been an island created by an 1880 flood that moved the

'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 The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

(though in 1940, the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

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 again became a river bend landform. "The city owned Kansas City Public Levees, the city of Kansas City and the Fairfax Industrial District sponsored a project in which the

United States Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...

constructed flood protection levees and walls around the district, including three pump houses to pump water" with 2 of the houses on the later airfield (the dike extended from Quindaro downstream around Goose Island to the mouth of the

Kansas River The Kansas River, also known as the Kaw, is a meandering river in northeastern Kansas in the United States. It is potentially the southwestern most part of the Missouri River drainage, which is sometimes in turn the northwesternmost portion of ...

.) The protected land along the river north of the city ("North Bottoms") was used for farmland which was partly used as an airfield for a 1921 "

American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is an Voluntary association, organization of United States, U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It comprises U.S. state, state, Territories of the United States, U.S. terr ...

air meet".

Industrial development

"In late 1923, the Kansas City Industrial Land Company, a subsidiary of the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

, purchased nearly 1,300 acres of Missouri River bottom land 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 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. Early passenger flights were by Universal Aviation Corporation, Southwest Air Service Express, and Central Air Lines; and in 1933 when American,

Braniff Braniff Airways, Inc., operated as Braniff International Airways from 1948 until 1965, and then Braniff International from 1965 until the cessation of air operations, was an American airline that operated from 1928 until 1982 and continues to ...

, and

US Airways US Airways was a major airline in the United States. It was originally founded in History of aviation in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh as a mail delivery airline called All American Aviation, which soon became a commercial passenger airline. In 1953, it ...

were operating flights, Rearwin Airplanes and American Eagle were manufacturing aircraft in the district. A naval reserve air base was established at the airport in 1935 and in 1936, the Chrysler Motor Parts Company began operations along the airport.

World War II manufacturing

In addition to a

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Navy Elimination Air Base, Air Force Plant NC was built (1st B-25 accepted in February 1942.) By May 1942 the Fairfax Division of the Fruehauf Trailer Company was in the district, and a dual hangar USAAF Modification Center was completed in October 1942. During the war a factory was started for a rubber company (completed post-war by Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corporation), and an air freight terminal for Military Air Transport was opened on March 2, 1945.

Post-war businesses

To liquidate

military surplus Military surplus is goods, usually materiel, that are sold or otherwise disposed of when held in excess or are no longer needed by the military. Entrepreneurs often buy these goods and resell them at surplus stores. Usually the goods sold by th ...

, the

Reconstruction Finance Corporation The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the United States federal government that served as a lender of last resort to US banks and businesses. Established in ...

set up a depot in the district (72 flyable B-25J aircraft were sold to the public), and General Motors leased the Air Force Plant for automobile assembly (GM also built post-war F-84F aircraft at the plant.) Transcontinental & Western Air used the modification center for aircraft servicing until the Great Flood of 1951, and in January 1947 four new factories were under construction. In 1960 GM bought the former Air Force Plant it had been leasing since 1945 and then constructed a new 1985 factory when the airport closed. An annexation ordinance expanded the city limits to encompass the "United States Government rea of2 acres" and the airport's with 13 buildings—the "Fairfax plat" was the area within the northeast corner of the Fairfax Industrial District of ~.

Fairfax Assembly Fairfax Assembly & Stamping is a General Motors (GM) automobile manufacturing facility in Kansas City, Kansas. The site was originally a World War II bomber plant, and has a comprehensive history of producing vehicles for numerous GM brands. It e ...

opened in 1987 again and produced Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse models. In July 2006, the Kansas City council offered $146,000,000 in bonds for GM to produce a new mid-size vehicle at the plant.

References

{{Reflist , refs= {{cite web , last=Freeman , first=Paul , date=2012-12-29 , title=Sweeney Airport / Fairfax Airport / Fairfax Army Airfield (KCK), Kansas City, KS , url=https://www.airfieldsfreeman.com/KS/Airfields_KS_E.htm#fairfax , work=Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Eastern Kansas , publisher=Airfields-Freeman.com , access-date=2013-07-14 {{Cite court , year=1950 , title=STATE, EX REL. v. City of Kansas City, 169 Kan. 702 (1950), 222 P.2d 714 , url=http://law.justia.com/cases/kansas/supreme-court/1950/37-748-0.html , accessdate=2014-08-16 , quote=The Fairfax Industrial District consists of approximately 2,300 acres of land formerly owned by the Kansas City Industrial Land Company, which company sold tracts to various persons and corporations, including tracts of about 925 acres in the northeast portion of the district to the city of Kansas City for a municipal airport, now known as Fairfax airport. … Since 1925, by accretions and the addition of Goose Island, 900 acres were added, 700 acres of which are part of the city's airport (T. 523), making a total acreage area at this time of about 2.300 acres. … The airport statute, being Article 1, Chapter 3 of the 1947 Supp. to *711 G.S., 1935, gives the city the same jurisdiction and police power over its airport, even though the airport is located outside the city limits, as it has over any part of the city located within the city limits. {{Cite map , year=c. 1946 , title=map title tbd , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sMvYoAEACAAJ , accessdate=2013-07-14 , quote=Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Plant … Barracks U.S. Navy … Ferrying Group Quarters … Military Air Transport Hangar … Fruehauf Trailer Co. … U.S. Army Air Base ''Fairfax Industrial District'', UPRR
map partially depicted online at Airfields-Freeman.com.)
/ref> Geography of Wyandotte County, Kansas Manufacturing in Kansas

History

Early history

Industrial development

World War II manufacturing

Post-war businesses

Further reading

References