Kansas City Journal

The Kansas City Journal-Post was a newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri from 1854 to 1942 which was the oldest newspaper in the city when it folded.

It started as a weekly The Kansas City Enterprise on September 23, 1854, a year after the city's founding and shortly after The Public Ledger had folded. Kansas City's first Mayor William S. Gregory and future mayors Milton J. Payne and E. Milton McGee along with city fathers William Gillis, Benoist Troost, Thompson McDaniel, Robert Campbell and Kansas City's first bank and biggest store Northrup and Chick pooled $1,000 to start it.

William A. Strong was its first editor and David K. Abeel was the first publisher. It operated above a tavern at Main Street and the Missouri River in the River Market neighborhood.

In 1855, Strong enlisted another future mayor Robert T. Van Horn to take over the paper. Van Horn bought it for $250 and retained Abeel as publisher.

In 1857 it became The Western Journal of Commerce and in 1858 it became The Kansas City Daily Western Journal of Commerce.

During the lead up to the American Civil War the paper was to espouse the popular Missouri view that the status quo should not be disrupted. Missouri should remain in the Union and remain a slave state. When the war erupted Van Horn enlisted in the Union Army and the paper became staunchly Republican.

The paper was to actively encourage city fathers to invest to get the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad to build the first bridge across the Missouri River at Kansas City. The construction of the Hannibal Bridge in 1869 was to make Kansas City the dominant city in the region.

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