Pressure Washing
Independence
MO

The town was founded on March 29, 1827 — named for the Declaration of Independence — at the furthest west point on the Missouri River where commercial cargo could navigate. That geography made it the natural jumping-off point for everything that came west. By the 1840s, Independence was outfitting wagon trains for the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails. It's the only city in the country that served as the launching point for all three, and the nickname "Queen City of the Trails" stuck.

Today Independence is the largest suburb on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro and the fifth-largest city in Missouri, with about 123,000 people across 78 square miles. The Independence Square downtown still has the old courthouse modeled after Philadelphia's Independence Hall, and Harry Truman's preserved courtroom is inside. Three blocks northwest at 219 North Delaware sits the Truman Home, a white Queen Anne Victorian with clapboard siding where Harry and Bess lived from their 1919 wedding until Harry's death in 1972. It's part of the Truman National Historic Landmark District, established in 1971 just before the president's death — tree-lined streets and a mix of Colonial Revival, Queen Anne, and Folk Victorian homes from the late 1800s through mid-century.

The standout landmark is Vaile Mansion at 1500 N. Liberty, a 31-room Second Empire palace built in 1881 by Harvey Vaile. The hand-pressed red brick alone cost $50,000 when it was built. Inside there are nine marble fireplaces, a 6,000-gallon water tank, and a 48,000-gallon wine cellar in the basement. The Bingham-Waggoner Estate, once home to Civil War artist George Caleb Bingham, has been on the Santa Fe Trail since 1827.

The neighborhoods across Independence are wildly different from one another. Mt. Washington and Fairmount on the northwest side started out as summer homes for wealthy Kansas City families who rode the "dummy line" out to the country — what's now Mt. Washington Cemetery was an 1880s amusement park with a 20-acre lake. Those areas filled in with 1920s and 30s bungalows and weren't even incorporated into Independence until the 1950s. Englewood and Procter west of Crysler became Independence's first suburbs, and the Englewood Arts District on Winner Road is the city's creative heart now — Third Friday Art Walks, the Puppetry Arts Institute, and the Englewood Arts Center.

Downtown, the 1859 Jail still has its twelve limestone cells that once held Confederate guerrilla William Quantrill and Frank James. Victorian-era homes with intricate trim sit a few blocks from brick foursquares, which sit a few blocks from bungalows, which sit a few blocks from mid-century ranches, which sit a few blocks from brand-new construction. Each of those eras wants something different from the people who maintain it. That's the kind of variety Independence is built on.