Riverfront park to celebrate Lewis, Clark’s stop in Kansas

? Nearly 200 years ago, two men standing watch for the Lewis and Clark Expedition at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers stole more than their allocated share of whiskey.

They were court-martialed and whipped that same day.

While not the historical highlight of the expedition, Lewis and Clark’s stay in Kansas will be commemorated with a park under development at Kaw Point in Kansas City, Kan. Park planners say the site will provide visitors with a beautiful, relaxing outdoor area.

“I believe it is going to be a shining star in the state of Kansas,” said Mike Calwell, a member of the Friends of the Kaw and a volunteer coordinator for development of the park. “The ambiance and the view is just incredible.”

Plus, he said, the historical area is framed by two major rivers.

“Not many states have that,” Calwell said.

The 10-acre Kaw Point Riverfront Park will have an education center, boat ramp, nature trails, boardwalk and camping area.

For canoeists, the boat ramp will provide another needed access point to the Kansas River, also known as the Kaw, one of the state’s only navigable rivers. The 170-mile Kaw has only a handful of developed entries for canoeists, and state officials have said they were negotiating to put in more ramps, including one in Topeka. Friends of the Kaw have said they would like to have ramps installed every 10 miles along the river.

Next year, Kaw Point will be a part of the bicentennial commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which paved the way for westward expansion.

Mike and Laura Calwell, of Mission, and their two dogs, Zoe and Misty, sit at Kaw Point, in Kansas City, Kan., where Lewis and Clark camped for several days nearly 200 years ago. Calwell, a member of Friends and the Kaw, is volunteer coordinator for the development of the site, where a riverfront park is planned.

In June, thousands of people are expected to visit the park when Lewis and Clark re-enactors spend several days and nights there.

Development of the park started last year, as environmentalists and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., got together to improve what had become an almost-abandoned industrial area.

Calwell said officials started looking into developing the area as a park after a 2002 visit by famed environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helped dedicate the first Kansas Riverkeeper boat.

Standing at Kaw Point, Kennedy said, “You look at the shoreline, and it’s a wasteland. This is an economic resource that’s being squandered.”

The Unified Government committed $400,000 to the project; dozens of volunteers and contributors are donating time and money, too.

The point, of course, would be hardly recognizable to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

In journals, Clark described the area as beautiful and teeming with deer and buffalo; a good place to build a fort, he wrote. In one entry, however, he noted that “the waters of the Kansas is verry (sic) disagreeably tasted to me.”