Kansas City Flood, June 1908, Wholesale District Near Union Station, reads the caption on the postcard mailed from Kansas City June 19, 1908. It shows the disastrous flooding in an area near the old railway depot at Union Avenue and Santa Fe Street, erected in 1878. It was not surprising a high site on Pershing Road was chosen when the new Union Station was to be built in 1914. The postcard was one from a treasured folder of 12 photographic scenes published in black and white by the H.F. Worth Printing Co. of Kansas City, at the time of the flood. A red two-cent stamp was used to mail the folder to an 8-year-old girl, Leala Fite, in St. Louis. She is now Mrs. Wesley Morris, of Kansas City. (At the time of the flood her father, an expert tile and marble man, was in Kansas City laying fine entrance floors for several buildings, one the Hotel Baltimore.) The postcard folder pictures 11 other water-inundated scenes captioned: Foreign District Along the Kaw; Freight Yards in Kansas City, Kan. in Background; West Bottoms Street Scene, near Depot; Deserted; Railroad Bridges over Kaw River; Shanties Along Viaduct, nearly Floating; Kansas Avenue, West from Cudahy's; Engine Trying to Work Through; Cattle Chutes of the Morris Packing Co.; Scene in West Bottoms District; and Bridge Held Down by Loaded Coal Cars. Kansas City Times, June 29, 1984.
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