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 went out of business. Kansas City's first mayor,
William S. Gregory, and future mayors
Milton J. Payne and
Elijah M. McGee, along with city fathers
William Gillis,
Benoist Troost, Thompson McDaniel,
Robert Campbell and Kansas City's first bank and biggest store,
Northrup & Chick, pooled $1,000 to start it. William A. Strong was its first editor, and David K. Abeel 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. Before the
American Civil War, the paper espoused the popular Missouri view that the status quo should be maintained, that Missouri should remain in the
Union and remain a
slave state. When the war began, Van Horn enlisted in the
Union Army, and the paper became staunchly
Republican. In 1880,
William Rockhill Nelson started
The Kansas City Star, which became
The Journal-Post's primary competitor. In 1909,
Denver Post owners
Frederick Gilmer Bonfils and
Harry Heye Tammen bought
The Post, with
J. Ogden Armour as a silent partner.
The Post, with its
tabloid format, red headlines and
yellow journalism was linked to the rise of the
Tom Pendergast political machine. In 1922,
Walter S. Dickey bought
The Journal. He bought
The Post in 1922 and combined their operations at 22nd and Oak. Dickey invested in the papers so as to compete with
The Star, ultimately bankrupting his own lucrative clay-pipe manufacturing company. The papers combined as
The Kansas City Journal-Post on October 4, 1928. In 1938, with the beginning of the collapse of the Pendergast machine, the paper changed the name of
The Post to
The Kansas City Journal. Also in 1938
Journal photographer Jack Wally bylined an
undercover photo exposé of gambling houses under Pendergast that ran in
Life magazine. The paper's last publication was on March 31, 1942. It had been the last daily competition to
The Star. ==References==