Leespeaks | Scribbles | American Studies

American Study #12

The Red Cars of the Strang Line

Orginally published in The View, 14 Dec. 1990

“Forward, forward let us range.
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.”
Tennyson

Strang Depot at 80th and Santa Fe Drive, 1990

“Uh huh,” the woman at the next pump said to her preschool daughter, “that’s gas. That’s what makes the car run.”

Uh, huh, I thought as I watched the numbers on the gas pump roll by, that’s right. I looked west at the intersection of 75th and State Line Road with the light, late morning traffic whizzing by.

Gas burns, which creates combustion, which makes for piston action, which powers the crank shaft, which powers the transmission, which turns the axle, which turns the wheels and that’s how we get to Johnson County from Kansas City. But it isn’t how we got there to begin with.

I admit to laboring for years under the misconception that Johnson County is a creation of the automobile, a child of the post WWII-era car/baby boom. To drive along any of the county’s main thoroughfares and see all the strip malls, it’s easy to get the wrong impression about how this patchwork quilt of suburban hell/bliss (take your pick) arose.

It arose after the covered wagon, but before the automobile grew fins and began eating the landscape. In the 1920s and 30s, city dwellers were lured to the suburbs in large numbers by the Red Cars of the Strang Line Interurban Railway.

The Strang Line, brainchild and pet project of William B. Strang, considered by most to be the founder of Overland Park, ran from 7th and Oak through Westport and Overland Park to Olathe. It ran “once an hour on the half hour,” with “30 minute service on Sundays and holidays.”

Strang came to the Kansas City area from Syracuse, N.Y., around the turn of the century, having made a pile of money in the family business: streetcars. He took an immediate shine to the fields that are now Overland Park. Like many who came west, Strang visualized an ideal community when he stared at the prairie.

Strang was a man of many interests, including film making and aviation. He built Aviation Park, which became a center for aviation in the early years of the century and was frequented by the Wright Brothers, among others. Strang’s film company made two short movies, one about a streetcar and the other about an airplane, before the enterprise folded. Aviation Park was subdivided after Strang’s death in 1921 and sold for house lots.

Most importantly for the development of the area, Strang organized the Strang Land Company. He built the Strang Line around 1910 to get people to come and see the site of his ideal community. The cars were plush, with thick cushions, carpeting and curtains. It was advertised as the "highest, coolest, and most beautiful ride out of Kansas City."

The Strang Land Company’s main real estate sales instrument in the 1920s was a 24-page brochure entitled "A Home on Overland Turnpike." It painted a picture of Kansas City as a blighted, sunless metropolis full of pale, hounded citizens barely able to rouse themselves for another day’s toil. It stated that the Book of Nature was open to all, while making it clear that only the "right sort" would be accepted into this new Eden.

Since most of you probably won’t he making the trip to the Johnson County Historical Society’s archives anytime soon, a few excerpts from chapter one ("Are You One of the Sordid Sort?") are presented here, with contemporary annotations in italics:

City dwellers "are not apathetic, exactly, but city life has somehow destroyed their taste for the beautiful, has made their thoughts of an everyday, sordid nature, born of continuous contact with a great city where the dollar is the only god that is worshipped, and the occupation of getting dollars is the only art that is understood... “The trouble with the city resident is that his life and residence do not allow him to forget his business and the worries that are incidental to his occupation. While he lives within the city he can never feel. when he closes his office for the day, that he has left his cares behind him. “Such a life and such an environment crowd out of his soul everything that is beautiful and artistic, and leave only the sordid nature behind.” p.3.

In 1907, there were two stores in Overland Park. By 1931, there were around fifty “business concerns" in the area. The Overland Park Chamber of Commerce estimates that there are now 5,000 businesses operating on the highways and byways of the city. With a population of 112,000, Overland Park sits approximately at the center of metropolitan area with a population of 1.5 million.

“Why not live in God’s open where there is no smoke, no smell, no noisy screeching motor cars in the night to interfere with the serenity of your slumbers; none of the murkiness and dowdiness which cannot be avoided in the City; where you can have space to raise chickens, to grow flowers and vegetables; where you can keep your own cow and be independent?” p.15.

Richard Coleman, an urban designer and architect with the Overland Park Planning Department estimates that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 apartment units in Overland Park today, with plans for an additional 1,000 in the near future. The Johnson County Motor Vehicle Division processed 240,000 vehicle registration renewals in 1989. It is still legal to raise chickens and keep cows in Overland Park, provided you own at least three acres of land, approximately 130,000 square feet.

“Will you condemn your children to the shut-in life of the City with only it’s streets and parks for them to play in? Why don’t you make up your mind now and say the word that will take the pasty-white look out of their little faces and replace it with the healthy glow gained from direct contact with the clean, dark soil? Think a moment also of your wife. See how the roses are missing from her cheeks and how wearily she talks of her daily life and the obligations it entails.” p. 15-16.

There are 14 tanning centers in Overland Park and six garden centers. Take your pick, kids.

Under the spell of whatever logic or argument, people moved and have been moving across the state line ever since. Needless to say, the view of Overland Park has changed. The Strang Line did a rousing business in the 20s, but declined throughout the 30s as the use of automobiles increased in Johnson County and streetcar rider-ship declined. The last run was made on July 10, 1940. Most of the lines were removed during the war and, eventually, roads like K-l0 replaced the old right-of-ways.

Few fixtures of the Strang Line remain. Strang Park sits at the northeast corner of Farley and 89th Street, with remnants of the original lines. The limestone car barn and powerhouse (79th Street and Santa Fe Drive) now houses Traditions Furniture. The original Strang Line depot at 80th and Santa Fe Drive now houses (strange but true) Suburb Decoration, “Your One-Stop Decorating Shop.”