In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • A President, A Church, and Trails West: Competing Histories in Independence, Missouri
  • Louis W. Potts
A President, A Church, and Trails West: Competing Histories in Independence, Missouri. By Jon E. Taylor. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2008.

In 1993-1998 Jon Taylor served as historian for the National Parks System at the Harry S Truman National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri. He found that the city "was just not wild about Harry" for it failed to preserve the neighborhood around Truman's home (x-xi). He then moved on to attain a Ph.D. He discovered that rival pasts of Independence—as the proclaimed Zion where members of the Reorganized Latter Day Saints Church (now the Community of Christ) were to gather and as the self-designated Queen City of the Trails (Santa Fe, California, Oregon)—vied with the legacy of our last walking president. "In Independence, the three competing [End Page 124] histories have different constituencies that lobby for each history, and sometimes, often without realizing it, community leaders make decisions about one history that have serious implications for the preservation of the other two" (7). Thus while this work is not interdisciplinary, it does follow the three threads (the warp) as they are woven into the woof—historic preservation, heritage tourism, and memory vs. history. He succeeds in attaining his goal. With occasional recourse to a series of maps, periodic photographs, and a lucid chronology covering 1831-2007 the reader can see the fabric emerge.

There are actually two churches involved in these contests over the past and future. The Mormons came to Independence in 1831, were forced out in 1833 and expelled from the state five years later. After Reorganization in 1860 they returned to the west side of town to fulfill a vision of building an ideal community around sacred ground. A hospital served the wider community 1909-2007 and since 1920 the church's headquarters, an auditorium (1926), and a temple (1992) have added significantly to the cultural landscape. Truman is on record in the 1960s claiming of his fellow townspeople's antipathy toward the RLDS, "The old people hate them just as much now as they did then. It's a violent prejudice. I don't feel that way, and a great many of the people in Independence do not" (30). After establishment in 1974 of a Heritage District the First Baptist Church was more aggressive in acquiring properties, demolishing structures and challenging preservation efforts. The author laments of a crisis, "In 1984 the city council, bowing primarily to the argument that church autonomy was more important than preserving the environment associated with a former president" began reducing the size of the district so churches could expand (242-243). Preservation of the site lost out.

Truman claimed two main ties to the trails heritage, the least strong thread in this story. His grandfather in 1846-1860 was a teamster on the trails west "and I heard a great many stories from him on how the opening of this country came about" (55). From 1926 until his death in 1972 he served as president of the National Old Trails Association. Yet he recognized that Independence largely turned its back on its antebellum heritage: "they never had done anything for the National Old Trails" (52). Rather, in his lifetime, historic structures had been destroyed surrounding the Square and county courthouse. Only on extended Labor Day weekends since 1973 did an annual festival fill the Square with tourists and after 1990 was a National Frontier Trails Center, a dubious venture of the state and local politicians, opened off the Square.

The strongest thread pursued is that of historic preservation with the combined, if not coordinated, efforts of federal agencies. NARA, managing the presidential museum and library is largely praised here. The task of the NPS is less so. The dilemma for the latter from 1982 onward was that its initial responsibility was the Truman Home. An NPS regional officer exclaimed, "The house was such a gift because it was so complete...we got a house there that looked like people lived in it." The insurmountable challenge was that "turning the home into a tourist attraction...

pdf

Share