KC MUSEUM

In the boomtown 1880s, Kansas City's newly affluent families began to build mansions on the bluff overlooking the East Bottoms. Within a decade, landscape architect George Kessler had planned a winding system of parks and boulevards for the neighborhood - including Cliff Drive, Missouri's only urban state scenic byway - in an effort to guide and coordinate the city's growth in this neighborhood and farther south. But as more factories, grain elevators and steel mills moved into the East Bottoms, the mansion-dwellers, rankled by the stench of industry, moved out. Many of the original houses were destroyed or divided into multi-family units, and working-class immigrant communities repopulated the bluff. Today, strong neighborhood associations have helped restore the area's architectural and historical legacies while maintaining the Northeast's identity as one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the urban core.

CITY MARKET

The City Market's history of commerce dates back to the origins of Kansas City: John Calvin McCoy first established a dock on the riverbanks here called Westport Landing, where he unloaded supplies for his Westport store (founded 1834). In 1857, the first City Hall was built on "Market Square," where citizens gathered for horse-trading, political rallies, revivals, medicine shows and circuses. New merchants continued to arrive for decades (Ennis-Hanley-Blackburn Coffee Company, in 1904; the still-existing Planter's seed store, in 1928), and in the 1970s, when the blocks of quaint brick buildings were reborn as the River Quay entertainment district, the smell of money permeated once again. Today, City Market is best known for the greens unpacked each weekend from local produce trucks: It offers the region's largest farmers' market, open Saturdays and Sundays year-round.

DOWNTOWN KCMO

Political boss and liquor distributor Tom Pendergast ensured that Prohibition, imposed in 1919, had little effect on the rowdy 12th Street taverns and saloons in downtown Kansas City, Mo. The city's federal prosecutor at the time, who was on Pendergast's payroll, never brought a single felony prosecution under the Volstead Act; a bribed police force looked the other way. Fixed elections kept friends in high places, and in return Pendergast's other major business venture - a ready-mix company - was awarded millions of dollars in government contracts for the Depression-era construction of civic projects, including a new 29-story City Hall, the Jackson County Courthouse, Municipal Auditorium, the 700-acre Municipal Airport, and hundreds of miles of paved streets. Decades later, Kansas City's former appetite for vice endures abstractly in its splashy one-time reputation as the "Paris of the Plains." The appetite persists concretely, too, in our skyline.

KAW POINT

Located at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, Kaw Point affords rich history and privileged cityscape views. The Lewis and Clark expedition arrived here on June 26, 1804, and camped three days. In the late 19th century, a community of Croatian immigrants settled on the east-facing bluff called Strawberry Hill, a neighborhood whose ethnic heritage is still celebrated today. The canopied trails and outdoor amphitheater at Kaw Point Park, developed in the last ten years, make it one of the city's best urban treasures.

DOWNTOWN KCK

In July 1843, 664 members of the Wyandot Nation were forced to migrate west from their homes near Upper Sandusky, Ohio, following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. When an estimated 50-100 of the displaced died of typhoid and cholera on the banks of the Missouri River, the survivors carried the bodies across the water and buried them in a high ridge overlooking Kaw Point. The Wyandot continued burying their families at Huron Cemetery for generations. But for nearly as long, its location - in the center of downtown Kansas City, Kan. - inspired fierce battles between forces for development and forces for preservation. Finally, in 1998, the cemetery was officially preserved for religious, cultural and related purposes in keeping with its sacred history.

CENTRAL AVENUE/BETHANY PARK

Paleterias, carnicerias and Mexican groceries dapple the streets surrounding Central Avenue, which dips east-to-west through KCK's Riverview neighborhood. Hispanic communities settled in the area generations ago to work in Argentine's silver smelter and Armourdale's meatpacking plants, but most of the corridor's current storefronts have opened more recently than that. Between 1990 and 2010, the Hispanic and Latino population in Riverview more than quadrupled, booming from 2,609 to 10,610. In recent years, residents have begun to revitalize the neighborhood via commercial growth and community outreach - like the annual Halloween party thrown by the community center here in Bethany Park.