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Jefferson Highway
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On October 25, 2003, the Powers Museum assisted the Cass County Historical Society of Harrisonville, MO in a test road rally over a portion of the Jefferson Highway located between Harrisonville and Webb City, MO. The museum has been researching the route in Jasper, Barton and Vernon counties to find the various alignments of the Jefferson Highway and the original Highway 71 route that was developed after the initial campaign for the Jefferson Highway. Other historical societies, museums and other interested parties along the Jefferson/Highway 71 have been assisting in the project, too, and it is anticipated that other groups will join as the project is expanded throughout the entire route in Missouri and Kansas. The Powers Museum has been in contact with Texas and Oklahoma museums along the route and the Cass County Historical Society has made contact with Iowa and Minnesota museums.
If you have information on the Jefferson Highway in your area or photographs from any location along the highway's route, please contact the Powers Museum.
The section map (click here) represents only a small portion of the route that was driven on October 25th. The map is taken from a "1923 International Tourist Guide for the Jefferson Highway."
Anyone with information on the Jefferson Highway or early Highway 71 is urged to contact the Powers Museum. The various county contacts are looking for photographs of the highways, businesses located along or near the highways or work crews and/or active supporters of the highways or the earlier 365 Day Road clubs.
Click here to see how Harrisonville, Missouri has recognized their Jefferson Highway heritage.
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Why would the Powers Museum be interested in this subject area? Not only did the highway intersect Carthage but its longtime promoter was James Douglas Clarkson of Carthage. Mr. Clarkson was an agricultural implement dealer (at 2nd & Main, now the Bank of America parking lot), who after retirement from that business, literally rode the length of the highway — New Orleans to Winnipeg — in a mobile office complete with desk and Dictaphone during the years 1916 to 1922 to promote its development. The July 1916 Jefferson Declaration seen here is a sample of the monthly publication of the Jefferson Highway Association and Clarkson supplied much of the material for the publication including an "on-the-road" type report each month. For more information on the Jefferson Highway, click here. For Butler, Missouri's Jefferson Highway link, click here. Other county links will be coming soon.
For information on Pittsburg State University's Axe Library/Special Collections holdings on the Jefferson Highway in southeast Kansas, click here.
Copyright © 2009 Powers Museum
1617 West Oak • P.O. Box 593 • Carthage, MO 64836
e-mail:infonow@powersmuseum.com
| phone: 417-237-0456
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