Kansas City News Blog

Five years ago, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood in the parking lot near Kaw Point Park, an overgrown spit at the confluence of the Missouri and Kaw rivers littered with debris and wafting the odor of dead fish, someone in the crowd asked him what he saw. The noted clean-water activist said simply: "A squandered resource."

Mike Calwell was there that day. In fact, he and his wife, Laura -- and their work with the Friends of the Kaw -- had brought Kennedy to the gritty industrial bottoms just east of Kansas City, Kansas. Since then, the couple have been working to turn that forgotten spot into a historic destination where residents and tourists can explore the 1804 landing of Lewis and Clark.

After this weekend, they're mighty close to declaring: mission accomplished.

On Friday, Jason mentioned the activity at Kaw Point Park this weekend. So using any excuse to hang out near the river, I thought I'd check it out. The last time I was at this notoriously dead-fish-smelling confluence was last summer for the start of the Missouri River 340 kayak race, when racers had their gear shoehorned among the trees and weeds and struggled to get past each other along a claustrophobically narrow path.

On Sunday, the place looked entirely different.

Calwell, a friendly guy who strikes a Lewis-and-Clark pose if you ask him for a photo, gave me the rundown on the park's evolution. In March 2004, he lined up enough donations to build a $150,000 boat ramp. Volunteers blazed a preliminary trail, allowing visitors to venture out to the point to stand where Lewis and Clark landed, see where the two rivers meet and get a killer view of downtown Kansas City. "But any time we got high water," Calwell said, "it just tore up the park."

Now that problem has been solved -- and then some.

In recent weeks, Calwell cobbled together another round of donations that turned the Point into a performance venue. Using $100,000 worth of rocks the size of dining tables donated by a local construction company and two days' free labor from the Unified Government, Calwell's volunteer crew armored the banks of the unruly river, so the park won't be washed over with litter and debris every time the river rises. They shored up a new path and opened up the entry area by building a four-foot retaining wall. And, the piècepiècepièce dedede résistancerésistancerésistance: They turned a scrubby hill into a natural amphitheater and stage that will be juiced up to 100 amps.

A dozen volunteers were still putting the finishing touches on the new rock structures as Calwell regaled me with even grander vision for the historic landing sight. A paved trail out to the point. A 600-pound statue of Lewis and Clark that was donated to Friends of Kaw Point but kept in storage finally placed on display. Rows of stones in front of the stage tagged with the names of every person in the Lewis and Clark party.

"They'll be nothing like it in the U.S.," Calwell said proudly. "And I've seen all of them."