Edwardsville, KS

The townsite was surveyed in 1869 on the north bank of the Kansas River along the Union Pacific line, about 13 miles west of Kansas City. The land had belonged to Half Moon, a chief of the Delaware (Lenape), who sold it to a General Smith; Smith sold it on to William Knous, who platted the town. A post office had been established in 1867. source

The name. Named for John H. Edwards, general passenger agent of the railroad, who also served as a justice of the peace and as state senator from Ellis County. source

Incorporated as a city in 1915. In 1910 the town had a population of 209. source 1 source 2

1. 1867A post office was established at the site. source
2. 1869The townsite was surveyed on land that had belonged to Delaware chief Half Moon, and platted by William Knous, along the Union Pacific on the north bank of the Kansas River. source
3. 1881By the early 1880s Edwardsville was a town of thirty or forty dwellings with business houses, a depot and a school, and the surrounding Kaw Valley bottomland had become potato country - farmers shipped through the Kansas City market as far as Chicago and St. Louis. Jacob T. Williamson, whose family had farmed ground that became Armourdale, bought 300 acres near Edwardsville in 1881 and was described in an 1883 state history as a farmer and potato specialist. source
4. 1886Jacob and Rebecca Williamson sold an acre at the western edge of their land, by a deed dated February 18, 1886, to five men - John Elmore, Henry Francis, Clayborn Cannon, Solomon Hodges and Junius G. Groves - for use as a cemetery for African American burials. The oldest legible headstone predates the deed by three years. The burial ground was forgotten until the mid-1990s, when the owner of the land found the graves during residential development and left the area marked and undisturbed; by 2006 the City of Edwardsville owned the cemetery and had undertaken to maintain it. source
5. 1914A Kansas City interurban trolley, the Kaw Valley line, was serving this stretch of the valley out to Bonner Springs. source
6. 1915Incorporated as a city; the 1910 census had recorded only 209 residents, so the city as it exists today is overwhelmingly a post-war and late-twentieth-century build-out (ACS median year built 1982). source 1 source 2
7. 1997Wyandotte County and the City of Kansas City, Kansas consolidated into the Unified Government effective October 1, 1997. Edwardsville did not consolidate and continues to operate its own city government with a six-member city council. source 1 source 2
8. 2024Edwardsville renamed 98th Street for Junius G. Groves. source

The median home sold here was built in 1989. Most of what sells was built between 1965 and 2024. That closely matches the Census figure of 1982 for all housing, so sales are broadly representative of the stock. 70% of sales included finished basement space beyond the above-grade footprint - which matters here, because square footage quoted above grade can understate a house considerably.

By property type, sales broke down as Single Family (28), Patio/Villa (5).

An Edwardsville address is a Wyandotte County address but is NOT a Kansas City, Kansas address. Wyandotte County's government consolidated with the City of Kansas City, Kansas effective October 1, 1997 to form the Unified Government; Edwardsville, Bonner Springs and Lake Quivira remained separately incorporated cities with their own mayors and councils and are not part of that consolidated city. source 1 source 2

A railroad town on the Union Pacific main line, laid out on land bought from Delaware (Lenape) chief Half Moon. source

Roy Williamson House

A two-story house of locally quarried limestone at 1865 Edwardsville Drive, built about 1909 and listed on the National Register in 2007. Roy and Minnie Williamson designed both the house and its grounds; a local stonemason named William Jones did the facing work. The design carries Arts and Crafts marks - low roof pitches, wide eaves, a shingled second story - with a two-story round turret of curved glass at the front corner. The nomination treats the setting as a designed landscape, with a circular drive around a stone fountain fishpond, dry-laid retaining walls terraced into the hillside and peonies the Williamsons planted still in bloom. The property was once part of a 300-acre farm; about three and a half acres remain with the house, the rest having become a subdivision named Williamson Farm. source 1 source 2

Schools

Bonner Springs-Edwardsville USD 204, headquartered in Bonner Springs. Boundaries do not follow city limits: USD 204 covers portions of Bonner Springs, Edwardsville, Kansas City and surrounding rural areas. Confirm attendance area by address. Confirm the assigned school for any specific address before you rely on it. source

Getting around

On the Union Pacific main line and the north bank of the Kansas River; I-70 and K-7 run through or adjacent to the city, and it sits just south of the Kansas Speedway interchange. About 13 miles due west of downtown Kansas City, Missouri in a straight line. source 1 source 2

Junius G. Groves

Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1859, Groves walked to Kansas in 1879 among the Exodusters, settled at Edwardsville, bought 80 acres and built that up to more than 500 acres in the Kaw Valley. He was called the Potato King of the World for growing more bushels per acre than any other producer on record, and the Union Pacific built a spur to his property to move the crop. He founded the community of Groves Center near Edwardsville, laid out a golf course, built a large brick house that drew national newspaper coverage, and died at Edwardsville in 1925. In 2024 Edwardsville renamed 98th Street for him. source 1 source 2