Overland Park City

Johnson County, Kansas

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Overland Park City Hall is located at 8500 Santa Fe Drive, Overland Park, KS 66212.
Phone: 913‑895‑6000.

Neighborhoods

In 1905 William B. Strang, Jr. platted a number of subdivisions along a military highway. One of these he named Overland Park. His vision for this section was for a planned, "park-like" community. From then until his death in 1921, Strang established several housing developments, an interurban railroad and an airfield.

The City of Overland Park was incorporated from Mission Urban Township in 1960 at which time the population was approximately 28,000. By 2010, Overland Park had grown to more than 175,000 residents. [1]

Overland Park's beginnings, around the turn of the 20th century, are still visible in the area known as downtown. Situated between 79th and 80th Streets and a few blocks west of Metcalf, Overland Park's first commercial center began in 1906 with the coming of the Kansas-Missouri Interurban railway, a commuter train connecting Kansas City with the bucolic Johnson County. Here a small, pre-existing farming community blossomed into a suburban settlement with a small business district to sustain it. After World War II, when the major north-south road, previously named Washington Crossing Road, became U.S. 169 the new commercial strip incorporated this old commercial center and its surrounding residential neighborhoods. Today Santa Fe Drive, downtown Overland Park's "Main Street," with its narrow streets, contiguous facades, and tree-lined sidewalks, has nearly been swallowed-up by the gas stations and auto malls of Metcalf Avenue. [2]

  1. City of Overland Park, KS, History of Overland Park, www.opkansas.org, accessed August, 2011.
  2. Daniel J. Carey, Suburban Place? Constructing Place in Overland Park, Kansas, 2008, Masters Thesis, University of Kansas, found at books.google.com, accessed August, 2012.

Nearby Towns: Lenexa City • Shawnee City •


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