KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The Kansas City stockyards were the place to be for some creatures to be back in the 1870s, helping the area known as the West Bottoms grow rapidly.
Packing houses were built and thrived for years, creating the need for workers willing to put in long hard hours to earn a living.
Instead of recruiting all local employees, business owners looked to immigrants from Croatia as a logical choice.
But the West Bottoms were no place to live thanks to flooding by the nearby Missouri River, so Croatian families moved just a short distance away to higher ground.
Bernadette Soptick's family is Croatian, and she describes how they found a place to live on Strawberry Hill in Kansas City, Kansas.
Janie Hayes, of the Strawberry Hill Museum and Center says there were a number of ethnic groups in the area and that they all “watched out for each other."
Strawberry Hill is bordered by Minnesota Avenue to its north, Interstate 70 to its east and south, and by 7th Street to its west.
It's still a vibrant neighborhood, but its population declined in 1956 when over 200 houses were razed for the construction of I-70. The last packing house closed in 1976.
Tony Kovac grew up on Strawberry Hill and says although many former residents have moved from the historic KCK neighborhood, the culture remains strong.
St. John the Baptist Churchon the hill was established over 125 years ago. For a time in the 1970s, the church offered mass in the Croatian language. During holiday services, music from the old country resonates through the chapel.
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