Olathe, Kansas

Everything Olathe is known for

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Rivers & Roads in Song near Olathe

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Olathe.

Interstate 35 27 songs Missouri River 7 songs U.S. Route 59 3 songs

History of Olathe

Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que: World-Famous Barbecue Born in a Gas Station RoadyGoat

1996

Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que, at the corner of 47th and Mission in Kansas City, Kansas, is one of the most celebrated barbecue joints in America, and it lives inside a working gas station. It opened in August of 1996, founded by Jeff and Joy Stehney, whose competition team Slaughterhouse Five won grand championships on the barbecue circuit, including the American Royal. It first opened under the name Oklahoma Joe's and was renamed Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que in 2014. The food earned national fame: Anthony Bourdain put it on his list of thirteen places to eat before you die. The signature is the Z-Man, a sandwich of slow-smoked brisket, smoked provolone, and two onion rings on a kaiser roll, named for a Kansas City radio host called The Z-Man. People still line up at the gas-station counter for the brisket, the burnt ends, and the ribs. (Sources: Joe's Kansas City; Wikipedia; Entrepreneur; Men's Health via explore.com.)

RoadyGoat → · 14.9 mi away

Bleeding Kansas - The Border That Started the Civil War RoadyGoat

1854

The Kansas-Missouri border became the most violently contested line in America before the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers vote on whether Kansas would be slave or free, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise. Missouri, already a slave state, shared its entire western border with Kansas. Pro-slavery Missourians and anti-slavery Northerners both flooded in to tip the vote. On March 30, 1855, hundreds of armed Missourians called Border Ruffians crossed into Kansas and stuffed ballot boxes, installing a pro-slavery legislature by fraud. Anti-slavery settlers called Jayhawkers refused to recognize it and set up a rival government. On May 21, 1856, Border Ruffians sacked Lawrence, Kansas, burning buildings and destroying a newspaper press. Three days later, abolitionist John Brown retaliated at the Pottawatomie Massacre, dragging five pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacking them to death with broadswords. Meanwhile in Washington, a South Carolina congressman walked onto the Senate floor and beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly to death with a metal-tipped cane over a speech about Kansas. Sumner could not return for three years. About fifty-five people were killed in the territory between 1855 and 1859. Kansas was admitted as a free state on January 29, 1861, days after Southern senators began walking out. The border you are crossing is the line that Border Ruffians and Jayhawkers fought and died over.

19.3 mi away

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

1933

One of America's finest encyclopedic art museums, built from the bequests of Kansas City newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson and schoolteacher Mary Atkins.

17.1 mi away

National World War I Museum and Memorial

1926

The only museum in the United States dedicated to World War I, built around the Liberty Memorial tower that was dedicated in 1926 before a crowd of 100,000.

18.6 mi away

Things to Do in Olathe

food 14.3 mi away
Joe's Kansas City BBQ

The Z-Man sandwich is legendary. Formerly Oklahoma Joe's. Inside a gas station.
historical 18.6 mi away
National WWI Museum

The nation's leading WWI museum. A glass bridge over a field of 9000 poppies.
food 20.3 mi away
Arthur Bryant's

The king of Kansas City BBQ since 1930. Presidents and celebrities line up for burnt ends.
historical 18.8 mi away
Crossroads Arts District

Kansas City's creative hub. Galleries bars and First Friday art walks.

Everything Near Olathe

34 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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