Jon E Taylor sku-8106874 All Books Independence History

Jon E Taylor’s A President, a Church and Trails West: Competing Histories in Independence, Missouri is a hardcover listed under All Books as sku-8106874. Taylor uses newspapers, public documents, oral histories and private papers to examine how Independence preserves and remembers its histories.

Joseph Smith declared the city Zion; it was a gathering and provisioning point for westward trails, and President Harry S. Truman called it home for sixty-four years. Truman’s presidential library opened there in 1957, his neighborhood became a national historic landmark in 1972, and his home became a national historic site in 1982.

Taylor argues that Mormon history and the history of the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails compete with Truman’s place in the city’s memory. He traces the return of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to Independence, its effects on neighborhoods near Truman’s home, and the preservation of trail history on the Independence square and at the National Frontier Trails Museum.

In the 1980s, the city council reduced the Truman Heritage District after church opposition while city officials pursued tourism tied to Truman. Taylor examines how these policies changed the landscape around Truman’s neighborhood and considers preservation in the context of U.S. and environmental history.