The Blue Spring

This modest spring is the reason a whole city has its name. As early as the eighteen twenties, cool clean water flowed from a hillside here into a tributary of the Little Blue River. To pioneers, traders, and wagon trains heading west on the Santa Fe trade, that reliable water made this an ideal place to camp and gather before crossing the open plains.

Freighters had already taken to calling the place Blue Springs, and a permanent settlement grew up beside the spring by the late eighteen thirties, taking its name from the water that drew everyone here. That watering stop grew into the city of Blue Springs, today one of the larger suburbs east of Kansas City. The spring itself is easy to overlook, but it is the humble origin point of everything around you, the small source that gave a Missouri city its name.