INDEPENDENCE, MO (KCTV) -
In about a month, fans will flood the metro for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Downtown Kansas City and Kauffman Stadium will be a baseball lover's paradise.
But when visitors want to know what else Kansas City has to offer, people may want to tell them to go off the beaten path.
One of the places where hotel rooms are going fast is Independence. There is more than meets the eye in the home of Harry Truman.
What most people know of Independence involves the 33rd United States president. And people in Independence are wild about Harry. But Truman sights aren't the only interesting places to see.
Visitors can head back to the frontier days with a Conestoga wagon ride filled with exciting tales of yore from wagon master Ralph Goldsmith.
"About that time a barmaid stuck her head out of a second floor window of the saloon and yelled, 'You tell 'em Wild Bill Hickock," Ralph Goldsmith said.
The tours start in front of the town's old jail where sparse rooms sit alongside a special, furnished cell where Frank James, Jesse's older brother, was held.
For the entire six months that Frank James stayed here, even when the door was shut, it was never locked.
"People in this area considered him a hero," Goldsmith said. "They literally brought him steak dinners, comforters, dressers, had card playing games every night in the jail."
If visitors want to make a day of the James gang, there is the bank in Liberty, site of one of the crew's robberies. Up by Kearney is the James family farm, and in St. Joseph, people can see where Jesse was killed.
If people are looking for something more hands on, and lesser known, check out the Puppetry Arts Institute. Kids can paint their own puppet heads to put on a show. There are traditional puppets from around the world, and some faces you might recognize, like Howdy Doody, Punch and Judy, and of course, Give 'Em Hell Harry.
If unusual is what one is looking for, head inside an unauspicious storefront for a surprising look at human hair. It was years later that Leila Cohoon began collecting it in the form of Victorian era hair work, wreaths made from human hair.
"That one was a wedding gift from the bride to her husband, made of her hair and his hair and her wedding bouquet and part of her dress," Cohoon said, owner of Leila's Hair Museum.
The delicate creations are a lost art form, an art form Cahoon is working to resurrect.
"There's 30 techniques to do every one of these hair wreaths in my museum. And I can teach 26 of them. It took me 32 years to figure out how to do it," she said.
There is also a selection of celebrity hair including the King, who has a direct link to Leila.
"Elvis, I had classes from his barber," she said.
And though covered wagon is one way to get around, there will also be $1 trolley rides on Fridays and Saturdays this summer, taking people to all the better known historic sites in town.
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