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Vale Tunnel

1905 establishments in MissouriRailway tunnels in MissouriTransportation buildings and structures in Kansas City, MissouriTunnels completed in 1905

The Vale Tunnel is a railway tunnel south of Raytown, near Kansas City, Missouri. It was built by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad in 1903-04, and was the final tunnel of four to be built on the entire Rock Island railroad, all of which were in Missouri. The tunnel is part of the Kansas City to St. Louis, Missouri line, and travels beneath Bannister Road. In 1980, the Rock Island was liquidated in court and the tunnel and line across Missouri was eventually sold to the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (AKA Cotton Belt). The tunnel is 441 feet long. There have been several owners of the line since 1980, after the Rock Island went bankrupt. Most of the line remains intact as does the tunnel, except for a few places where it has been cut for road improvements. In 2016, the line was bought by Jackson County, Missouri. The line was converted into the Rock Island Rail Trail. The first phase was completed in June 2019, and was 6.4 miles. The second phase was opened in July 2021 with an additional 7 miles, for a total length of 13.5 miles. Vale Tunnel has received lighting and is one of the center pieces of the trail.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Vale Tunnel (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Vale Tunnel
East Bannister Road, Kansas City

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 38.9477 ° E -94.43537 °
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East Bannister Road 12702
64138 Kansas City
Missouri, United States
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Unity Village, Missouri
Unity Village, Missouri

Unity Village is a village in Jackson County, Missouri, United States, bordering Kansas City and Lee's Summit. It is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Its population was 99 at the 2010 census. The founders of the Unity spiritual movement, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, purchased a 58-acre farm in 1919 as a weekend getaway for employees of their downtown Kansas City headquarters. In March 1920, the land came to be known as Unity Farm, and the following purchase of 12 surrounding farms expanded the land to nearly 1,500 acres.The farm produced fruits and vegetables, including 7,500 apple trees, a 400-tree peach orchard, 12 acres of grapevines, cherry and plum trees, and fields of oats, corn, wheat, strawberries, asparagus, and soybeans. Unity Farm also supported a poultry house containing 2,000 white leghorn hens, whose eggs helped sustain a meatless menu at the Unity Inn cafeteria downtown. The Fillmores’ work was consolidated at Unity Village after World War II, and it is now the world headquarters for the ongoing spiritual movement. On March 15, 1953, the State of Missouri officially incorporated the land as Unity Village. In the 2010 census, its population was 99. The centerpiece of Unity Village is a campus with historic buildings. The grounds feature dwellings in the English Cotswold style as well as magnificent Mediterranean-inspired buildings designed by Waldo Rickert Fillmore (also known as Rickert), the second son of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. The Tower and an office building then used for the Silent Unity Prayer Ministry opened in 1929 and are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Unity Village is also home to two artificial lakes. Lake Charles R. Fillmore (named for the grandson of the Unity cofounders) was created in 1926 to supply water to the farm and orchard that Unity maintained until the 1980s. A crew of 100 men built a concrete buttress dam, the only one of its kind in Missouri and one of the few west of the Mississippi River, at a cost of $100,000 to form the lake. The lake is 42 feet deep and covers 21 surface acres, holding about 75 million gallons of water. It remains the primary water supply for the Village today, and its water is pumped to the on-campus water treatment plant.