World War I Museum

For our March meeting, we took a trip up to Kansas City to visit the National WWI Museum and Memorial. This is the only museum in the United States dedicated to World War I.

The museum itself is located underground, beneath the memorial. To enter, you walk across a glass bridge over a field of 9,000 silk red poppies, each representing 1,000 combatant deaths—a staggering visual introduction to the scale of the war.

A walk through the museum will give you a chronological display of events of the war. Tanks, uniforms, and personal letters are just a few of the features on display. There are several displays throughout that use life-sized dioramas of trenches along with high-tech audiovisual displays.

Why Kansas City?

It’s a common question: Why is the national museum in Missouri? The answer lies in the city’s immediate response to the war’s end. In 1919, Kansas Citians raised over $2.5 million in just 10 days (equivalent to roughly $50 million today) to build a memorial for those who served.