Most of Gunn City was built recently: 7% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1998. Below: maps from 1887 on and the census since 1880.
Gunn City was platted in 1871. It was named for O. B. Gunn, an engineer of the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad.
A famous vigilante action took place in Gunn City on April 23, 1872, that came to be called the "Gunn City Massacre." Outraged by a swindle by certain officials of a company building a rail line to Santa Fe, local citizens reacted by trapping the perpetrators on a train and shooting them dead.
Passages that mention Gunn City, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Cass County, Missouri1917 · page 566Read the page →
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Jesse E. Richardson was educated in the public schools of Gunn City and in 1906 when his father died, he succeeded to his father’s mercantile business in Gunn City, buying out the interests of the other heirs of the estate. David Richardson the father came to Cass County about 1867, and settled on a farm north of Gunn City, in Index township. Here he bought a hundred sixty acres of land and was successfully engaged in farming and stock raising for a number of years. In 1892 the father
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History of Cass County, Missouri1917 · page 629Read the page →
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he found that all the buildings upon his place had been destroyed. He accordingly settled upon eighty acres in Camp Branch township and sold his farm near Harrisonville. The farm upon which Solomon Yoder located is now owned by Alfred Kohler. In 1896 he moved to Gunn City and there his death occurred July 23, 1903. Seven years later, May 14, 1910, his widow followed him in death at the home of her daughter, Mrs.
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Gunn City, 1871 to 1954
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
