page_title: Evergy
section_title: History of Kansas City Power & Light
hierarchical_section_title: Evergy / History of Kansas City Power & Light
caption_attribution_description: English: Kansas City Power and Light Building, Kansas City, Missouri
context_page_description: Evergy is an American investor-owned utility with publicly traded stock that has its headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, and in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was formed from a merger of Westar Energy of Topeka and Great Plains Energy of Kansas City, Missouri, parent company of Kansas City Power & Light. Evergy is the largest electric company in Kansas, serving more than 1,000,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in the eastern half of the state. Evergy has a generating capacity of 16,000 megawatt electricity from its over 40 power plants in Kansas and Missouri. Evergy service territory covers 28,130 square miles in east Kansas and west Missouri. Evergy owns more than 13,700 miles of transmission lines and about 52,000 miles of distribution lines.
context_section_description: Kansas City Power and Light Company was an electric utility company serving the Kansas City metropolitan area.  It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Great Plains Energy of which it was the biggest component.  The company traces its roots to November 1881 when Joseph S. Chick obtained the exclusive rights to use the Thompson-Houston arc lighting system in the counties of Jackson, Missouri, and Wyandotte, Kansas, for $4,000. The following month, the initial franchise to establish an electric works in the City of Kansas, Mo., was granted to Lysander R. Moore and later assigned to Kawsmouth Electric Light Company. Construction was begun in February 1882 on a power plant on a tract of land at the southeast corner of 8th and Santa Fe Streets in the West Bottoms. Kawsmouth Electric Light Company built quickly and, on Saturday night, May 13, 1882, brought electric illumination to the first 13 customers on the west side of Main Street in the downtown district. In 1885 the company reincorporated as Kansas City Electric Light Company.
  Weeks spun off the Edison Electric Light & Power Company to meet residential demand.  An electric war ensued when in 1883 J. Ogden Armour, heir to the Armour Packing Company purchased the company on May 14, 1900, to power the Metropolitan Street Railway Company and Kansas City Electric Light Company.  Under Armour the company bought competitors and built a new power plant in 1903, providing steam heat to downtown businesses.  The company focused on the trolley company and in 1911 it went into receivership.  In October 1917, the company spun off the trolley business (which still controlled some power plants) and emerged from bankruptcy as  Kansas City Light & Power Company. In 1917 the company began construction on the Northeast Power station.
  In June 1919, the company reincorporated again, as Kansas City Power and Light Company. After acquiring the Carroll County Electric Company on July 29, 1922, the reorganized company became Kansas City Power & Light Company, adopting the ampersand and corporate name that continues to this day.  Armour sold his interest in 1923.  Continental Gas & Electric Corporation purchased the controlling interest in 1924 and was part of United Light and Power until United dissolved in 1950.   The Hawthorn Station, situated on the Missouri River, was started in 1948, and the first of two units were completed in 1951. Two other units followed and were fully operational by 1956. Kansas City Power became independent in 1950.  It acquired Eastern Kansas Utilities in 1952.  It was part of a consortium that built Wolf Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Burlington, Kansas.
  On October 1, 2001 a holding company, Great Plains Energy Incorporated, was established based in Kansas City, Missouri that owned electric utility Kansas City Power and Light Company and Strategic Energy, LLC, an energy management company.
  It acquired Aquila, Inc. in July, 2008.
  In 2014, it ranked #855 on the Fortune 1000 list.
caption: The art deco Kansas City Power and Light Building was the former headquarters of the company and was the tallest building west of the Mississippi until 1942, tallest in Missouri until 1976 and tallest in Kansas City until 1986 and is the namesake of the downtown Kansas City Power & Light District
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