Fort Sumter wasn’t first, or so they say in Missouri when folks talk about the Civil War. They’re even advertising the idea in Smithsonian and other national publications.

Missouri historians are holding on to the notion that trouble was brewing, and maybe firing full force by 1854, when frontier settlers from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains but didn’t see eye-to-eye with neighbors sent by the New England Emigrant Aid Society to abolish slavery while settling the west.

I checked out the part of the claim I could reach with three easy day trips in and out of Kansas City. I wasn’t looking for Civil War battle sites, but for not-so-civil relationships.

Volunteers and staff in all the historic sites I visited really care about this story of the warring before the War. Finding your way is a bit of a puzzle best figured out with advance literature and a good map.

You can concentrate on the shoot-em-up style all along the border with Freesoilers and the Kansas Jayhawkers fighting for abolition and the Missouri Bushwhackers defending slavery as a way of life, as you check out interesting museums, historic houses and a battle site or two.

My plan connected me to the Pony Express, the bank-robbing James brothers and artist George Caleb Bingham, plus lots of pretty scenery and some great restaurants.

Since everything turned out to be more interesting than I expected, I didn’t leave enough time to check out Kansas City – except for a stroll through the Truman Presidential Museum & Library in next-door Independence.

Guess that’s a story for another day about a city which clearly looks like it’s on the move with new and expanded art museums, almost-completed massive entertainment and sports centers and the bustling, modern 1922 Country Club Plaza and 1914 Union Station.

Bustle is exactly what those short skinny Pony Express riders did when they delivered 35,000 letters during 18 months.

Stage coaches took four months to deliver the mail and the military sensing big trouble was brewing wanted faster communication, says Cindy Deffron, development director at the Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph.

Johnny Fry rode the first 80-mile leg west on Apr. 3, 1860, leaving the stables in St. Joseph at 7:15 p.m., and he rode the last leg of the return mail delivery 10 days later, back to the same stables at 4:30 p.m.

His family gathers every other year at the Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph, a city with lots going on an hour drive north of Kansas City, and the Fry descendants are expected in 2010 for the 150th anniversary festivities.

This museum is lots of fun and very interactive.

Heave the four-pouch leather mail holder called a mochila from one saddle to another, just like the lightweight riders had to do. They had two minutes to move to a new horse and refresh at each relay station along the 2,000 mile route, and each rider changed horses ten times on a shift.

NASCAR pit stop standards perhaps just before the Civil War?

Four hundred horses were needed — Morgans and Thoroughbreds in the east, Pintos in the middle stretch and Mustangs in the west—for the 160 relay stations.

The Pony Express Museum is a family place. Relatives of Pony Express rider Bob Haslan visit often; he’s the rider praised for going 380 miles in 36 hours. Buffalo Bill Cody’s great nephew visited last year, and confirmed the jacket on display is indeed from his Wild West shows, but more important to Pony Express fans is the fact Wild Bill was a mail rider, as well as a Civil War scout for the 7th Kansas Cavalry.

Schedule a day or two to explore the sparkling clean and fantastic Patee House just a few blocks away, a luxury hotel in 1858 and the headquarters of the Pony Express.

With 140 rooms, a recreated Main Street of the 1850s and ‘60s, fully-loaded covered wagon, 1854 saloon where you can order a sarsaparilla, model railroad and climb-aboard railroad mail car, 1920s auto and fire truck collections and lots more, the Patee House spills over with the enthusiasm of Gary Chilcote, its director for 40 years.

He gives context to the lives of the people in northwest Missouri as they were taking sides after passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act allowing the popular vote to determine free or slave state status for the territory.

Not only is the Patee House Museum a mesmerizing collection of astonishing depth and detail, it’s a good place to start delving into the myths and legends of Jesse James in the turbulent years before the shot was fired at Fort Sumter.

Thanks to abundant James tales, my three days of exploring in and out of Kansas City felt a bit like Elvis sightings. Everybody has a Jesse James story to tell, and most of them don’t match the others. That’s tough on fact-gathering reporters and historians, but kind of fun when you relax and just look for the passion people have about him.

At the farm in Kearney where Jesse and Frank James grew up, and Frank lived his last years, you can grasp the start of the 1850s anger which fueled the brothers and their gang, and most everyone else in this western territory.

The grounds are lovely but the story is mean: Jayhawkers from Kansas, called Union guerrillas by some tour guides, hanged the stepfather repeatedly, not quite to the point of death, beat up young Jesse, tossed an explosive into the house killing the youngest brother and severing the mother’s lower arm.

Their purpose: trying to get information on brother Frank who was presumably fighting with border ruffians, led by William Quantrill.

Liz Murphy added to the tales at the Jesse James Bank Museum in Liberty where former Jesse and Frank, dressed as Union soldiers, carried off the first daylight bank robbery on Feb.13, 1866.

She calls the abundance of Jesse James information "fakelore."

The house where Jesse was reportedly killed Apr .3, 1882 is next to the Patee House in St. Joseph, complete with his death photograph, a bullet hole in the wall, a painting of the killer entering the house and accounts of Jesse’s three burials and DNA testing.

Coffin artifacts seem to be important to the telling and re-telling of the Jesse James stories.

There’s almost as much talk about "Order 11"as there is about Jesse James. Everybody claiming the Civil War began in Missouri talks about "Order 11,"a demand issued Aug.25, 1863 by Sherman’s brother-in-law, Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing.

He said he was trying to stop the constant fighting between the pro-slavery Kansas Jayhawkers and the Missouri Bushwhackers, dating back to 1854.

Everyone in Cass County, Ewing declared, living more than one mile from Harrisonville or Pleasant Hill, had to move away within 15 days or swear a loyalty oath to the Union which would let them stay safely in a designated camp.

On day 16, virtually everything the pioneers had built was burned. The anger across the Kansas-Missouri border was abundant before Order 11, and it grew even stronger after those fires.

"Thirty percent of the original settlers came back in 1865 even though they had lost everything, Carol Bohl with the Cass County Historical Society says. "900 filed claims, but few were paid.

"This was personal, directed against civilians," Bohl says. "Nothing like this happened elsewhere in the United States."

Ask for Bohl in the Harrisonville Library and she’ll take you into the one log cabin which remained, presumably because it was tucked so deep in the woods. She’ll also load you up with facts about the unhappiness on the Missouri Kansas border in the late 1850s.

Tour guides in museums, historic sites and restored homes up and down Missouri’s western edge all talk about Order 11, and most of them point out their copy of the intricate scene of that slash and burn announcement painted years later by George Caleb Bingham.

He was trying to tell the voters in Ohio to vote no and not elect Ewing governor, using art for political commentary.

I didn’t know I’d be able to turn Civil War research into an art project, but I liked that turn of events a lot. Bingham’s handsome, beautifully furnished home in Independence is a good stop before catching a ride in a covered wagon to see the jail where Frank James was held, in a furnished unlocked cell, and to visit even more border wars places.

There are lots of "before the war began" trails to follow in Missouri.