Kansas City traces its beginnings to 1821, when Missouri was admitted to the Union. In that year, Francois Chouteau, a French man living in St. Louis, came up the Missouri River and established a trading post on the waterway in the area that is now the northeast industrial district. Another young trader, John Calvin McCoy, opened a store inland on the Santa Fe Trail. He considered his land a portal to the West and thus named it Westport.