Bus #24 from Kansas City goes to the small town of INDEPENDENCE , twenty minutes east of the city and most famous as the former home of President Harry S. Truman. The Truman Presidential Museum and Library on US-24 and Delaware Street (Mon-Wed & Sat 9am-5pm, Thurs 9am-9pm, Sun noon-5pm; $5) includes a reconstruction of his White House office, and chilling documents pertaining to the development of the atomic bomb. The Victorian Truman Home , a mile south at 219 N Delaware St, is decorated as it was when it functioned as the summer White House (daily 8.30am-5pm, in winter closed Mon; $3).

Jesse James staged the first ever daylight bank robbery in 1866 in what's now the Jesse James Bank Museum , on the Old Town Square of LIBERTY , fifteen miles northeast of downtown Kansas City (Mon-Sat 9am-4pm; $4). Among the memorabilia and dusty relics of early banking, you can see the vault and the safe that he raided.