LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. —If you decide to make a trip to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, we have some detours you can make along the way.

The first stop will let you take a step back in time at the Rice-Tremonti Home in Raytown, Missouri. 

“It’s one of the few antebellum homes still left in Jackson County. Built in 1844, 16 years prior to the Civil War. It encompasses the whole sweep of American history from that time,” Leigh Elmore, President of Friends of the Rice-Tremonti Home Association, said. 

Early pioneer settlers built the home and established a plantation. 

“They made a good living, selling provisions to the westward travelers, those that were headed west on the Santa Fe Trail, Oregon Trail or the California Trail. There was quite a lot of traffic here in 1849 after gold was discovered in California,” Elmore said. 

Subsequent families kept that home intact for future generations.

“Luckily, we had the families that lived here, the Rice’s, the Lowe’s and the Tremonti’s, who knew the historical importance of it, and they kept it here and preserved it,” Elmore said. 

The Rice-Tremonti Home is open on the first and third Thursday of each month through October. Anyone interested in a tour of the historic home can find more information on the riends of the Rice-Tremonti Home Association website.

Roughly 20 minutes to the north, you’ll find the city of Independence, Missouri. There the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum is dedicated to sharing the former president’s life and legacy. 

“He helped open the building in 1957. He worked here right up until the end of his life in 1972. You can see the office he worked in and feel his foot prints in the hallways as you walk around the building,” Mark Adams, Education Director of the Harry S Truman Presidential Library and Museum, said. 

The building closed for a massive renovation in 2019 and reopened with new, state-of-the-art interactive exhibits in the spring of 2022. 

“We now tell Truman’s story all on one level from birth to death in chronological order, and amazingly we’ve never done that before,” Adams said. 

The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum is open seven days a week. You can find a full list of museum events here.