Come on guys and gals. I know y'all have good ideas out there. What sort of steampunk style locations and faces do you have??
Well as a resident of KC, I can say you can't discount the river and its importance during that era.
Here's an interesting tidbit I dug up:
In 1869, less than two months after the golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, symbolically joining east and west tracks in the first transcontinental railroad, Kansas City celebrated completion of the Hannibal Bridge, a railroad bridge joining north and south tracks across the Missouri River. With the opening of this new span, several additional railroads laid tracks to Kansas City to cross the “Mighty MO” and the threshold to places west. With the increased volume of rail traffic, Kansas City’s four small depots were stretched more and more to their limits. By 1877 construction of a new depot in Kansas City’s west bottoms was underway. Completion of Union Depot in 1878 gave Kansas City what was hailed as the “Handsomest and Largest Depot west of New York.”And of course the wikipedia entry on
KC.I'm naturally far more familiar with present day KC, but I can tell you a substantial amount of urban and sub-urban development north of the river didn't exist even until my lifetime. In fact much of the greater North Kansas City and Gladstone area wasn't developed at all when I was a child, and a lot of it was still farmland or woodlands.
It's still a "boom" area somehow since it started expanding in the 80's. Same goes for area's around Liberty MO., even Smithville and the Ozarks. Independence is something of an "older" township but is still expanding.
Point being back then you still had a lot of very untamed natural land and substantial woodlands north of the MO river. In the Dresdenverse a lot of nasty things could be poking around out there.
Keep the idea in mind that KC is basically a barter-town/crossroads grown big story. With the river ports and rail lines that eventually came through, Kansas City just kinda "happened".
Today it is a smallish city with delusions of grandeur