Former Site of Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins
Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri
Marker Inscription
In 1931 Emmett Breen built Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins west of here. On July 19, 1933 Platte County Sheriff Hold Coffey led a coalition of lawmen from the Platte County Sheriff's Office, Missouri Highway Patrol and the Jackson County Sheriff's Of… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
In 1931 Emmett Breen built the Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins along the highway west of here, a typical Depression-era auto-camp. On July 19, 1933 it became a battleground: a coalition of Platte County, Jackson County, and Missouri Highway Patrol lawmen converged on the site in one of the violent lawman-versus-outlaw confrontations that marked the Midwest's 'public enemy' era of the early 1930s.
Why it matters
It marks a flashpoint of the Depression-era crime wave, when roadside auto-camps and fast cars made rural highways the stage for the nation's most infamous outlaws.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
West of Kansas City, this marker recalls a very particular American moment: the Depression-era highway, where hard times, fast cars, and desperate people collided. When Emmett Breen built the Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Cabins in 1931, he was answering the needs of a country newly in love with the automobile — and newly on the move. Roadside auto-camps like his offered gas, food, and a cheap cabin to travelers making their way across the middle of the continent.
But the early 1930s were also the depths of the Great Depression, and the same open roads that carried families and salesmen also carried a new kind of criminal. This was the era the newspapers called the age of the 'public enemy' — armed robbers who used powerful cars and the seams between county and state jurisdictions to stay a step ahead of the law.
Into that world stepped the lawmen: local sheriffs, the young state highway patrols, and county officers, often improvising cooperation across boundaries that outlaws exploited. The Red Crown site sits right at that intersection of ordinary roadside commerce and the violent manhunts of the Depression's crime wave.
People & events
The marker gives us two names on opposite sides of the story. The first is Emmett Breen, who put up the tavern and cabins in 1931 — the entrepreneur, the builder, the man who saw opportunity along the highway. His establishment was meant to be a comfortable waypoint, nothing more.
The second is Platte County Sheriff Holt Coffey, who on July 19, 1933 led a coalition of lawmen to this site. What makes his role notable is the coalition itself: officers from the Platte County Sheriff's Office, the Missouri Highway Patrol, and the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, joining forces across jurisdictions. That kind of combined posse was exactly the answer the era demanded, because the fugitives of the day counted on lawmen not talking to one another.
The confrontation that followed became one of the memorable lawman-versus-outlaw clashes of the Midwest's 'public enemy' years. The marker's own text breaks off before the shooting is described, and that is a good place to leave it — the essential point is that a quiet roadside stop became, for one violent day, the front line of the Depression's war on crime.
Its place in the American story
The early 1930s produced a rogues' gallery of outlaws whose names still echo, and a national anxiety that ordinary law enforcement could not keep up with them. Sites like the Red Crown Tavern are the physical settings of that drama — proof that the 'public enemy' era was not a movie but something that happened at real gas stations and cabin courts along real American highways.
The episode also marks a turning point in how the country policed itself. The multi-agency posse that gathered here foreshadowed the modern coordination between local, state, and eventually federal authorities — cooperation that the mobility of automobile-age criminals made unavoidable. The lawmen were learning, in real time, to fight fugitives who no longer respected the old boundaries.
And it captures the double face of the automobile in American life: the same freedom of the open road that thrilled families on vacation also handed outlaws a getaway. The Depression-era highway was where those two stories met, sometimes with gunfire.
If you visit
There is nothing left of the tavern and cabins today — the marker stands for a place that time and traffic erased, so come prepared to read rather than to sightsee. The reward here is imaginative: to look at an ordinary stretch of road west of Kansas City and repopulate it with 1933.
Picture the low tourist cabins, the tavern with its lights on, the dust of the highway, and then the sudden arrival of a posse of sheriffs and patrolmen. Read the marker and let the date — July 19, 1933 — pin the scene in place. It helps to remember that this was a working roadside stop, the kind of unremarkable spot where the era's violence often actually landed.
For a road-tripper interested in the outlaw history of the Midwest, this makes a satisfying stop precisely because it isn't a polished attraction. Stand where it happened, get the geography into your body, and you'll understand the 'public enemy' era better than any film can teach you. Then drive on — as everyone in that story eventually did.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Emmett Breen
- · Sheriff Holt Coffey
Related events
- · Red Crown Tavern shootout
Themes & tags
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