The Kansas City, Kaw Valley & Western Railway was an interurban rail line with electric car service between downtown Kansas City, Missouri and Lawrence, Kansas. The collection contains scattered records of the railway's operation, including correspondence, operational cost data, freight charge receipts, accident reports for the line during its most prosperous years, maps and architectural drawings, and an honor's thesis by John W. Florin on the history of the railway line.

The collection includes 85 aerial and ground photographs taken by official photographers stationed at the United States Naval Air Station in Olathe, Kansas, of the flooding in the greater Kansas City area in 1951.