Kansas City offers a number of worthwhile museums.

One that gives a surprisingly rich in-depth view of life on the 19th-century American frontier is the Arabia Steamboat Museum, situated near the Missouri River in the downtown area, north of the Plaza. It's owned and operated by the Hawley family, who discovered and excavated the remains of the boat.

Before the railroads opened up the West, shallow-hulled steamboats plied the rivers, bringing passengers and supplies. On Sept. 5, 1856, the Arabia sank near Parkville, Mo., just north of Kansas City. The boat was loaded with 200 tons of supplies, including tiny beads to trade with the Indians, tools, shoes, dishes, luxury foods, everyday clothing, and, supposedly, gold and whiskey.

The Arabia went down fast. No lives were lost except that of a mule tethered to the stern, but passengers had no time to rescue their belongings. As the Missouri River shifted over the years, the Arabia was lost under farm fields, but memories of it and its cargo lived on.

In 1987, Kansas Citian David Hawley pored over old maps and figured out where the boat must be. He, his brother Greg, their father, Bob, and family friends Jerry Mackey and David Luttrell located the wreck and got permission from the farmer to excavate it over the course of the winter — as long as the fields were restored in time for spring planting.

The story of how they did it is almost as fascinating as the goods themselves, painstakingly preserved and well worth a visit. No gold or whiskey were found, but the things that were buried were in some ways more valuable, from printed buttons that match the fabrics they were sold with to a set of carpenters tools.

The Hawleys decided not to break up the collection. They figured out ways to preserve their trove; the exhibits grow as each piece, from leather goods to wooden beams, is finished and brought from the restoration areas. There's always something new, and, as a bonus, David and Bob Hawley often offer their own recollections after showings of a documentary film about the dig. The bones of the mule are there, too.

LIBERTY MEMORIAL AND NATIONAL WORLD WAR I MUSEUM

A couple of miles south of the Arabia is the Liberty Memorial, a 217-foot tower built to honor the memories of the 418 Kansas Citians killed in World War I, and all those who served in the war. It was constructed with the contributions of 83,000 donors, including pennies and nickels from schoolchildren, and dedicated in 1926.

In 2004, Congress designated it the National World War I museum; in 2006, the complex was declared a national historic landmark. The exhibits are vividly evocative of the war that devastated a generation and led to World War II.

The entrance is a glass bridge above a muddy field strewn with 9,000 poppies, each of them representing a thousand battlefield deaths. Two theaters show newsreels and representations of the trenches. The artifacts on display include uniforms, weapons and a tank, and the high-tech interactive displays beguile visitors of all ages. It's a sobering and informative primer on mass warfare.

NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM OF ART

Like the St. Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art sits atop a hill and offers free admission. It has a wide-ranging but manageable collection of art, from the modern works exhibited in the stunning Bloch Wing (which opened in 2007) to the just-revamped and reopened Egyptian galleries.

Built around the rich, ornate contents of the 2,300-year-old tomb of an Egyptian noblewoman named Meretites ("Beloved of her father"), complete with her beautifully decorated inner and outer coffins, the exhibit displays assorted accessories and elaborate grave goods. Among them are a large and charming collection of shabtis, small figurines of workers designed to take care of Meretites' every need in the afterlife.

The rooms are handsome and attractively done but not really worth a special visit. They're worth seeing, though, with the Nelson's other collections.

I was more taken with the impressive three-gallery American Indian Art Collection, open since November, which includes pre-Columbian to contemporary Indian art. Seeing the piles of long-buried trade beads at the Arabia Museum made the intricate, sophisticated beadwork on view at the Nelson even more meaningful and impressive.