Source: https://sphsp.org/find-a-chapter/usa/stat-of-missouri/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:09:03+00:00

Document:
BEING A PARENT IS A GIFT:LETS ALL WORK TOGETHERsingleparentshelpingsingleparents.comhttps://twitter.com/HelpingMomsDadshttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Singleparentshelpingsingleparentscom-Club-State-of-Missouri/519252221506238Each local group is moderated by local volunteers. Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on ‘Find Chapter’. Have fun!
Missouri (see pronunciations)—nicknamed The Show-Me State—is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. Missouri is the 21st most extensive and the 18th most populous of the 50 United States. Missouri comprises 114 counties and the independent city of St. Louis.
The four largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. Missouri’s capital isJefferson City. The land that is now Missouri was acquired from France as part of the Louisiana Purchaseand became known as the Missouri Territory. Part of the Territory was admitted into the union as the 24th state on August 10, 1821.
Missouri’s geography is highly varied. The northern part of the state lies in dissected till plains while the southern part lies in the Ozark Mountains (a dissected plateau), with the Missouri River dividing the two. The state lies at the intersection of the three greatest rivers of North America, with the confluence of theMississippi and Missouri Rivers near St. Louis, and the confluence of the Ohio River with the Mississippi north of the Bootheel. The starting points of the Pony Express and Oregon Trail were both in Missouri. Themean center of United States population as of the 2010 Census is at the town of Plato in Texas County.
The state is named for the Missouri River, which was named after the indigenous Missouri Indians, aSiouan-language tribe. They were called the ouemessourita (wimihsoorita), meaning “those who have dugoutcanoes“, by the Miami-Illinois language speakers. As the Illini were the first natives encountered by Europeans in the region, the latter adopted the Illini name for the Missouri people.
While many American states have names that its natives and non-natives pronounce dissimilarly, Missouri is the only one whose name is pronounced differently even just among its present-day natives—the two most common pronunciations being /məˈzɜri/ and /məˈzɜrə/. This situation of differing pronunciations has existed since the late 1600s. Further pronunciations also exist in Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, involving the realization of the first syllable as either /mə/ or /mɪ/; the stressed second syllable as either /ˈzɜr/ or /ˈzʊər/; the third syllable as /i/, /ə/, centralized /ɪ/ ([ɪ̈]), or even ∅ (in other words, a non-existent third syllable); and the phoneme /r/ as either of two allophones: [ɹ] or [ɻ]. Any combination of these phonetic realizations may be observed coming from speakers of American English.
Politicians often employ multiple pronunciations, even during a single speech, to appeal to a greater number of listeners. Often, “eye dialect” spellings of the state’s name, such as “Missour-ee” or “Missour-uh,” are used informally to phonetically distinguish pronunciations.
Missouri borders eight different states, as does its neighbor, Tennessee. No state in the U.S. touches more than eight states. Missouri is bounded on the north by Iowa; on the east, across the Mississippi River, by Illinois,Kentucky, and Tennessee; on the south by Arkansas; and on the west by Oklahoma,Kansas, and Nebraska (the last across the Missouri River). The two largest Missouri rivers are theMississippi, which defines the eastern boundary of the state, and the Missouri River, which flows from west to east through the state, essentially connecting the two largest metros, Kansas City and St. Louis.
Although today the state is usually considered part of the Midwest, historically Missouri was considered by many to be a Southern state, chiefly because of the settlement of migrants from the South and its status as a slave state before the Civil War. The counties that made up “Little Dixie” were those along the Missouri River in the center of the state, settled by Southern migrants who held the greatest concentration of slaves.
In 2005, Missouri received 16,695,000 visitors to its national parks and other recreational areas totaling 202,000 acres (820 km), giving it $7.41 million in annual revenues, 26.6% of its operating expenditures.
North of, and in some cases just south of, the Missouri River lie the Northern Plains that stretch into Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Here, gentle rolling hills remain from the glaciationthat once extended from the Canadian Shield to the Missouri River. Missouri has many large river bluffs along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec rivers. Southern Missouri rises to the Ozark Mountains, a dissected plateau surrounding the Precambrian igneous St. Francois Mountains. This region also hosts karst topography characterized by high limestone content with the formation of sinkholes and caves.
Missouri generally has a humid continental climate ( Dfa) with cold winters and hot and humid summers. In the southern part of the state, particularly in the Bootheel, the climate turns into a humid subtropical climate. Located in the interior United States, Missouri often experiences extremes in temperatures. Without high mountains or oceans nearby to moderate temperature, its climate is alternately influenced by air from the cold Arctic and the hot and humid Gulf of Mexico. Missouri’s highest recorded temperature is 118 °F (48 °C)at Warsaw and Union on July 14, 1954 while the lowest recorded temperature is −40 °F (−40 °C) also at Warsaw on February 13, 1905.
Missouri also receives extreme weather in the form of thunderstorms and tornadoes. The most recent tornado in the state to cause damage and casualties was the 2011 Joplin tornado, which destroyed roughly 1/3 of the city of Joplin. The tornado caused an estimated $1–3 billion in damages, killed 159 (+1 non-tornadic), and injured over 1,000 people. The tornado was the first EF5 to hit the state since 1957. The tornado was the deadliest in the U.S. since 1947, making it the 7th deadliest tornado in American history, but the 27th deadliest in the world.
Indigenous peoples inhabited Missouri for thousands of years before European exploration and settlement. Archaeologicalexcavations along the rivers have shown continuous habitation for more than 7,000 years. Beginning before 1000 CE, there arose the complex Mississippian culture, whose people created regional political centers at present-day St. Louis and across the Mississippi River at Cahokia, near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. Their large cities included thousands of individual residences, but they are known for their surviving massive earthwork mounds, built for religious, political and social reasons, in platform, ridgetop andconical shapes. Cahokia was the center of a regional trading network that reached from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The civilization declined by 1400 CE, and most descendants left the area long before the arrival of Europeans. St. Louis was at one time known as Mound City by the European Americans, because of the numerous surviving prehistoric mounds, since lost to urban development. The Mississippian culture left mounds throughout the middle Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, extending into the southeast as well as the upper river.
Part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase by the United States, Missouri earned the nickname “Gateway to the West” because it served as a major departure point for expeditions and settlers heading to the West in the 19th century. St. Charles, just west of St. Louis, was the starting point and the return destination of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which departed up the Missouri River in 1804 to explore the western territories to the Pacific Ocean. St. Louis was a major supply point for decades for parties of settlers heading west.
As many of the early American settlers in western Missouri migrated from the Upper South, they brought enslaved African Americans for labor, and a desire to continue their culture and the institution of slavery. They settled predominantly in 17 counties along the Missouri River, in an area of flatlands that enabled plantation agriculture and became known as “Little Dixie“. In 1821 the territory was admitted as a slave state as part of the Missouri Compromise with a temporary state capitol in St. Charles. In 1826 the capital was shifted to its permanent location of Jefferson City, also on the Missouri.
Originally the state’s western border was a straight line, defined as the meridian passing through the Kawsmouth, the point where the Kansas River enters the Missouri River. The river has moved since this designation. This line is known as the Osage Boundary. In 1836 the Platte Purchase was added to the northwest corner of the state after purchase of the land from the native tribes, making the Missouri River the border north of the Kansas River. This addition increased the land area of what was already the largest state in the Union at the time (about 66,500 square miles (172,000 km) to Virginia’s 65,000 square miles, which then included West Virginia).
Conflicts over slavery exacerbated border tensions among the states and territories. From 1838 to 1839, a border dispute with Iowa over the so-called Honey Lands resulted in both states’ calling up militias along the border.
With increasing migration, from the 1830s to the 1860s Missouri’s population almost doubled with every decade. Most of the newcomers were American-born, but many Irish and German immigrants arrived in the late 1840s and 1850s. As they were mostly Catholic, they mostly set up their own religious institutions in the state, which had been mostly Protestant. Having fled famine and oppression in Ireland, and revolutionary upheaval in Germany, the immigrants were not sympathetic to slavery. Many settled in cities, where they created a regional and then state network of Catholic churches and schools. Nineteenth-century German immigrants created the wine industry along the Missouri River and the beer industry in St. Louis.
Most Missouri farmers practiced subsistence farming before the Civil War. The majority of those who held slaves had fewer than five each. Planters, defined by historians as those holding twenty slaves or more, were concentrated in the counties known as “Little Dixie”, in the central part of the state along the Missouri River. The tensions over slavery had chiefly to do with the future of the state and nation. In 1860 enslaved African Americans made up less than 10% of the state’s population of 1,182,012. In order to control the flooding of farmland and low-lying villages along the Mississippi, the state had completed construction of 140 miles (230 km) of levees along the river by 1860.
These events heightened Confederate support within the state. Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new Missouri State Guard. In the face of Union General Lyon’s rapid advance through the state, Jackson and Price were forced to flee the capital ofJefferson City on June 14, 1861. In the town of Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session. They enacted a secession ordinance. However, even under the Southern view of secession, only the state convention had the power to secede. Since the convention was dominated by unionists, and the state was more pro-Union than pro-Confederate in any event, the ordinance of secession adopted by the legislature is generally given little credence. The Confederacy nonetheless recognized it on October 30, 1861.
Child workers in Kirksville, Missouri, 1910. Photographed by Lewis Hine.
Though regular Confederate troops staged some large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted chiefly of guerrilla warfare. “Citizen soldiers” or insurgentssuch as Captain William Quantrill, Frank and Jesse James, theYounger brothers, and William T. Anderson made use of quick, small-unit tactics. Pioneered by the Missouri Partisan Rangers, such insurgencies also arose in portions of the Confederacy occupied by the Union during the Civil War. Recently historians have assessed the James brothers’ outlaw years as continuing guerrilla warfare after the official war was over. The activities of the Bald Knobbers of south-central Missouri in the 1880s has also been seen as an unofficial continuation of insurgent hostilities long after the official end of the war.
Between the Civil War and the end of World War II, Missouri transitioned from a rural economy to a hybrid industrial-service-agricultural economy as the Midwest rapidly industrialized. The expansion of railroads to the West transformed Kansas City into a major transportation hub within the nation. The growth of the Texascattle industry along with this increased rail infrastructure and the invention of the refrigerated boxcar also made Kansas City a major meatpacking center, as large cattle drives from Texas brought herds of cattle toDodge City and other Kansas towns. There, the cattle were loaded onto trains destined for Kansas City, where they were butchered and distributed to the eastern markets. The first half of the twentieth century was the height of Kansas City’s prominence and its downtown became a showcase for stylish Art Decoskyscrapers as construction boomed.
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Missouri was 6,021,988 on July 1, 2012, a 0.6% increase since the 2010 United States Census.
According to the 2010 Census, Missouri had a population of 5,988,927; an increase of 392,369 (7.0 percent) since the year 2000. From 2000 to 2007, this includes a natural increase of 137,564 people since the last census (480,763 births less 343,199 deaths), and an increase of 88,088 people due to net migration into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 50,450 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 37,638 people. Over half of Missourians (3,294,936 people, or 55.0%) live within the state’s two largest metropolitan areas–St. Louis and Kansas City. The state’s population density 86.9 in 2009, is also closer to the national average (86.8 in 2009) than any other state.
As of 2011, 3.7% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race). As of 2011, 28.1% of Missouri’s population younger than age 1 were minorities(note: children born to white hispanics are counted as minority group).
The five largest ancestry groups in Missouri are: German (27.4 percent), Irish (14.8 percent), English (10.2 percent), American (8.5 percent) and French (3.7 percent). “American” includes some of those reported as Native American or African American, but also European Americans whose ancestors have lived in the United States for a considerable time.
German Americans are an ancestry group present throughout Missouri. African Americans are a substantial part of the population in St. Louis (56.6% of African Americans in the state lived in St. Louis or St. Louis County as of the 2010 census), Kansas City, Boone County and in the southeastern Bootheel and some parts of the Missouri River Valley, where plantation agriculture was once important. Missouri Creoles of French ancestry are concentrated in the Mississippi River Valley south of St. Louis (see Missouri French). Kansas City is home to large and growing immigrant communities from Latin America esp. Mexico, Africa (i.e. Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria), and Southeast Asia including China and the Philippines; and Eastern Europe like the former Yugoslavia (see Bosnian American). A notable Cherokee Indian population exists in Missouri.
Missouri is home to an endangered dialect of the French language known as Missouri French. Speakers of the dialect, who call themselves Créoles, are descendants of the French pioneers who settled the area then known as the Illinois Country beginning in the late 17th century. It developed in isolation from French speakers in Canada and Louisiana, becoming quite distinct from the varieties of Canadian French andLouisiana Creole French. Once widely spoken throughout the area, Missouri French is now nearly extinct, with only a few elderly speakers able to use it.
Of those Missourians who identify with a religion, three out of five are Protestants of various denominations. There is also a very large and influential Roman Catholic community in some parts of the state; approximately one out of five Missourians are Roman Catholic, making it the largest single Christian denomination. Areas with large Catholic communities include St. Louis, Jefferson City, Westplex, and theMissouri Rhineland (particularly that south of the Missouri River).
The St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas also have important Jewish communities who have contributed much to the culture and charities of the cities; more recently, those same areas have Indian and Pakistani immigrants, who have created Hindu and Muslim congregations as well.
Several religious organizations have headquarters in Missouri, including the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, which has its headquarters in Kirkwood, as well as the United Pentecostal Church International in Hazelwood, both outside St. Louis. Independence, near Kansas City, is the headquarters for the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), and the group Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
This area and other parts of Missouri are also of significant religious and historical importance to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which maintains several sites/visitors centers, and whose members make up about 1 percent, or 62,217 members, of Missouri’s population. Springfield is the headquarters of the Assemblies of God USA and the Baptist Bible Fellowship International. The General Association of General Baptists has its headquarters in Poplar Bluff. The Unity Church is headquartered inUnity Village.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Missouri’s total state product in 2006 was $225.9 billion. Per capita personal income in 2006 was $32,705, ranking 26th in the nation. Major industries include aerospace,transportation equipment, food processing, chemicals, printing/publishing,electrical equipment, light manufacturing, and beer.
Missouri has vast quantities of limestone. Other resources mined are lead, coal, and crushed stone. Missouri produces the most lead of all of the states. Most of the lead mines are in the central eastern portionof the state. Missouri also ranks first or near first in the production of lime, a key ingredient in Portland cement.
As of May 2012, the state’s unemployment rate is 7.3%, while the nation overall is 8.2%.
Personal income is taxed in ten different earning brackets, ranging from 1.5% to 6.0%. Missouri’s sales taxrate for most items is 4.225%; additional local levies may apply. More than 2,500 Missouri local governments rely on property taxes levied on real property (real estate) and personal property.
Most personal property is exempt, except for motorized vehicles. Exempt real estate includes property owned by governments and property used as nonprofit cemeteries, exclusively for religious worship, for schools and colleges and for purely charitable purposes. There is no inheritance tax and limited Missouri estate taxrelated to federal estate tax collection.
In 2011, 82% of Missouri’s electricity was generated by coal. 10% was generated from the state’s onlynuclear power plant, the Callaway Plant in Callaway County, northeast of Jefferson City. 5% was generated by natural gas. 1% was generated by hydroelectric sources, such as the dams for Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks.
Missouri has the potential to generate 689,519 GWh/year from 274,000 MW of wind power, and 5,382,000 GWh/year from solar power using 3,188,000 MW of photovoltaics (PV), including 13,081 MW of rooftop photovoltaics.
Two of the nation’s three busiest rail centers are located in Missouri. Kansas City is a major railroad hub for BNSF Railway,Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, andUnion Pacific Railroad. Kansas City is the second largest freight rail center in the US (but is first in the amount of tonnage handled). Like Kansas City, St. Louis is a major destination for train freight. Springfield remains an operational hub for BNSF Railway.
Amtrak passenger trains serve Kansas City, La Plata, Jefferson City, St. Louis, Lee’s Summit, Independence, Warrensburg,Hermann, Washington, Kirkwood, Sedalia, and Poplar Bluff. A proposed high-speed rail route in Missouri as part of the Chicago Hub Network has received $31 million in funding.
Many cities have regular fixed-route systems, and many rural counties have rural public transit services. Greyhound,Trailways, and Megabus all provide inter-city bus service in Missouri.
The Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge connectingCape Girardeau to East Cape Girardeau, Illinois.
The current Constitution of Missouri, the fourth constitution for the state, was adopted in 1945. It provides for three branches of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The legislative branch consists of two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate. These bodies comprise theMissouri General Assembly.
The House of Representatives has 163 members who are apportioned based on the last decennial census. The Senate consists of 34 members from districts of approximately equal populations. The judicial department comprises the Supreme Court of Missouri, which has seven judges, the Missouri Court of Appeals(an intermediate appellate court divided into three districts), sitting in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Springfield, and 45 Circuit Courts which function as local trial courts. The executive branch is headed by theGovernor of Missouri and includes five other statewide elected offices. Following the election of 2012, all but two of Missouri’s statewide elected offices are held by Democrats.
Harry S Truman (1884–1972), the 33rd President of the United States (Democrat, 1945–1953), was born inLamar. He was a judge in Jackson County and then represented the state in the United States Senate for ten years, before being elected Vice-President in 1944. He lived in Independence after retiring.
Missouri is widely regarded as a bellwether in American politics, often making it a swing state. The state had a longer stretch of supporting the winning presidential candidate than any other state, having voted with the nation in every election since 1904 with three exceptions: in 1956 it voted for Democratic Governor Adlai Stevenson of neighboring Illinois over the winner, incumbent Republican President Dwight Eisenhower of neighboring Kansas, and in 2008 it voted for Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona over national winner Senator Barack Obama of neighboring Illinois. Missouri was still the closest state in the nation in both of these races, which were decided by extremely narrow margins of fewer than 4,000 votes each. However, in 2012, Missouri swung strongly Republican when it voted for former Governor Mitt Romney ofMassachusetts over the winner, incumbent President Barack Obama, by a nearly 10-point margin. There are 4,190,936 registered voters (as of Oct 24, 2012). At the state level, both Democratic Senator Claire McCaskilland Democratic Governor Jay Nixon were re-elected.
Today, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell any kind of liquor), and no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage. Missouri has no laws prohibiting “consumption” of alcohol by minors (as opposed to possession), and state law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication.
Missouri has 114 counties and one independent city(St. Louis).
The largest county by size isTexas County (1,179 sq. miles) and Shannon Countyis second (1,004 sq. miles).Worth County is the smallest (266 sq. miles). The independent city of St. Louis has only 62 square miles (160 km) of area. St. Louis City is the most densely populated area (5,140.1 per sq. mi.) in Missouri.
St. Louis is the principal city of the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, composed of 17 counties and the independent city of St. Louis; eight of those counties lie in Illinois. As of 2009, St. Louis was the 18th largest metropolitan area in the nation with 2.83 million people. However, if ranked using Combined Statistical Area, it is 15th largest with 2.89 million people. Some of the major cities making up the St. Louis Metro area in Missouri are St. Charles, St. Peters, Florissant, Chesterfield, Creve Coeur, Wildwood, Maryland Heights,O’Fallon, Clayton, Ballwin, and University City.
Kansas City is Missouri’s largest city and the principal city of the fifteen-county Kansas City Metropolitan Statistical Area, including six counties in the state of Kansas. As of 2009, it was the 29th largest metropolitan area in the nation, with 2.068 million people. Some of the other major cities comprising the Kansas City metro area in Missouri include Independence, Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs, Raytown, Liberty, andGladstone.
The term “compulsory attendance age for the district” shall mean seventeen (17) years of age or having successfully completed sixteen (16) credits towards high school graduation in all other cases. Children between the ages of five (5) and seven (7) are not required to be enrolled in school. However, if they are enrolled in a public school their parent, guardian or custodian must ensure that they regularly attend.
Jesse Hall and the Francis Quad on theUniversity of Missouri campus.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the state established a series of normal schools in each region of the state, originally named after the geographic districts: Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University) (1867), Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri) (1871), Southeast Missouri State University (1873), Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University) (1905), Northwest Missouri State University (1905),Missouri Western State University (1915), and Missouri Southern State University (1937). Lincoln University and Harris-Stowe State University were established in the mid-nineteenth century and are historically black colleges and universities.
Among private institutions Washington University in St. Louisand Saint Louis University are two top ranked schools in the US. There are numerous junior colleges, trade schools, church universities and other private universities in the state. A. T. Still University was the first osteopathic medical school in the world.Hannibal-LaGrange University in Hannibal, MO, was one of the first colleges west of the Mississippi (founded 1858 in LaGrange, MO, and moved to Hannibal, MO, in 1928).
The 19th century border wars between Missouri and Kansas have continued as a sports rivalry between theUniversity of Missouri and University of Kansas. The rivalry is chiefly expressed through football and basketball games between the two universities. It is the oldest college rivalry west of the Mississippi Riverand the second oldest in the nation. Each year when the universities meet to play, the game is coined “Border War.” An exchange occurs following the game where the winner gets to take a historic Indian War Drum, which has been passed back and forth for decades.
Many well-known musicians were born or have lived in Missouri. These include guitarist and rock pioneerChuck Berry, singer and actress Josephine Baker, “Queen of Rock” Tina Turner, pop singer-songwriterSheryl Crow, Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, and rappers Nelly, Chingy, and Akon, all of whom are either current or former residents of St. Louis.
Country singers from Missouri include New Franklin native Sara Evans, Cantwell native Ferlin Husky, West Plains native Porter Wagoner, and Mora native Leroy Van Dyke, along with bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent, a native of Greentop.
The Kansas City Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra are the state’s major orchestras. The latter is the nation’s second-oldest symphony orchestra and achieved prominence in recent years under conductor Leonard Slatkin.
Branson is well known for its music theaters, most of which bear the name of a star performer or musical group. These facilities have made Branson one of America’s most popular tourist destinations..
Famed authors Kate Chopin, T.S. Eliot, and Tennessee Williams were all from St. Louis.
Filmmaker, animator, and businessman Walt Disney spent part of his childhood in the Linn County town ofMarceline before moving to Kansas City, Missouri. Disney began his artistic career in Kansas City, where he founded the Laugh-O-Gram Studio.
Several Film versions of Mark Twain’s novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been made.
Meet Me in St. Louis, a musical involving the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, starred Judy Garland.
Part of the 1983 road movie National Lampoon’s Vacation was shot on location in Missouri, for the Griswold’s trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Thanksgiving holiday favorite Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was partially shot at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport.
The award-winning 2010 film Winter’s Bone was shot in the Ozarks of Missouri.
John Carpernter’s Escape from New York was filmed in Saint Louis in the early eighties, due to the high number of abandoned buildings in the city.
Missouri has five major sports teams: theRoyals and Cardinals of MLB, the Chiefs andRams of the NFL, and the Blues of the NHL.
The use of the unofficial nickname the Show-Me State has several possible origins. The phrase “I’m from Missouri” means “I’m skeptical of the matter and not easily convinced”. This is related to the state’s unofficial motto of “Show Me,” whose origin is popularly ascribed to an 1899 speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver, who declared that “I come from a country that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri, and you have got to show me.” However, according to researchers, the phrase was in circulation earlier in the 1890s. According to another legend, the phrase was a reference to Missouri miners brought to Leadville, Colorado to take the place of striking miners and being unfamiliar with the mining methods there required frequent instruction.
Missouri is also known as “The Cave State” with over 6000 recorded caves (second to Tennessee). Perry County has both the largest number of caves and the single longest cave in the state.
Other nicknames include “The Lead State”, “The Bullion State”, “The Ozark State”, “Mother of the West”, “The Iron Mountain State”, and “Pennsylvania of the West”.
There has also been a migration of insects from the south to Missouri. One example of this is the waspPolistes exclamans.
^ “Metropolitan Area Rankings; ranked by population” (Microsoft Excel). Census. US. 2000. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Annual Estimates of the Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012” (CSV). 2012 Population Estimates. United States Census Bureau, Population Division. December 2012. Retrieved 2012-12-24.
^ “Elevations and Distances in the United States”. United States Geological Survey. 2001. Retrieved 2011-10-24.
^ “Introduction to Missouri – The Show Me State Capital Jefferson City”. Netstate.com. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Pony Express National Historic Trail”.
^ Wheaton, Sarah (October 13, 2012). “Missouree? Missouruh? To Be Politic, Say Both”. The New York Times. pp. A1. Retrieved 2012-10-14.
^ Missouri – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-webster.com (August 31, 2012). Retrieved 2013-07-21.
^ Lance, Donald M. (Fall 2003). “The Pronunciation of Missouri: Variation and Change in American English”. American Speech 78 (3): 255–284. doi:10.1215/00031283-78-3-255.
^ “Missouri pronunciation”. Forvo.com. 2008. Retrieved 2012-11-20.
^ “Midwest Region Economy at a Glance”. Bls.gov. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “UNC-CH surveys reveal where the ‘real’ South lies”. Unc.edu. June 2, 1999. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ Almanac of the 50 States (Missouri). Information Publications (Woodside, CA). 2008. p. 203.
^ “Missouri’s Karst Wonderland – Missouri State Parks and Historic Sites, DNR”. Mostateparks.com. June 6, 2008. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ “Income Inequality in Missouri”. Ded.mo.gov. December 21, 2001. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ Hoffhaus. (1984). Chez Les Canses: Three Centuries at Kawsmouth, Kansas City: Lowell Press.ISBN 0-913504-91-2.
^ “”MISSOURI V. IOWA”, 48 U.S. 660 (1849) – US Supreme Court Cases from Justia & Oyez”. Supreme.justia.com. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “First interstate project”. Fhwa.dot.gov. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Resident Population Data”. Resident Population Data. Census. 2010. Retrieved 2012-12-24.
^ “Population and Population Centers by State”. United States Census Bureau. 2000. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
^ Ammon, Ulrich (1989). Status and Function of Languages and Language Varieties. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 306–8. ISBN 0-89925-356-3. Retrieved 2010-09-03.; International Sociological Association.
^ Carrière, J-M (1939). “Creole Dialect of Missouri”. American Speech (Duke University Press) 12 (6): 502–3. JSTOR 451217.
^ “Valparaiso University”. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “The Association of Religion Data Archives | Maps & Reports”. Thearda.com. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ “FRB: Federal Reserve Districts and Banks”. Federalreserve.gov. December 13, 2005. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ National Association for State Energy Officials and the Kentucky Department for Energy Development and Independence. “Missouri Energy Profile”. Retrieved 2013-07-14.
^ Missouri Department of Natural Resources. “Geologicaly Survey Program – Oil and Gas in Missouri”. Retrieved 2013-07-14.
^ United States Energy Information Administration. “Petroleum and Other Liquids – Number and Capacity of Petroleum Refineries”. Retrieved 2013-07-14.
^ EIA (July 27, 2012). “Electric Power Monthly Table 1.17.A.”. United States Department of Energy. Retrieved 2012-08-15.
^ EIA (July 27, 2012). “Electric Power Monthly Table 1.17.B.”. United States Department of Energy. Retrieved 2012-08-15.
^ Sherwood, Larry (June 2011). “U.S. Solar Market Trends 2010”. Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC). Retrieved 2011-06-29.
^ Sherwood, Larry (July 2010). “U.S. Solar Market Trends 2009”. Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC). Retrieved 2010-07-28.
^ “Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Chicago – St. Louis – Kansas City”. Retrieved 2010-01-28.
^ “KC Streetcar – About KC Streetcar”. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
^ “Number of Persons Killed or Injured in Missouri Crashes by Year”. Missouri State Highway Patrol. Retrieved 2012-09-30.
^ Wade, Lynn A. (August 7, 2010). “Upgrade of U.S. 71 to I-49 coming to Missouri soon”. Nevada Daily Mail. Retrieved 2011-03-29.
^ “Registered Voters in Missouri 2012”. Missouri Secretary of State. October 24, 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-28.
^ “Missouri Secretary of State – State Archives – Origin of “Show Me” slogan”. Sos.mo.gov. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ Mercatus Center (March 28, 2013). “Freedom in the 50 States-Missouri“. Freedom in the 50 States.George Mason University. Retrieved 2013-03-29.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 290.145”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 67.305”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 311.170”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 311.310”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 311.086”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “State Cigarette Excise Tax Rates” (PDF). Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “”Best Cities for Smokers,” ”Forbes Magazine”, November 1, 2007″. Forbes. Archived from the original on 2010-05-31. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System – Adults who are current smokers”, September 19, 2008″. Apps.nccd.cdc.gov. May 15, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 407.931.3”. Moga.mo.gov. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, ”County Level Survey 2007: Secondhand Smoke for Missouri Adults”, October 1, 2008″. Dhss.mo.gov. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Mo. Rev. Stat. § 191.769”. Moga.mo.gov. August 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
^ “Annual Estimates of the Population for Incorporated Places in Missouri”. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
^ Missouri Department Of Elementary And Secondary Education (September 2, 2009). “Home Schooling”. Dese.mo.gov. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ “America’s Best Colleges 2008: National Universities: Top Schools.” USNews.com: . January 18, 2008.
^ Don Colborn, PhD. “HLGU – About HLG”. Hlg.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
^ “Origin of “Show-Me” Slogan”. State Archives Missouri History (FAQ). MO: Secretary of State. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ House, Scott (May 14, 2005). “Fact Sheet on 6000 Caves”. The Missouri Speleological Survey. Retrieved 2008-03-16.
^ West, Mary Jane (1968). “Range Extension and Solitary nest founding in Polistes Exclamans”.Psyche 75 (2): 118–23. doi:10.1155/1968/49846.
Missouri Digital Heritage, Missouri Government.
State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.
Missouri’s African American History, Missouri Government.
Energy & Environmental Data for Missouri, US: DoE.
real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Missouri, USGS.
“Missouri”, QuickFacts (geographic and demographic information), US: Census.
Missouri – Race and Hispanic Origin: 1810 to 1990 (PDF), US: Census, 71.1 kB.
“http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Main_Page American Library Association Government Documents Roundtable”, List of searchable databases produced by Missouri state agencies.
Missouri History, Geology, Culture, UM system.
Historic Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Missouri, UM system.
1930 Platbooks of Missouri Counties, UM system.
“Totals”, Population estimates, US: Census, 2011.
“States metropolitan areas cities”, Population (estimates & projections), US: Census.

References: V. 
 § 290
 § 67
 § 311
 § 311
 § 311
 § 407
 § 191