50 Fun Facts About Missouri

What is the capital of Missouri?

Jefferson City, named for Thomas Jefferson and sited on the Missouri River, has been the capital since 1826 and with roughly 43,000 people is one of the smallest state capitals.

What is Missouri's famous unofficial nickname, printed on its licence plates?

Congressman Willard Vandiver is credited with the phrase in an 1899 speech: 'I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.'

Missouri is also called the Cave State because it has more than how many recorded caves?

Missouri has more than 7,300 recorded caves, second only to Tennessee; Perry County has the most of any county and the state's longest, Crevice Cave.

What does the name of the Missouria people, from which the state's name derives, mean?

French colonists adapted the Illinois-language name wimihsoorita, 'one who has dugout canoes'; the 'muddy water' gloss often given is a folk etymology.

Missouri joined the Union in 1821 on what terms?

Maine was admitted as a free state to keep the balance, and slavery was banned in Louisiana Purchase lands north of 36°30'.

Which free state was admitted alongside Missouri under the Missouri Compromise?

Maine, until then part of Massachusetts, entered as a free state in March 1820; the Senate tied the two admissions together and Henry Clay steered the compromise through the House.

Where was Missouri's temporary capital before the 1826 move to its Missouri River home?

St. Charles was also the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804.

Which was the first permanent European settlement in Missouri, founded by the French in 1735?

Ste. Genevieve, founded by French Canadians on the Mississippi around 1735, came first; St. Louis followed in 1764 as a fur-trading post under Pierre Laclède.

How tall is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis?

The Gateway Arch is 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at its base, the world's tallest arch and the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, clad in stainless steel.

Which Finnish-American architect designed the Gateway Arch?

Eero Saarinen won the 1947-48 design competition; he died in 1961, before construction ran from 1963 to 1965 at a cost of about $13 million.

What is the Gateway Arch's mathematical shape?

The arch is a weighted (flattened) catenary, the curve of a hanging chain whose links grow heavier toward the ends, which is why it thickens from 17 feet across at the top to 54 feet at the base.

Mark Twain's boyhood home, the setting for Tom Sawyer, was which Missouri river town?

The family moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi in 1839, when Sam was four; it became St. Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

In which tiny Missouri village was Samuel Clemens, later Mark Twain, born in 1835?

Florida, in Monroe County, had about a hundred people when Clemens was born there on 30 November 1835, the sixth of seven children; Missouri also has towns called Paris and Mexico.

Twain was born shortly after the appearance of what, and predicted he would 'go out with it'?

Halley's Comet reached perihelion on 20 April 1910 and Twain died the next day, having been born two weeks after its 1835 appearance; he had said he expected to go out with it.

Which US president was born in Lamar, Missouri, and raised in Independence?

Harry S. Truman, born in Lamar in 1884 and raised in Independence, became president when Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945.

What does the 'S' in the 33rd president's name stand for?

Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young both got a nod, a common Southern practice.

What business did Truman open after returning from World War I?

Truman & Jacobson, a haberdashery he opened in Kansas City in 1919 with army friend Eddie Jacobson, failed in the 1921-22 recession; he then became a Jackson County judge and US senator.

St. Louis hosted a World's Fair in 1904 to mark the centennial of what?

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, named for the 1803 deal that brought the territory into the US, opened a year late in April 1904 on 1,200 acres of Forest Park.

Which sporting event did St. Louis host in 1904, a first for the United States?

The 1904 Summer Olympics, the third modern Games and the first outside Europe, ran for months alongside the World's Fair, with most competitors American.

Which treat was reputedly born at the 1904 St. Louis fair when a vendor ran out of paper cups?

Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi supposedly rolled a waffle into a cone; historians still argue about it.

Which drink's popularity 'rapidly increased' after Richard Blechynden served it at the 1904 fair?

Iced tea had appeared in cookbooks since the 1860s, but Blechynden, promoting Indian tea to the fair's sweltering crowds, poured it over ice and helped make it a national habit.

The barbecue style of the state's biggest western city is known for a thick, sweet sauce made with what?

Kansas City sauce is thick and sweet, built on tomatoes, brown sugar and molasses; Henry Perry is credited as the style's originator, and burnt ends are the local speciality.

Which brewing giant has been headquartered in St. Louis since the 1850s?

Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser since 1876, grew from a St. Louis brewery bought by Eberhard Anheuser in 1860 and has been owned by Belgium's AB InBev since a 2008 takeover.

Adolphus Busch was the first American brewer to do what, in the 1870s?

Busch pioneered refrigerated railroad cars and a network of icehouses to ship Budweiser nationally in the late 1870s; he was also the first American brewer to pasteurise beer and to bottle it extensively.

Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899 by John Stark in which Missouri town?

Scott Joplin wrote Maple Leaf Rag while living in Sedalia, where music publisher John Stark issued it in 1899, naming it for the Maple Leaf Club where Joplin played.

Which 'Father of Rock and Roll' was born into a middle-class St. Louis family in 1926?

Chuck Berry was born in the Ville district of St. Louis in October 1926, son of a contractor and a school principal, and later ran his own club there, Berry's Club Bandstand.

Walt Disney was born in Chicago but raised largely in which Missouri metropolis from 1911?

The Disneys moved from Marceline to Kansas City in 1911; Walt attended Benton Grammar School there and discovered vaudeville and movies through classmate Walter Pfeiffer.

The Pony Express ran from Sacramento to which Missouri city?

Riders left St. Joseph, the westernmost point then reached by rail and telegraph, and covered the roughly 1,900 miles to Sacramento in about ten days.

How long did the Pony Express operate?

It ran only 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861, closing two days after the transcontinental telegraph was completed; it cut cross-country message time to about ten days.

In which Missouri city did the 1857 Dred Scott case begin?

Scott's owner had settled in St. Louis in 1830; Chief Justice Taney wrote the 7-2 opinion.

Which resort town in the Ozarks is famous for its strip of live-entertainment theatres along Highway 76?

Branson's strip took shape after the Presley family opened their theatre on Highway 76 in 1967 and the Baldknobbers followed; by the 1990s it had dozens of theatres and drew millions of visitors a year.

Which 1907 novel made the Ozarks resort town a tourist destination and its author a millionaire?

Harold Bell Wright's The Shepherd of the Hills sold over a million copies and drew readers to the Ozarks; a museum about him sits inside the town's World's Largest Toy Museum.

Lake of the Ozarks was created by damming which river?

The dam across the Osage River, completed by Union Electric in 1931, backed up a lake with about 1,150 miles of shoreline, one of the largest man-made lakes in the US at the time.

What is the name of the dam that created Lake of the Ozarks?

Bagnell Dam, 2,543 feet long and finished in 1931, flooded the old county seat of Linn Creek, which was rebuilt on higher ground.

How many World Series had the St. Louis Cardinals won between 1926 and 2025?

Eleven titles, from 1926 to 2011, second only to the Yankees; the Cardinals also won nineteen NL pennants in that span, the early ones built on Branch Rickey's pioneering farm system.

The state's NFL team began life in 1960 as which franchise?

Lamar Hunt founded the Dallas Texans as an AFL charter member in 1960 and moved them to Kansas City in 1963, renaming them the Chiefs after mayor H. Roe Bartle's nickname.

Which title game did the Chiefs win as the final contest before the AFL-NFL merger took full effect?

Super Bowl IV, in January 1970, saw the Chiefs beat the Vikings 23-7, the second AFL win after the Jets in Super Bowl III and the last game before the merged league played in 1970.

Which city, the largest of the Mississippian culture, sits across the Mississippi from St. Louis?

Cahokia Mounds, near Collinsville, Illinois, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose Monks Mound is the largest earthen structure in the Americas north of Mexico; St. Louis itself was nicknamed Mound City.

What breaded, deep-fried appetiser was created and popularised in St. Louis?

Toasted ravioli, breaded and deep-fried rather than boiled, is claimed by several restaurants on The Hill, St. Louis's Italian neighbourhood; locals call them T-ravs and dip them in marinara.

The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis is informally known by the name of which founder?

Locals call it Shaw's Garden after Henry Shaw, the English-born hardware merchant who opened it in 1859; its herbarium is one of the largest in the world.

Which natural disasters rocked the state in 1811-12?

The New Madrid earthquakes, three great shocks between December 1811 and February 1812, were felt over much of the eastern US and briefly made the Mississippi run backward in places; casualties were few because the region was sparsely settled.

Missouri backed the winning presidential candidate every election from 1904 to 2004 except which year?

In 1956 Adlai Stevenson of neighbouring Illinois narrowly carried Missouri while losing nationally to Eisenhower; the state's bellwether streak ended for good when it backed McCain in 2008.

How many counties does Missouri have, plus the independent city of St. Louis?

Missouri has 114 counties, plus St. Louis, which separated from St. Louis County in 1876 and functions as its own county-level unit.

What is the low, flat, southeastern corner of Missouri called?

The Bootheel, shaped like a boot's heel on the map, was kept in Missouri in 1818 reputedly at the urging of planter John Hardeman Walker; it is the state's warmest, wettest and poorest region.

Which two Indigenous nations lived in Missouri when Europeans arrived in the 17th century?

The Osage dominated the south and west and the Missouria lived along the river near its junction with the Grand; the Missouria gave the river, and then the state, its name.

Which bird has been Missouri's official state bird since 1927?

The eastern bluebird became Missouri's state bird in 1927; the cardinal, despite the baseball team, is the state bird of seven other states including Illinois.

Which of these authors was NOT from St. Louis?

Hemingway was from Oak Park, Illinois; the other three all grew up in St. Louis.

Roughly what is Missouri's population?

That makes it the 19th-most populous state and 21st in land area.

Which is the state's third-largest city, principal city of its own metro area in the southwest?

Springfield, in the southwest Ozarks, has about 170,000 people, behind only Kansas City and St. Louis; Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, comes next.

What was Truman's Executive Order 9981 of 1948?

He had grown up in segregated Missouri, where the practice was widely accepted.