Missouri is a midwestern state of the United States, located near the country's geographic center at the confluence of the two longest rivers in the United States--the Mississippi and the Missouri. Situated where North meets South and where the industrial East gives way to the plains of the West, Missouri exhibits characteristics of all these areas. It is bordered on the north by Iowa; on the east by Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; on the south by Arkansas; and on the west by Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. During the 19th century, Missouri served as a springboard for countless westward-bound settlers, and the state's cities were long the westernmost outposts of U.S. civilization. Missouri means "people with big canoes," an Algonquian word given to the Indians living near the mouth of the Missouri River. LAND AND RESOURCES The terrain of Missouri varies from flat plains to rough hills. The lowest elevation, 70 m (230 ft), is along the Saint Francis River in the southeast, and the highest point, 540 m (1,772 ft), is Taum Sauk Mountain in the Saint Francois Mountains south of St. Louis. Physiographic Regions Missouri has three major physiographic regions: the Ozark Highland, the Plains, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The Ozark Highland has an average elevation of about 300 m (1,000 ft); it covers the southern portion of the state from St. Louis and Jefferson City on the Missouri River to Oklahoma and Arkansas. The region is famous for more than 4,000 caves and many large springs. One, Big Spring, in the south central part of the state, is among the largest springs in the United States. The Ozarks retain the rolling surface of a plateau near Springfield and in some of the central areas, but elsewhere swift-flowing streams have dissected the plateau, forming steep, narrow-crested hills. Relief reaches 230 m (750 ft) in the most rugged areas (see \TOzark Mountains\t). North and west of the Ozarks is the Plains region, rising gradually from 200 m (650 ft) near St. Louis to more than 380 m (1,250 ft) in the extreme northwest. More than 1 million years ago, Pleistocene glaciers extended as far south as the Missouri River, covering northern Missouri with glacial till. Parts of the northeast are nearly flat, but in most places postglacial erosion by streams has resulted in hills and valleys. In a belt about 80 km (50 mi) wide along the Missouri River, the dissected plains are thickly mantled with loess. South of the Missouri River, along the Kansas border, the Osage Plains are more open and undulating. The third major physiographic region, the Mississippi Alluvial Plain, or Bootheel, consists of the seven southeastern counties. The surface slopes slightly southward from the foot of the Ozark Escarpment. Soils Missouri's most productive soils are those of the loess belt along the Missouri River and the alluvial soils of the Bootheel. Soil erosion, once a widespread problem in Missouri, has largely been controlled with improved management practices. Rivers and Lakes The \TMississippi\t and \TMissouri\t rivers dominate the state's drainage system. The streams of northern Missouri flow generally southward across the till plain to these rivers. In southern Missouri streams flow away from the crest of the Ozark Highland in all directions. Ozark streams are fed by a complex network of underground drainage systems, and their discharge is relatively stable throughout the year. Missouri's largest lakes are artificial. The Lake of the Ozarks, formed by damming on the Osage River, is one of the world's largest artificial lakes. Groundwater is abundant. Climate Missouri has a continental climate with hot, humid summers and cold winters. Because it lacks major topographical barriers, the state has a gradual climatic differentiation, warming from northwest to southeast. The clash of contrasting air masses in spring and fall may set off violent thunderstorms, some of which are accompanied by tornadoes. The average January minimum temperatures range from -10 deg C (14 deg F) in the northwest to -1 deg C (30 deg F) in the southeast. July maximum temperatures average 33 deg C (92 deg F) throughout the state. Precipitation occurs throughout the year. Mean annual precipitation ranges from 813 mm (32 in) in the northwest to 1,270 mm (50 in) in the southeast. Average annual snowfall is 508 mm (20 in) in the northwest and 130 mm (6.5 in) in the southeast. Vegetation and Animal Life At the time of white settlement, the flatter parts of the Plains region were covered with prairie grass that reached heights of 2 m (7 ft). The more dissected parts were covered with hardwood forests. In the Ozarks an oak and hickory forest prevailed, with short-leaf pine intermixed in the east. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain had a forest of bald cypress, tupelo, and sweetgum. At present, new-growth commercial forests are gaining importance, and only in the Bootheel and the Osage Plains have farms and pastures blocked reforestation. The wildlife of Missouri includes deer, wild turkeys, and bears. Mineral Resources Missouri has about 5.5 billion metric tons (6.1 billion U.S. tons) of coal reserves in the Plains region, much of it in thin seams or of high sulfur content. The state also has vast reserves of \Ttar sands\t in its western counties, but no economical method of mining this petroleum has yet been found. Missouri is the leading lead-mining state in the United States, with deposits in the eastern Ozarks. East central Missouri is an important producer of barite, which is used as a pigment. Clays are mined in central Missouri, and extensive iron ore deposits are found in the eastern Ozarks. Limestone, marble, granite, and sandstone are quarried for construction purposes. PEOPLE The population of Missouri (1990 census) is 5,137,804. Missouri's population density approximates the national average of about 27 persons per sq km (70 persons per sq mi), but rural regions in the Ozarks and in north central Missouri are much more sparsely populated. During the 1980s, \TKansas City\t overtook \TSaint Louis\t as the largest city in Missouri, but its metropolitan-area population remains second in size to metropolitan Saint Louis. Other large cities are \TSpringfield\t, \TIndependence\t, \TSaint Joseph\t, and \TColumbia\t. Two-thirds of Missourians live in metropolitan areas, and one-third live in the 19 cities with populations of 25,000 or more. Between 1980 and 1990 the population of Missouri increased by more than 4%, and Missouri was among the faster-growing states in the Midwest. Missouri has one of the nation's highest percentages of persons over 65 years of age. Blacks, concentrated in the large cities, constitute 10.7% of the state's population. The religious affiliation of Missourians is diverse. Roman Catholics are the largest single religious group, but Protestants, representing many denominations, form the majority of church members. Education Education in Missouri was conducted primarily in private institutions until after the Civil War, when free public education became widely available. Education is at present supervised by a state department of education. The state per capita personal income is slightly below that of the nation. Per pupil expenditure for public elementary and secondary schools also runs slightly below the amount for the nation as a whole. The University of Missouri, founded in 1839, was the first state university west of the Mississippi River. Today it has four campuses. Eight state universities and colleges have been established along with Lincoln University, founded in 1866 as the first state college for blacks (see \TMissouri, state universities and colleges of\t). Private institutions include St. Louis University (1818) and Washington University (1853), both in St. Louis. Culture Missouri supports the arts through a state council on the arts. The Missouri State Museum is in Jefferson City. The St. Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, as well as the plant collections of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis are renowned. The St. Louis Symphony, established in 1879, is the second oldest symphony orchestra in the United States. Historical Sites The most visited historical site in the state is the Gateway Arch in the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Designed by Eero \TSaarinen\t, it is located on the original riverfront town site of St. Louis and symbolizes the city's role as gateway to the West. The region surrounding \THannibal\t is closely associated with the life and work of Mark \TTwain\t. Saint Joseph was the eastern terminus of the famed but short-lived \Tpony express\t. Sainte Genevieve preserves some of the best remaining examples of French Creole architecture in the Mississippi Valley. Recreation The Ozark National Scenic Riverway, the first national riverway, encompasses the Current and Jack's Fork rivers in the eastern Ozarks. Large tracts of the Ozarks are in national or state forests and are increasingly used for recreation. The state also maintains a large and varied system of state parks. Professional baseball, football, basketball, and ice hockey teams are supported in Saint Louis and Kansas City. Communications The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, founded by Joseph \TPulitzer\t, and the Kansas City Star and Times are leading metropolitan newspapers. The world's first school of journalism was founded at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1908. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY Although Missouri is often considered an agricultural state-- and is in fact one of the nation's leading farming states-- manufacturing has assumed a more prominent economic role in Missouri than farming. The number of farms in Missouri has decreased, a trend also seen in the nation as a whole. Agriculture Missouri remains an important agricultural state. Its principal crops are soybeans and corn, followed by winter wheat, cotton, and hay. Missouri ranks among the ten leading states in the production of each of these commodities. The loess belt and the Bootheel are the foremost row-crop areas, but agriculture is successful throughout the Plains region and western Ozarks. Most farm grains are used for livestock feed. This helps explain why Missouri is a major livestock state, habitually ranking high among all U.S. states in its production of beef cattle, hogs, and dairy cattle. Dairying is concentrated in southwestern Missouri. The distinctive agricultural economy of the Bootheel was once based on large cotton farms, but soybeans, corn, wheat, alfalfa, and rice have displaced much of the cotton. Manufacturing Missouri's leading economic sector, manufacturing, accounts for about 25% of the total value of goods and services produced in Missouri every year. The largest industry is the manufacture of transportation equipment, especially automobiles, with production ranking second in the nation; aircraft, spacecraft, and railroad equipment follow. Other major industries include food processing (primarily brewing, flour milling, and meat-packing), printing and publishing, and the manufacture of chemicals, fabricated metal products, machinery, and electrical equipment. Tourism Tourist facilities are concentrated at the Lake of the Ozarks and in the White River region of the southwest. All of the Ozarks offers hiking, cave exploring, camping, boating, canoeing, fishing, and hunting. Many small Ozark communities are economically dependent on tourism. Transportation Missouri's central location and its economic vitality spurred the development of a large network of roads, highways, and railroad track. The most heavily used transportation corridors are those between Saint Louis and Kansas City and Saint Louis and the southwest. Commercial barge traffic on both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers makes Saint Louis one of the nation's busiest inland river ports. Both Saint Louis and Kansas City are national air and trucking centers and serve as major distribution nodes for Missouri and much of the area of its adjoining states. Although large artificial lakes are conspicuous in the state's landscape, hydroelectric power provides only a small amount of Missouri's electricity production. Coal-fueled) plants furnish approximately 90%. GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS Missouri has had four constitutions: 1820, prior to statehood; 1865 and 1875, in the aftermath of the Civil War; and 1945. Amendments to the constitution may be proposed by a majority of the legislature or by petition signed by 8% of the voters in two-thirds of the state's congressional districts. Proposed amendments must be approved by a majority of the voters in a statewide election. A constitutional convention must be called every 20 years to review the constitution for possible changes. The Missouri general assembly is composed of the senate of 34 members, half of whom are elected every 2 years for 4-year terms, and the house of representatives with 163 members, all of whom are elected every 2 years. The general assembly meets annually. The governor is elected for 4 years and may succeed himself once. The chief judicial officers are the 7 supreme court judges. The Missouri Plan for selecting judges, adopted in 1945, has become a nationwide model for the nonpartisan assignment of judges. Each of Missouri's 114 counties is governed by a 3-member administrative court. Saint Louis functions as an independent city with county status. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have considerable electoral strength in Missouri, but since World War II the Democrats, strongest in the cities and the Bootheel, have more often controlled the legislature, state offices, and Missouri's representation in the U.S. Congress. Missouri's Democrats tend to have a more conservative political philosophy than Democrats nationally. Republicans retain strength in suburban regions and in the southwestern part of the state. HISTORY Among the early Indian inhabitants of Missouri were \TMound Builders\t, whose earthenwork monuments can be seen throughout the state. The most important regional tribes were the \TOsage\t, \TSauk\t, \TFox\t, and \TMissouri\t. Most had moved from the state by the time of European settlement. European exploration began with the passage of Father Jacques \TMarquette\t and the trader Louis \TJolliet\t down the Mississippi in 1673. In 1682 the Mississippi Valley was claimed for France by Robert Cavelier, sieur de \TLa Salle\t, who named the territory Louisiana. The first permanent white settlement in what is now Missouri was made by the French at Sainte Genevieve in 1732. French settlement in the 18th century was based on lead mining and fur trading, of which Saint Louis (founded 1764) became the center. France ceded the region to Spain in 1762, but Spanish control was never more than superficial. The Spanish did, however, permit settlement from east of the Mississippi, and by 1800 most of the new settlers were from Kentucky and Tennessee. Spain retroceded the region to France in 1802, and in 1803 Missouri, along with the rest of the Louisiana territory, was sold to the United States (see \TLouisiana Purchase\t). Missouri was made a U.S. territory in 1812. Statehood was achieved in 1821 by way of the \TMissouri Compromise\t (1820), which permitted Missouri's entry into the Union as a slave state. In 1837 the six northwestern counties were purchased from the Indians and added to the state by the Platte Purchase. Because of its central location and its access to navigable rivers, Missouri served as the departure point for western trails and expeditions. The \TLewis and Clark Expedition\t began near Saint Louis in 1804. The \TSanta Fe Trail\t opened a thriving trade with the Southwest in 1821, and the \TOregon Trail\t, beginning in the 1830s and '40s, was used by thousands of settlers to the Northwest. Both trails originated at Independence, Mo. Steamboat traffic on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers became important by the 1820s. Later access to the West took place via the overland Butterfield Trail, the pony express, and the railroads radiating from Saint Louis and Kansas City. The famous Missouri mule was specially bred for the arduous Santa Fe Trail. Missouri was primarily a rural, agricultural state. In the Ozarks a subsistence farmer-woodsman economy, with Appalachian cultural traits, was established. The Boonslick district in the state's center developed into the richest agricultural region, based in part on a small-scale slave plantation system. The Civil War and Economic Growth By the mid-19th century slavery was becoming uneconomical, and immigrants from free states and from Europe, especially Germany and Ireland, had modified the social structure. Nonetheless, slavery remained a controversial issue in the state. The case of \TDred Scott v. Sandford\t, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856-57, began in Missouri. The moderate antislavery stance of Missouri's longtime (1821-50) senator, Thomas Hart \TBenton\t, cost him his political career. Despite the strong block of proslavery sentiment, a Missouri state convention voted against secession in 1861. Several major Civil War battles took place in the state, however, and guerrilla fighting was bitter, bloody, and statewide. Violence continued after the war in the activities of such outlaws as Jesse \TJames\t. The state government was troubled by extremist groups immediately after the war, but stability was achieved in the 1870s. After the Civil War, railroad building and the renewed westward movement of Americans encouraged industry and urban growth. Following a new influx of foreign immigrants, Saint Louis grew to become the nation's fourth largest city in 1900. Economic development in the West fostered Kansas City's growth in agricultural and cattle-based industries. Missouri's peak rural-farm population was reached in 1900. Its economic and social growth was depicted in the murals of Thomas Hart \TBenton\t, grandnephew of the senator. The 20th Century In the period from 1880 to 1920 lumbering companies exhausted the best of the Ozark timber, and moved on to new territories. Many former employees turned to agriculture. In southeastern Missouri large-scale forest clearing, levee building, ditching, and draining of swamps encouraged cotton farming and attracted thousands of laborers, many of whom were black. The Tri-State Mining District, centered on Joplin, was the nation's largest zinc-producing region, and the lead mines of the Saint Francois region boomed in the 1920s. Political power inexorably shifted from rural areas to the urban centers, as Missouri's cities expanded in response to the growing economy. The Depression of the 1930s temporarily slowed economic growth, World War II further drained the rural work force, which left the farms in favor of employment in the cities. Industries continued to expand in the 1950s. By the 1960s, however, depopulation of the inner part of each metropolitan area had begun. Urban deterioration lingers as one of the more intractable problems facing Missouri. Solutions are complicated by a fiscally conservative citizenry and by the fact that state boundaries transect the metropolitan areas of Saint Louis and Kansas City. Yet every Ozark county has gained population since 1970, reversing a half-century-old pattern of rural population decline. Missouri agriculture remains sound and efficient. A vigorous program of road improvement has broken down the isolation of the Ozarks and has encouraged the revival of Ozark crafts and folk culture. Missouri, because of its centrality in the nation and its diverse resources, continues to attract manufacturing and commerce and more than its national share of retirement communities and tourists. Walter A. Schroeder Bibliography: Chapman, Carl H., The Archaeology of Missouri (1975); Houck, Louis, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the Union (1908; repr. 1971); Karsch, Robert Frederick, The Government of Missouri, 12th ed. (1974) and Missouri Under the Constitution (1968); McCurdy, Frances L., Stump, Bar and Pulpit: Speechmaking on the Missouri Frontier (1969); McReynolds, Edwin C., Missouri: A History of the Crossroads State (1975); Meyer, Duane Gilbert, The Heritage of Missouri, rev. ed. (1970); Nagel, Paul C., Missouri: A Bicentennial History (1977); Parrish, William E., ed., A History of Missouri, 5 vols. (1971- ); Rafferty, Milton D., et al., Atlas of Missouri (1970) and Economic and Social Atlas of Missouri (1975).