USA Guide
The Great Plains
Missouri
The state of Missouri, where the forest meets the prairie and the Mississippi River meets the Missouri River, has two significant cities: dominant St Louis sits midway down the state's eastern fringe; Kansas City is almost directly across on the western border. The pair are linked by I-70, but there's not much in between. In contrast, the south features the beautiful hillsides, streams, and ragged lakes of the Ozark Mountains, as well as the booming tourist haven of Branson. In the east, small river towns such as Hannibal and Ste Genevieve brighten the course of the Mississippi.
Although the first French colonists honored the claims of local Native Americans, such as the original Missouri, when the area was sold to the US in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase, the Indians were driven west by a great rush of settlers. In the 1840s and 1850s immigrants from Germany and Ireland flooded into eastern Missouri. Outnumbering their pro-slavery predecessors, they swung the balance in favor of staying in the Union during the Civil War – however, Confederate guerrilla forces attracted considerable support among slave-owners in the west of the state. Meanwhile, Missouri, and St Louis in particular, was establishing itself as an important gateway to the West. Today, the "Show Me State" (so called because of the supposed skepticism of the typical Missourian) retains a conservative air.
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