- published: 16 Jun 2016
- views: 23615
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a 14-county metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri that straddles the border between the U.S. states of Missouri and Kansas. With a population of 2,393,623, it ranks as the second largest metropolitan area with its core in Missouri (after Greater St. Louis) and has a population in Kansas larger than the Wichita metropolitan area. Alongside Kansas City, the area includes a number of other cities and suburbs, the largest being Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; and Independence, Missouri; all over 100,000 in population.The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) serves as the Council of Governments and the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the area.
The larger Kansas City Metropolitan Area as seen on a map can be visualized roughly as four quadrants:
The northeast quadrant of the map is locally referred to as "north of the river" or "the Northland". It includes parts of Clay County, Missouri including North Kansas City, Missouri. North Kansas City is bounded by a bend in the Missouri River that defines a border between Wyandotte County, Kansas and Clay County, Missouri running approximately North-South and a border between North Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Missouri running approximately East-West. The sharpest part of the river bend forms a peninsula containing the Kansas City Downtown Airport.
Kansas i/ˈkænzəs/ is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind", although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans". For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue.
When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine whether Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed, and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, corn, sorghum, and soybeans. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 34th most populous of the 50 United States.
I've got my old man's Delta '88
The windows cracked I'm on the interstate
Just a hundred miles to go on half a tank of gasoline
Lucky charms and Tic-Tacs and mom's amphetamines
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
February makes me kinda crazy
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
Will you still be callin' me your baby
I met a man in a diner outside of Hays
He said marriage brought him there
It was divorce that made him stay
I drove straight through to Junction City
I thought I'd call you in Topeka
But I didn't want the pity
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
February makes me kinda crazy
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
Will you still be callin' me your baby
Feels like I been thrown into the slammer
With the back end of a hammer
Drawn over my strings
Living became needing
My crying became bleeding
And now I am only dreaming
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
February makes me kinda crazy
A hundred miles to go to Kansas City
Will you still be callin' me your baby