Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, or K.C., is the largest city, and second largest metropolitan area, in the state of Missouri. It is the 37th–largest city by population in the United States and the 23rd–largest by area. It is the central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Kansas–Missouri border. It was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west. Originally called Kansas after the river, this became confusing upon the establishment of Kansas Territory in 1854. The name Kansas City was assigned to distinguish the two.

Sitting on Missouri's western border, with downtown near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, the modern city encompasses 316 square miles (820 km²). Most of the city is located in Jackson County, but portions of the city spill into Clay, Cass, and Platte counties. It is one of Jackson County's two county seats (the other being Independence). The 18th and Vine Neighborhood gave birth to the musical styles of Kansas City jazz and Kansas City blues. It is also known for Kansas City-style barbecue. The area is infamous for the Border War that occurred during the American Civil War, including the Battle of Westport and Bleeding Kansas. Major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Independence and Lee's Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park, Olathe, and Kansas City.

Kansas City metropolitan area

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.

Geographic overview

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

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.