Watch a rerun of The Wonder Years, and you get a pretty good idea of what it was like to grow up in Raytown in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. In an era of the Vietnam War, race riots and assassinations, it was an oasis of Middle America. Despite its reputation as the home of the Tomb of the Unknown Bowler, few kids there suffered the burdens of poverty or, frankly, the burdens of wealth. It was a place where the schools provided a good education to those who were willing to work hard and earn it. Truth be told, it still is.

As Raytown occupies a unique place at the center of Jackson County, Jackson County—also on occasion the recipient of undeserved disrespect—similarly occupies a unique place at the center of the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. No other county offers a greater variety of lifestyle, from loft living in the River Market to lake
living at Lotawana to rural life in Oak Grove.

Over one-third of those who live in the 11-county metro area live in Jackson County. Over 42 percent of the jobs and over half the top employers (those employing more than 500 workers) can be found here as well. Because so many top-drawer companies call the county home, earnings per job at $36,745 is higher in Jackson County than in any other county in the surrounding area. It also beats out the metro average of $34,350 and the national average of $34,110.

While the great jobs tend to gravitate toward the central business district, the citizens who hold those jobs come from all over. A study of migration patterns shows major increases in population in Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs and Grain Valley, primarily because of excellent schools, but there are stalwarts west and south who would never dream of moving. Regardless of faith, residents of Brookside and Waldo depend on strong Jewish, Lutheran and Catholic schools to remain the cornerstones of their neighborhoods as those schools have been for decades.

As for institutions of higher learning, Jackson County houses more main campuses than any other county in the area. Many of those universities collaborate with the Stowers Institute and MRI and other participants in Kansas City’s life sciences initiative, anchored for the most part at Rockhill Road and Volker Boulevard.

Hospitals are a big part of that initiative, and nowhere does health care have a greater tradition than in Jackson County. Saint Joseph Health Center, Research Medical Center, Saint Luke’s Hospital, and Children’s Mercy all have roots that go back over one hundred years. Of the 25 facilities ranked on Ingram’s most recent list of Top Area Hospitals & Medical Centers, 12 are located in Jackson County.

Jackson County has Union Station and the Country Club Plaza and the Liberty Memorial. It has all the major sports teams in Kansas City with the Comets and Knights at Kemper Arena, the Explorers at Hale Arena, and, of course, the occupants of the Truman Sports Complex. It is the only county among its neighbors to have produced the 1969 Chiefs and the 1985 Royals, Super Bowl and World Series teams respectively.

The vast majority of live performance venues in town are here, from 18th & Vine to the Missouri Repertory Theater to the Martin City Melodrama. It is the residence of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, often described as the finest art museum between Chicago and San Francisco. It offers Westport for nightlife and a strip of restaurants along 39th Street that will make you forget all about steak and barbecue.

This is the only county in the metro area that can boast that it produced a U.S. president, or such artists as Robert Altman, Thomas Hart Benton, Walt Disney, Charlie Parker and, in his own way, Satchel Paige.

Jackson County, with a larger population and a wider disparity among the socio-economic levels of that population, faces challenges that many surrounding counties don’t. It also has so much more to offer. It is not just central to the Kansas City metropolitan area; it is the heart and soul.