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• Big urban, or small-town flavor, Kansas City really has it all: The most populous county in the region is Jackson County, home to most of Kansas City, Mo., with nearly 688,000 residents.
• Surrounding the twin KC cores are nearly 50 cities, including suburbs, large and small: The Metro area has four cities of 100,000 or more in population, four other cities have at least 50,000, and 10 with 20,000+.
• The Missouri/Kansas state line divides Greater Kansas City, but the division is not so severe as in 1863 when Missourians—under the leadership of William Quantrill—rode to Lawrence, burned most of the town, and killed some 125 citizens.
• An estimated 60 percent of the nation’s animal-related research and commerce takes place within 100 miles of the Kansas City region’s borders.
• Nearby St. Joseph, Mo., is the beating heart of that animal-sciences beast; it has more than 5,000 jobs in animal pharmaceuticals, agriculture chemicals, food processing, animal research and development.
• Production workers here generate nearly 15 percent more added value per hour than the national average, studies have shown, explaining why Ford and GM continue to invest heavily in capital improvements in KC.
• The nationally noted rebirth of Downtown Kansas City includes $7 billion in investment since 2002, either in place, under construction or planned. Included in that is more than $100 million for the two-mile streetcar starter line that began operating in 2016 and is
being expanded soon south past the Plaza.
• The region’s logistics sector has undergone dramatic growth in the past decade, and for the first time, Kansas City is seeing construction of industrial facilities pushing beyond the 1 million-square-foot threshold.
• Civic leaders and voters have committed a new massive single-terminal at Kansas City International Airport. It’s already taking shape at KCI and about to change with the beautiful new state-of-the-art terminal that is charted to open by 2021.
• More tons of freight move by rail through Kansas City than anywhere else in the nation, and in terms of rail traffic, it’s the second-largest rail center in the U.S., only behind Chicago.
• Greater Kansas City has 30 percent more freeway miles per capita than any metro in the world and has the second least-congested traffic of any million-plus metropolitan area in the nation.
• With more than 5,000 jobs in animal pharmaceuticals, agriculture chemicals, food processing, animal research and development, nearby St. Joseph, at the northern edge of the Kansas City MSA, is a national center of animal and life sciences.
• Production workers in greater Kansas City produce up to 50 percent more per hour than the national average, as measured by the U.S. Bureau of Census.
• Huge intermodal facilities in Johnson County on the Kansas side and Jackson County in Missouri have helped push this region into national prominence for distribution. Greater Kansas City is also home to the nation’s largest Foreign Trade Zone.
• The world’s biggest barbecue competition takes place every year at Kansas Speedway. Hundreds of competitive smokers and grillers compete in this signature event in tandem with the region’s premier agricultural livestock show.
• Cerner Corp’s rapid rise through health-care IT software into population health systems has helped overtake Sprint Corp. as the region’s largest private-sector employer. More than half of Cerner’s 29,500 employees worldwide work here.
• Platte County, Mo., and Johnson County, Kan., have some of the highest per-capita incomes in the two-state area.
• Fort Leavenworth is based in Greater Kansas City. Founded as a home for a small U.S. Calvary detachment, “The Fort” today is home to the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, which draws top students from U.S. and allied forces.
• World-famous bandit Jesse James was a Kansas City phenomenon. He was born in Kearney, robbed his first bank in Liberty and died in St. Joseph.
• Lewis and Clark were early visitors, back in 1803, but they set the stage for westward expansion that made this region a hub: The Santa Fe, California and Oregon trails all started in Independence, Mo. (and lend their names to that city’s annual fall festival, Santa-Cali-Gon Days).
