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A hundred years of Route 66. Two hundred fifty years of America. And a state whose fingerprints show up in more of the nation’s story than most people realize.
Some years lend themselves to a theme. This is one of them: 2026 marks the centennial of Route 66, born in Missouri, and the semiquincentennial—yes, we had to look it up, too—of the United States itself. In that spirit, here’s a fresh cut through Missouri’s trivia—firsts, anniversaries, and the everyday facts that make the Show-Me State more consequential than its Midwestern modesty usually lets on.
Firsts and Anniversaries
• On April 30, 1926, Springfield businessman John T. Woodruff sent a telegram proposing the name “Route 66” for a new Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway. One hundred years later, Springfield hosted the National Route 66 Centennial Kickoff, drawing visitors from all eight states the highway crosses.
• Ste. Genevieve was Missouri’s first European settlement, founded around 1735 and named for the patron saint of Paris—pre-dating the United States itself by more than four decades.
• The Eads Bridge, connecting St. Louis with East St. Louis, Ill., was the first bridge across the Mississippi River when it was completed in 1874, seven years after construction began.
• The historic Santa Fe Trail, connecting Missouri to New Mexico, helped spark Kansas City’s rise. The trail’s Westport leg, founded in 1838, linked directly to the riverport that grew into the city’s core.
• Schaeffer’s Specialized Lubricants in St. Louis, founded in 1839, is the oldest surviving company in Missouri—nearly two centuries old and still operating.
By the Numbers
• Missouri is home to more than 6.3 million residents as of 2026, the 18th most populous state in the nation.
• The Show-Me State’s real GDP reached $357.97 billion in 2025, ranking 22nd nationally and up 1.3 percent from the year before, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
• Factories drive a meaningful share of Missouri’s prosperity: manufacturing employs roughly 287,000 Missourians, nearly one in eight private-sector jobs statewide.
• Missouri’s farmland sprawls across 95,000 farms, covering roughly 27.5 million acres of the state’s 44.2 million. The crown jewels are soybeans, generating nearly $4 billion annually, and corn is close behind.
• The state is home to nearly 4 million beef cattle, but poultry is the bigger number: more than 300 million chickens are raised each year, along with 15.5 million turkeys.
• Missouri borders eight states, tied with Tennessee for the most of any state in the nation. The longest border, shared with Illinois along the Mississippi River, stretches 331 miles.
People and Places
• Jefferson City, the state’s political center, is named for President Thomas Jefferson, who orchestrated the Louisiana Purchase that more than doubled the young nation’s size—territory that included the land Missouri now occupies.
• Missouri’s roots run deep with trailblazers like George Washington Carver, born into slavery, who became a pioneering scientist, and St. Louis’s William Wells Brown, widely regarded as America’s first published black novelist.
• Known worldwide by his pen name Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens brought Missouri’s river towns to life in classics like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, turning his hometown of Hannibal into a literary pilgrimage site.
• Harry Truman’s presidential library and final resting place are located in Independence, just east of Kansas City.
• Missouri has sent an outsized share of talent to Hollywood: actors Kevin Kline, Kathleen Turner, John Goodman, Jon Hamm, Don Johnson, Dick Van Dyke and Chris Cooper all got their start here, following Golden Age stars Jean Harlow and Ginger Rogers.
• The Opera House, the oldest building on Disneyland’s Main Street, stands as a tribute to Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Mo.
Defense and Distinction
• Missouri is home to B-2 Stealth bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base near Sedalia and the Army’s Fort Leonard Wood in the Ozarks. In St. Louis, Boeing’s defense unit produces F/A-18 and F-15 fighter jets, along with autonomous vehicles and space and missile systems.
• Medicine is among Missouri’s business-sector heavyweights, anchored by major research hospitals and medical centers—Washington University in St. Louis alone operates a world-class medical campus leading breakthroughs that reach patients well beyond the state’s borders.
• As America marks 250 years of independence this year, Missouri’s own milestones—the Louisiana Purchase territory, the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails, the birthplace of Route 66—place the Show-Me State at the center of the nation’s westward story in a way few states outside the original thirteen colonies can claim.
PUBLISHED AUGUST 2026
