Why Kansas City is (Mostly) in Missouri

Why is the Kansas City most people think of the one that’s in Missouri? Well strangely, Kansas City, Missouri existed first. First known as The City of Kansas, it was incorporated on February 22, 1853. Its residents named it after the Kansa, a Native American tribe that the residents of Kansas also named their state after later on.

Keep in mind that Kansas didn’t exist yet in 1853. The next year, it became a territory and it didn’t become a state until 1861. It wasn’t until October 1872 that a few smaller towns all together to officially form Kansas City, Kansas. Of course, this was after Kansas City, Missouri’s population had skyrocketed. Before the Civil War, KCMO had less than 5,000 people. A decade later, it was approaching 35,000. The folks in KCK wanted to piggyback on the success of KCMO and essentially confuse visitors into thinking THEY were the real Kansas City. I should mention that before this, Kansas politicians made several attempts to annex KCMO and the surrounding area into Kansas.


The Kansas City Times editorial board wrote, “Kansas City, Mo, is the legitimate outgrowth of the state of Kansas. In everything but a line on the map she is essentially a city of Kansas.” Unfortunately for Kansas, Missourians didn’t want to lose KCMO because you know, KCMO is awesome, so they fought back. Since then, the two cities and their suburbs have thrived in their own ways, but KCMO often dominates the headlines. Freaking KCMO. Anyway, how about this street behind me? It divides not just KCK and KCMO, but Kansas and Missouri further to the south. It's called State Line Road, and it's one of the most unique borders in the world. A street that divides two states presents unique challenges. For example, it used to be you'd find a lot of 18-year olds crossing the street to over there at night and then later that night stumbling back this way Because the drinking age was 18 over there but it was 21 over   here on the Missouri side Another example of this is the fact that if you drive down State Line Road you see that most of the businesses are on the Missouri side, where the taxes are lower.



But how and why did State Line Road come to be? The earliest mention of State Line Road comes from an 1872 directory. Back then, it was just a few blocks long. Just like today, people went back and forth across the border like it was nothing. Back then, this was where the cows were. In fact, cows could often be in both states at the same time. The stockyards straddled the border so that people could more easily conduct business on both sides of the state line, sometimes within the same building.

Soon though, it became apparent that a road separating the stockyards made it easier to move about to conduct such business. As the cities and their suburbs grew to the south, so did State Line Road. Today, it stretches nearly 14 miles. If you visit Kansas City today, you'd likely not be able to tell the difference crossing back and forth across the border. Both sides are awesome. Ironically, though, it's Kansas City Missouri that's still growing at a much quicker rate than Kansas City Kansas.