With over six million residents, it is the 19th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. The capital is Jefferson City. Humans have inhabited present-day Missouri for at least 12,000 years.
Missouri embodies a unique but dynamic balance between the urban and the rural and between the liberal and the conservative. The state ranks high in the United States in terms of urbanization and industrial activity, but it also maintains a vigorous and diversified agriculture.
Missouri, located in the central United States, shares borders with eight states: Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south, and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska to the west.
Missouri, the Show Me State, was admitted to the United States in 1821 as part of the Missouri Compromise.