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Famous for it's history
Jessie & Frank James The famous old time outlaws, who specialized in robbing trains in the late 1800's, Jessie was said to rob from the rich and give to the poor, Some think of him as an American version of Robin Hood, they  were from Missouri, after Frank James was released from prison he worked in a movie theater selling tickets. Jessie was shot in the back by one of his own men. Many movies have been made about the James gang.

{State bird, bluebird} {State flower, hawthorn}
{State tree, dogwood}

Missouri , where the forest meets the prairie and the Mississippi River meets the Missouri River, has just two major cities. Popular St Louis sits midway down the eastern side, Kansas City is almost directly across on the western border next to Kansas City, Kansas. The pair are linked by I-70, but there's not much in between to stop off for.  The south features the beautiful hillsides, streams and  lakes of the Ozark Mountains , as well as the booming country-and-western town of Branson ; while in the east , small river towns such as Hannibal and serene Ste Genevieve brighten the course of the Mississippi. The northwest , home of the Pony Express and outlaw Jesse James, still strikes up images of frontier times.

The Mississippi River offers some great fishing for cat fish, stories from the old days of fish so big they had to be pulled out with a team of horses, is probably not quite correct, but the fish do get well over 100 pounds, and some claim 300 pounds.
"Show Me"

The Mississippi defines Missouri's eastern border, absorbing as major tributaries the Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Des Moines rivers. Innumerable towns sprang up along the river, their aspirations reflected by such classical names as Alexandria, Antioch and Athens. Hannibal , the boyhood home of Mark Twain, is the largest in the northeast, while Gallic Ste Genevieve is the prettiest in the south. All have, however, decreased in importance with the growing pre-eminence of St Louis . Away from the river, the land rises to the Ozark Plateau, whose deep green valleys are cut by swift, clear streams.
 
There's little to see south of Kansas City before the Ozark Mountains . Occupying most of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, the area remained frontier territory until the timber companies moved in at the end of the nineteenth century. When they moved on, the hill-dwellers were left to eke out a living from the denuded terrain. Severe droughts forced many to leave for the cities. For those who remain, fishing resorts and tourist attractions supply some work, though the region remains poor and economically backward. None of the Ozark peaks is particularly high, but the roads through switch, dip, climb and swerve to provide stunning views of steep hillsides, thick with oak, elm, hickory and redbud that are quite resplendent in the fall.

Springfield is the region's main city, 130 miles south of Kansas City, but the gateway to the Ozarks, the country music town of Branson , is more popular by far.

KANSAS CITY , 250 miles due west of St Louis, straddles the state line between Kansas and Missouri. Virtually all its main points of interest are on the Missouri side, where the fountains, boulevards, and Art Deco and Mediterranean-style buildings, and the encouraging revitalization of downtown, are unusual and welcome features in a Midwestern city. Kansas City, Kansas, on the other hand, is a dull sprawl of suburbs that doesn't have much to attract visitors.

Perched just below the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, three hundred miles south of Chicago and north of Memphis, cosmopolitan ST LOUIS (pronounced, whatever any song might say, as Lewis) owes its vaguely European air to its history and developed cultural infrastructure. Any city capable of producing two of the twentieth century's greatest poets - T.S. Eliot and Chuck Berry - probably has a lot going for it.

St Louis was founded in 1764 by the French fur trader Pierre Laclede , but the American immigration that followed its sale to the US under the Louisiana Purchase all but extinguished the refinement it had gained during French and Spanish rule. It subsequently became crucial as the major gateway for pioneers on the wagon trails westward. Transportation - first steamboats, then trains and now air haulage - has long been the basis of its considerable industrial strength. However, St Louis has not always had an easy ride. Downtown reached a nadir during the 1970s, but the years since then have seen a remarkable turnaround, with attractions on the revitalized riverfront including the magnificent Gateway Arch and the restored warehouses of Laclede's Landing .

Try not to leave without sampling the outlying districts. To the west lie arty Central West End and studenty University (or "U") City , on either side of prodigious Forest Park with its museums and playing fields. The blue-collar southside features the markets, antique shops and jazz pubs of Soulard and the Italian shops and cafés of the Hill . Directly across the river in Illinois, East St Louis , once the stomping ground of jazz stars like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, has very little to offer visitors.