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2003-09-14 - 6:47 a.m.

Tour Guide

Order the Official Missouri Vacation Planner and you’ll learn Missouri is where the rivers run. Ask locals and you’re more likely to hear Missouri is where the hillbillies run.

We’re known as the Show Me State,” our state animal is a mule,

the state musical instrument is a fiddle, our state dance is the square dance and our state fish is a channel cat. We’re a little bit country.

Our self-depreciating humor aside, there’s really more to this state than barefoot, backy-chewin, backwoods hillbillies. Missouri is the southern most state in the Midwest, and because we’re bordered by eight states (Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma) we’re a very neighborly place. Most readers know Missouri is the boyhood home of Mark Twain.

In addition, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Eugene Field found their muse in Missouri. Renowned musicians, including Chuck Berry, Scott Joplin and Charlie Parker left their mark on music history here. And that’s not to mention Branson, reportedly offering more opportunities to enjoy country music than Nashville.

The state’s two largest cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, boast some impressive stats. St. Louis (The Gateway to the West) is home to the Gateway Arch

and hosted the 1904 World’s Fair. Both iced tea and the ice cream cone were invented at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Kansas City is called the City of Fountains.

Rome is the only city in the world with more fountains than Kansas City.

Central Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks is known as The Land of The Magic Dragon because the lake takes on a serpentine appearance when seen from the air, and Missouri’s Big Spring, located at Van Buren, is the largest single outlet spring in America.

You’ll discover all this in your travel guide. What you might not find are the following Missouri facts:

• The first successful parachute jump was made in St. Louis in 1912.

• Kansas City has more miles of boulevards than Paris

• The debate whether the correct pronunciation of Missouri is MissourAH or MissourEE has been going on since the late 1880s and is still unsettled.

• Missouri Day is the third Wednesday in October.

• In 1884 evaporated milk was patented in Missouri.

• Speleologists have recorded more than 5,500 caves in Missouri

• Thomas Jefferson's original tombstone is located on the campus of The University of Missouri.

• It’s against the law to play hopscotch on Sunday in Missouri.

• On Thursday lawmakers made it legal for residents of Missouri to carry concealed weapons. We have some really nutty legislators in this state.

• The goddess of grain, Ceres, honoring Missouri's agricultural heritage sits atop the capital building in Jefferson City.

• When Jesse James was shot and killed in 1882 in his St. Joseph home he was known as “Mr. Howard."

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