Jefferson City, Missouri

Jefferson City, informally Jeff City, is the capital of the U.S. state of Missouri. It had a population of 43,228 at the 2020 United States census, ranking as the 16th most populous city in the state, but the 9th least populous U.S. state capital. It is also the county seat of Cole County and the principal city of the Jefferson City Metropolitan Statistical Area, the second-most-populous metropolitan area in Mid-Missouri and the fifth-most populous in the state. It forms part of the nine-county Columbia–Jefferson City–Moberly combined statistical area, which has 415,747 residents. Most of the city is located within Cole County, with a small northern section extending into adjacent Callaway County.

Jefferson City is named for Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the third President of the United States, 1801–1809, and earlier major author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States on July 4, 1776. He also served several diplomatic posts overseas in Europe and was the first U.S. Secretary of State (1790–1793) in the first President's Cabinet of George Washington, and subsequently the second Vice President (1797–1801) under second chief executive John Adams.

Jefferson City is located on the northern edge of the Ozark Plateau on the southern side of the Missouri River in a region known as Mid-Missouri, that is roughly mid-way between the state's two large urban areas of Kansas City to the west and St. Louis in the east (along the west bank of the Mississippi River). It is 29 miles (47 km) south of Columbia, Missouri, and sits at the western edge of the Missouri Rhineland, one of the major wine-producing regions of the Midwest. The city is dominated by the monumental domed Missouri State Capitol, which rises from a bluff overlooking the nearby Missouri River to the north. Lewis and Clark with their Corps of Discovery passed the bluff here on their historic expedition upriver in 1804, eventually journeying westward to the Pacific Northwest region and the Pacific Ocean, before Europeans or Americans established any settlement there.

Many of Jefferson City's primary employers are in service and manufacturing industries like Hitachi. Jefferson City is also home to Lincoln University, a public historically black and federal land-grant university founded the year after the American Civil War in 1866, by the Union Army black veterans of the First Missouri Regiment of Colored Infantry & 62nd Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops with support from the Second Missouri Regiment of Colored Infantry / 65th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops.

In pre-Columbian times, this region was home of an ancient people known today as the Mound Builders, likely related to the Mississippian societies. They were subsequently replaced by Osage Native Americans. In the late 17th century, frontiersmen began to inhabit the area, including Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Louis Jolliet, Jacques Marquette, Robert de LaSalle, and Daniel Boone, with the latter having the greatest influence on the region. Famed Western explorer and settler Daniel Boone's son, Daniel Morgan Boone (1769–1839), would later lay out and plat Jefferson City in the early 19th century.

When the Missouri Territory was organized in 1812, St. Louis was Missouri's seat of government for the territorial governor and territorial legislature. Later St. Charles would serve as the next capital town of the old Territory. Jefferson City was chosen as the new state capital in 1821, after Missouri was admitted to the Union as the 24th State. The village on the southern banks of the Missouri River, first was called "Lohman's Landing", and when the new state legislature decided to relocate there, they proposed the name "Missouriopolis" before settling on the city of "Jefferson" to honor former third President Thomas Jefferson, who was still living at his Virginia home estate of Monticello for the next five years.

Over the years, the city was most often referred to as "Jefferson City"; the common name eventually stuck. For years, this village was little more than a trading post located in the wilderness about midway between St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1825, the settlement was formally incorporated, and a year later, the state legislature of the General Assembly of Missouri moved to Jefferson City, where they would continue to meet.

Jefferson City was also chosen by the lawmakers as the site of a state prison. This prison, named the Missouri State Penitentiary, opened in 1836. This prison was the unfortunate home to multiple infamous Americans, including former heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston, Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, and infamous 1930s bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.