East-West Gateway’s August 2021 Map of the Month highlights Missouri’s Bicentennial. This month, Missouri celebrates its 200th anniversary as the 24th state of the United States. Missouri entered the union on August 10, 1821, with its first capitol in St. Charles. This Map of the Month reproduces a portion of a map that was created in 1822, the year after statehood, by cartographers Henry Charles Carey and Isaac Lea.
In the 1820 territorial census, which occurred in the year before statehood, the counties of Franklin, Jefferson, St. Charles and St. Louis (inclusive of the city of St. Louis) made up 27 percent of the state population. Enslaved persons accounted for 16 percent of the population of these counties and 15 percent of the state’s population. This census excluded Native Americans.
By 1920, a century later, the boundaries of these counties and of the city of St. Louis had assumed their current form. At Missouri’s centennial, the five county-level jurisdictions represented 28 percent of the state’s population. Over 40 percent of people in the region were either foreign-born or the children of immigrants.
According to the most recent population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the four Missouri counties in the East-West Gateway region, along with the city of St. Louis, were home to 33 percent of the state’s population in 2020. Today, the St. Louis region accounts for a large portion of the state’s economic activity. The five county-level jurisdictions account for 39 percent of the state’s wage and salary employment, generate 46 percent of the state’s wages, and contribute 43 percent of the state’s gross domestic product.