The State of Missouri (nicknamed `The Show Me State’) is in the Midwest region of the USA and is bordered by Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east (across the Mississippi River), Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska to the west. The Missouri River forms the western boundaries with Nebraska and part of Kansas and then flows eastwards across the state to join the Mississippi, which denotes the eastern boundary; these two rivers are the longest in the USA. North of the Missouri is a region of undulating hills and fertile plains known as the Dissected Till Plains.

The state of Missouri, stretching into Arkansas, is the Ozark Plateau, the highest area of the state. In the west of the state are the low hills and prairies of the Osage Plains and in the south-eastern corner the fertile lowlands of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Other principal rivers include the White and the Osage. Missouri has a continental climate, with the south-east region receiving the heaviest precipitation. Under Spanish rule many slave-owning farmers had settled in the region; Missouri became the 24th state to enter the Union, on 10 August 1821, as a slave-holding state under the so-called Missouri Compromise.