17. Missouri

How on earth do you rank a state that’s home? Well, I’ll give it the old college try.

I think going into this list if you know me, you might assume that Missouri would be pretty low. I mean, I moved out of the state and have no intention of coming back. And it may be true that a few years ago closer to when I had moved away, it would have been lower. But as I look back at my time growing up and the environment that I had, I have realized just how spectacular Missouri might be.

Shout out to my mom who took all these incredible photos of our farm. She likes sunsets.

Missouri is a state that I don’t know if you quite understand unless you’re from there. And a lot of people don’t even know it exists. When I went to college and told people I’m from Missouri, when they responded, they got it confused with states like Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Nebraska. Truly all over the board. A lot of the time, I hear people joke “more like Misery, amirite. Hurhurhur.” And other times I hear it in association with that term I absolutely hate, “fly-over state”. The most any of these people that say that term have actually been to Missouri has been driving through Highway 70 if at all. So I think that kinda shows that people don’t actually know what Missouri is.

And Missouri does definitely have an identity crisis and it always has. Is it a Southern state or a Midwest state? Is it a state defined by its rural regions or its cities? And for the longest time up until the 2010s, was it a red state or blue state? And the answer to everything is that it’s a little bit all of the above. But I would argue that it takes from some of the best of all states with similar geography and puts it together into a truly special place. So what is Missouri? Really, it’s whatever you make of it, but it certainly isn’t a fly-over state.

I’ll start with the geography. Northern Missouri I would say is nothing that special. Much of it is pretty flat, but not too flat so it doesn’t drag down the ranking too much. But once you go south of the Missouri River is where the state truly shines. The state is so gorgeously hilly and has these massive bright yellowish bluffs, all culminating once you reach the Ozarks where the hills and bluffs get even more intense. Please check out my Arkansas ranking if you want to hear a little more about how incredible the Ozarks are near Lake Tablerock. 

And there’s still so much beauty I could talk about. Johnson Shut-ins and the Elephant Rocks offer such incredible land formations that you wouldn’t expect in a place like it. And the Mark Twain National Forest is just full of some of the best you can get from the state’s natural beauty. And let’s not forget the rivers and creeks. Once you go beyond the Muddy Mississippi and Missouri rivers, there are so many incredible pristine creeks that are an absolute delight. They’re rocky, so they are crystal clear and so calm that you can float down in an inner tube. It is such a special experience to get to go down these rivers surrounded by all the wildlife just putting back drinks from your cooler that's in another inner tube tied to yours. You want Missouri culture? That is Missouri culture.

And then there’s the state history. One thing that was really cool that I got to experience was a full semester in elementary school of Missouri indigenous history dating back around 10,000 years. Missouri had some of the largest Indian towns and cities and we know so much yet so little from the archaeology done in the state. While most of these tribes were gone before we have written history in the region, something that’s so amazing is that you can still find arrowheads dating back thousands of years scattered across the lands. On our farm and in the riverbeds along it alone we’ve found 10s of them. Now that is awesome.

There’s also the importance of Missouri as the crossroads of the nation. Before cars, St. Louis was one of the most connected places across the nation due to it being at the Missouri and Mississippi River delta. The city dates back to even before our nation was founded and remained the most important city in the region outside of Chicago until its decline in the last half a century. 

St. Louis is an incredible city, and its downfall is one of the most tragic in our country. It went from being a manufacturing and transportation hub with a population of nearly 1 million now down to less than 300,000. And no I am not overstating that St. Louis was once a world class city not far off from Chicago or New York. It was the first city outside of Europe to host the Olympics. That’s right, the Olympic games' host cities went Athens, Paris… St. Louis. That is incredible! 

And that’s not to say just how much there still is and has been to the culture of the city. It has been an instrumental city to music, being one of the major Jazz and Blues hubs of the early 1900s. And Chuck Berry, one of the founders of Rock and Roll, was a cornerstone of St. Louis. And the city still has some of the most robust cultural scenes with an incredible art museum, history museum, and botanical garden.

Unfortunately St. Louis was the victim of “white flight” to the suburbs in the mid 1900s as more descendants of former slaves moved from the South to the city. And while the suburbs of St. Louis continue to grow, the city has faced a long painful decline to where we now have the state refusing to put enough funding into it. But they’ll never be able to take away that the city is still where the heart, soul, and culture of the region is. Maybe someday the city will be able to bounce back. There is still so much incredible from the architecture to the centuries old neighborhoods, so even if the city might not be exactly what it used to be, it’s a must visit. Sometimes thinking about it almost makes me want to move back.

I love my home state, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about the possibility of moving back someday, but I don’t think I ever could in its current space. Frankly, the state has been taken over by a government that has no respect for its people, and would rather see it become a shadow of its former self instead of it be an open place to live for all its population. For some reason, these people would rather pick out an enemy like trans people, instead of solving the root problems in the state. I guess it’s easier to blame problems on anyone other than yourself. 

I hate to end on a sour note, because I really do love Missouri, and it’s a shame that it’s the people in charge that make me stay away (and maybe the ticks). It’s the exact reason I don’t count these people into my ranking because they don’t represent us. And I don’t want to focus on these losers when my journey through all of this was a triumphant, happy one. So regardless of those people, please, give Missouri a chance if you’re not already there. There is so much to love, and maybe then you can realize why it’s the destination and not what you dismiss as you go from coast to coast.