Kansas City is the distributing point for a huge agricultural region. It is one of the country's leading grain and livestock markets and is famous for its steak and barbecue. The city is also a great industrial center, with food processing, milling, petroleum refining, and vehicle assembly high in importance. Kansas City, Kansas, across the Missouri River, is politically separate, but the two cities form an economic unit constituting the Greater Kansas City area.

Kansas City, Missouri, was developed as a steamboat landing for the town of Westport, 4 miles south on the Santa Fe Trail, and a competitor with Independence as the trail's eastern terminus and outfitting point. The buildings that sprang up along this landing soon eclipsed Westport, which was eventually incorporated into the new city. Kansas City's roaring overland trade was disturbed by the border warfare of the 1850s and the Civil War, but peace and the railroads brought new growth and prosperity. A network of railway lines following the natural water-level routes that converge at the mouth of the Kansas River made Kansas City a great terminus.

Famous for their "booster" spirit, its citizens were aroused to the need for civic improvement in the 1890s by the crusade of William Rockhill Nelson, Kansas City Star publisher. As a result, today's Kansas City boasts 52 boulevards totaling 155 miles and more fountains than any city except Rome.