Jefferson City: The Capital Nobody Wanted to Build

Jefferson City became the capital of Missouri not because it was the most practical choice, but because it was a geographic compromise. When Missouri sought statehood in eighteen twenty, the two major population centers, Saint Louis in the east and the Boonslick country in the central river valley, each wanted the capital nearby. The legislature split the difference and chose a nearly uninhabited bluff on the Missouri River about halfway between them.

The new capital was named for Thomas Jefferson, who had doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase that brought this land into the republic. The statehouse was built on a commanding bluff above the river, though for years the building was embarrassingly modest. The current Missouri State Capitol, a neo-classical structure with a dome loosely modeled on Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, was completed in nineteen seventeen after a fire destroyed the previous building in nineteen eleven when it was struck by lightning.

The Civil War turned Jefferson City into a strategic prize. Missouri was a slave state that did not secede, and the Union army moved quickly in eighteen sixty-one to secure the capital and keep Missouri in the Union. Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, a Confederate sympathizer, fled the city and tried to take Missouri out by proclamation. The Union-loyal legislature declared his seat vacant, formed a provisional government, and the Confederacy never controlled Jefferson City.

The city today is a relatively small capital, with fewer than fifty thousand residents, dominated by the state government complex along the river bluffs. At the south entrance of the Capitol stands a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, looking out over the river valley he never saw but made possible.