Known as the Show Me State, Missouri is part of the Midwestern Region of the United States. Missouri is one of the few states encompassed by more than six other states. With Iowa in the north and Arkansas to the south, Missouri is surrounded by eight states in total. To the west, Missouri shares borders with Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, listed from northernmost to southernmost. East of Missouri are Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
The geographic center point of Missouri is located at a latitude of 32° 48.9' N and 92° 37.9' W. The physical location of Missouri’s center point is in Miller County. With GPS coordinates of 37.9643° N and 91.8318° W, Missouri is part of Division Four of Region Two in the United States, as determined by the Census Bureau. In other words, Missouri is in the Midwest.
Missouri has a width of 240 miles and a length of 300 miles. Altogether, the total area of Missouri comes to 69,715 square miles, making Missouri the twenty-first largest state in terms of physical size. Of the total area, Missouri is 98.6% land and 1.4% water. These percentages equate to 68,750 square miles of land and 965 square miles of water.
Located on the Des Moines River, the northernmost point of the Cave State is only a few miles north of a historic site in Clark County. The government site that honors the Battle of Athens is south of the northernmost point in Missouri. To the east, Missouri spans as far as the Mississippi River as it crosses the border between Missouri and Illinois.
There is a small conglomerate of southern counties that are collectively called the Missouri Bootheel. The southernmost point of the Missouri Bootheel is also the most extreme southern point of the state as a whole. Finally, in the west, Missouri’s furthest point is within the confines of Atchison County. The westernmost coordinates of Missouri are very near to the point where Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri collide.
The average level of elevation in Missouri is 800 feet above sea level. At its lowest point, Missouri is as low as 230 feet above sea level at the intersection between the Arkansas border and the St. Francis River. The Tatum Sauk Mountains in the St. Francois Mountain Range reach an altitude of 1,772 feet above sea level, marking the highest point in all of Missouri.