Geography Lesson

When we moved here earlier this year I told most people that we were moving to St. Louis; that's true in that we're in the Missouri city's metro area--one that covers two states. This part of the area is known locally as the Metro East, and it has some distinct characteristics beyond being under the legal jurisdiction of the State of Illinois.

Metro East encompasses five Illinois counties in the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area. In 2000, there were 599,845 people living in this designated area, scattered across a variety of cities and small towns, typically called "villages" here. The area's largest city is Belleville, but other large population centers include Edwardsville, Collinsville, Alton and Columbia.

What strikes us most as newcomers here from the Pacific Northwest is the development pattern. While many individual buildings date back to the early 1800s and many cities were incorporated 150 or more years ago, Metro East remained largely rural until just the past couple decades. A quick look at any aerial view--which shows St. Louis heavily developed and Metro East primarily still farmland--begs the question of why development took so long to jump the Mississippi.

But jump it has, and today the communities of Metro East continue to grow at a rapid pace.