Missouri’s Unofficial Nickname: The Show-Me-State

Exploring the origin of the phrase

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri. Photo by Matt Kozlowski, GNU Free Documentation License, via Wikimedia Commons.

There’s more than one story as to how Missouri became known as the Show-Me-State. Some say it began in 1899, when Missouri Congressman, Willard Duncan Vandiver, was giving a speech in Philadelphia while attending a Naval banquet. It’s said Vandiver said the following during his speech:

I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me. (Source.)

Maybe that is how Missouri got its nickname. The Vandiver story is the most commonly used one.

According to United States Now, the source of where the nickname came from hasn’t been settled. There’s another story indicating the phrase was used before Vandiver’s speech.

Willard D. Vandiver, Missouri Congressman. Photo: State Historical Society of Missouri (Columbia), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

There’s also the story about a group of miners from Missouri who traveled to Colorado to replace Colorado miners who were striking in the early 1900s. Because of the Missouri miners’ unfamiliarity with the mining practices in Colorado, supposedly, the Missouri miners kept needing to be shown the…