The Midwestern United States offers wonderful opportunities for vacations, many of them in Missouri, which offers visitors both urban and rural venues for their holiday getaways. The capital of Missouri is Jefferson City, but the four largest cities are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. Vacation homes in Missouri in cities such as these will provide tourists with a close-up view of the "New South, which is as urban and industrialized as many areas further north.
Missouri originally entered the Union when the Louisiana Territory was purchased from France. Today, the two great rivers in the state, the Mississippi and Missouri, provide not just a commercial access route to much of the state but also wonderful recreational opportunities across the full length of Missouri; both rivers are fully navigable across the full length of the state. In fact, the Mississippi River in Missouri has seen extensive work in order to deepen it for the benefit of both commercial and recreational interests.
The rural areas of Missouri offer visitors a charming view of days gone by, but one of the most popular tourist destination in the state is the city of Branson, which has become the de-facto Country Music Capital of the United States if not the entire world. In Branson, name performers such as Dolly Parton not only perform in regular stage shows, but also run their own theaters so they can specialize in giving the public the kind of performance that Branson visitors most want to see.