Claycomo, MO

Claycomo is a Clay County village in the Kansas City metropolitan area, and its name is a little piece of local shorthand: Clay County, Missouri. The 2020 census counted 1,343 residents. The place began as a 412-acre Barnes family farm, then was divided into lots by the Munger Investment Company, whose planners graded roads and named streets after poets. Claycomo incorporated in 1946, still looking more like a developing farm edge than an industrial address.

That changed when Ford arrived. The village brought the land containing the future assembly plant into its boundaries, and Ford became a local business in 1951. The site produced B-47 bomber wings during the Korean War period before vehicle production began in 1957. Ford’s plant now occupies the largest piece of Claycomo’s story, but the village still has parks, a library, a fire department, and the old street grid around it. I-35, I-435, and U.S. 69 make the industrial map impossible to miss. Claycomo is where a farm subdivision grew up beside a factory and ended up with both histories at once.