Wood Heights, MO

Wood Heights is a Ray County city in the Kansas City metropolitan area, using the Excelsior Springs ZIP code and post office even though it has its own city government. The 2020 census counted 757 residents. Excelsior Springs 40 School District serves local students, and nearby Excelsior Springs supplies many of the everyday addresses and services that do not fit inside Wood Heights itself. The city is a residential pocket in the rural-suburban belt north of Kansas City.

Wood Heights takes its name from Robert “Woodson” Hite, a Ray County figure linked by family to Frank and Jesse James. Hite rode with “Bloody Bill” Anderson during the border war and later joined the James Gang; he was killed in Ray County in 1881. That history is the unusual thread in a place otherwise defined by homes, roads, school buses, and postal lines. Wood Heights has its own municipal identity, but the daily map overlaps with Excelsior Springs and the wider Kansas City region.