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St. Louis or Saint Louis is a city in eastern Missouri, extending along the west bank of the Mississippi River where it makes a great bend to the east. The hub of the largest metropolitan region in Missouri, St. Louis is one of the Midwest's principal industrial, commercial, educational, and cultural centers. It is a city of predominately brick buildings, softened by abundant trees that line streets and shelter homes.
t. Louis is located a short distance downstream from the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River; the city is situated on land that gently rises from the river shoreline. Average elevation is 139 m (455 ft). The city's location in the middle of the North American continent gives it very changeable weather. It is influenced by both warm air masses from the Gulf of Mexico and cold air masses from Canada. Annual precipitation averages 970 mm (38 in), with most of the rain coming in late spring and early summer. Winter snowfalls account for about 500 mm (about 20 in) of the precipitation. Winters, while cold, are rarely severe and summers can be quite hot. The average high temperature in January is 3° C (38° F) and the average low is -6° C (21° F); in July highs average 32° C (89° F) and lows average 21° C (70° F).
St. Louis was established in 1764 by French fur traders and named in honor of Louis IX, a 13th-century king of France canonized as a saint. In 1876 the state legislature granted St. Louis a special status as an independent city and separated it from surrounding St. Louis County. This was done at a time when the city was wealthy and surrounding rural lands poor, but fortunes have since reversed and St. Louis now covets the tax base of its prosperous suburbs. Attempts to rejoin the county have been rebuffed.
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