It was the Kansas City Chiefs’ training camp that drew us in, like it does for thousands every summer. Helmets gleaming in the Missouri sun, rookies chasing roster spots, and Patrick Mahomes flicking passes that somehow bend the laws of physics. There’s something electric about seeing professionals train on a college field, something surreal about watching the most-watched team in Missouri practice in a town that doesn’t often make the sports pages.
But Missouri Western has a quiet confidence of its own, one that doesn’t need the Chiefs to feel like it matters.
The campus sits in St. Joseph, perched on a rise just east of the Missouri River, ringed by soft hills and a horizon that opens wide. Founded in 1915 as St. Joseph Junior College, the school was created to serve local students who couldn’t afford to travel to Columbia or Kansas City. It offered two-year degrees, practical instruction, and the kind of accessibility that still defines its mission. By 1969, it had become Missouri Western College, and just a few years later, in 1972, it earned university status. That same year, it relocated to the new campus on the east side of town—a sign of ambition, and permanence.
Since then, it’s grown steadily—not into a flagship, but into something more grounded: a university deeply rooted in place. It serves the region not just as an educational institution, but as a cultural and civic anchor.
The Chiefs arrived in 2010. Their annual training camp transformed the school for a few weeks each summer—bleachers rise, parking lots fill, and fans swarm the campus in red and white. But when the crowds leave and the fields fall quiet, Missouri Western returns to itself: a campus of mossy stone buildings, generous green spaces, and what may be the best college logo in the state.
The Griffon—a mythical beast, half-lion and half-eagle—is the school’s mascot and icon, and whoever designed it deserves a medal. It’s fierce, golden, stylized without being cartoonish. Plastered on walls, signs, and jerseys, the Griffon doesn’t just represent athletics—it represents an idea: vigilance, wisdom, courage. All in one winged package.
And then, of course, there’s Walter Cronkite.
The legendary newsman—“the most trusted man in America”—was born in St. Joseph in 1916. Though he moved to Kansas City as a child, his connection to this place remains. Missouri Western honors him with the Walter Cronkite Memorial, a sweeping multimedia tribute housed on campus. It’s not a dusty collection of artifacts. It’s immersive. Interactive. It invites you to walk through his career, through the moon landing and Vietnam, through Kennedy’s assassination and Watergate, through the golden age of journalism when words were weighed and trust was earned.
There’s something grounding about standing in that space. A reminder that this little college, in this modest city, helped shape one of the most iconic voices of the 20th century. That greatness doesn’t just rise from Harvard or Columbia—it rises from the river towns and the state schools, too.
As we left campus, I kept thinking about how unexpected it was. We came for sport, but we left with stories—about a school that grew from a junior college to a university; about a mythical griffon that somehow embodies the spirit of the place; about a man whose voice once united a country, and who got his start not far from these same Missouri hills.