Shawnee Mission, Kansas
Shawnee Mission, Kansas /ʃɔːniˈmɪʃən/ is a name created by the United States Postal Service to denote an area (ZIP Code 662xx) of Johnson County, Kansas that contains numerous towns. Parts of southern Overland Park are not part of Shawnee Mission, as they were annexed from unincorporated Stanley and use ZIP code 66085.
The following towns are included in the area known as Shawnee Mission:
- Countryside (Incorporated into the City of Mission in January, 2003)
- Fairway
- Lake Quivira (the northern part is in Wyandotte County, Kansas)
- Leawood
- Lenexa
- Merriam
- Mission
- Mission Hills
- Mission Woods
- Overland Park (except some southern parts)
- Prairie Village
- Roeland Park
- Shawnee
- Stanley (unincorporated)
- Westwood
- Westwood Hills
The name Shawnee Mission derives from the Shawnee Methodist Mission, a mission to the Shawnee tribe, founded in 1830 in present-day Wyandotte County, Kansas by the Methodist church. The mission was moved to what is now Johnson County in 1839. The county was named for Rev. Thomas Johnson, the first missionary sent by the church and a territorial legislator. The Shawnee Mission School District and Blue Valley School District encompass most of the area.
Shawnee Mission is part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. If the independent cities that constitute Shawnee Mission were to incorporate into a single municipality, its 2015 population estimate would be 402,662 (up from 325,147 in 2000), and would surpass Wichita as Kansas' largest city.
