Concordia was settled in the 1830s and 1840s by German Lutheran immigrant families drawn to the rolling farmland of western Lafayette County. The community they built around their church and school gave the town both its name and its enduring character.
The town was platted in the 1860s and formally incorporated in 1877. St. Paul's Lutheran High School, founded in the 1880s, made Concordia a regional center of German-Lutheran education, and generations of families across the Midwest have sent students here since.
Through the twentieth century Concordia grew as a farming and small-manufacturing town along what is now Interstate 70, close enough to Kansas City and Columbia for commuters while keeping its own schools, businesses and traditions downtown along Main Street.
Today Concordia is home to roughly 2,400 residents. City Hall on South Main Street, the Concordia R-2 Orioles, St. Paul's Lutheran High School, Edwin A. Pape Lake, and the annual Concordia Fall Festival continue the traditions that started here more than 150 years ago.
Historical narrative adapted from the Concordia, Missouri — A Centennial History; City of Concordia.