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Eureka is a city mainly in St. Louis County, Missouri, with a small portion in Jefferson County, sitting at the extreme southwest edge of the Greater St. Louis metro area along Interstate 44.

The village of Eureka was laid out in 1858 by Strodt and Shands of St. Louis along the route of the Pacific Railroad, which had reached the site in 1853.

Eureka got its name when railroad builders came around a bend, saw the level land along the Meramec River with little rock to clear, and cried 'Eureka!' — Greek for 'I've found it!'

The area's first known inhabitants were Shawnee Native Americans living on the banks of the Meramec River, and artifacts of their occupation are still found there today.

In 1898 Eureka became home to the St. Louis Children's Industrial Farm, created to give children from St. Louis tenement neighborhoods a taste of rural life; it later became Camp Wyman, now part of the Wyman Center and one of the oldest camps in the United States.

Eureka was incorporated as a fourth-class city on April 7, 1954, starting with a land area of about 2.7 square miles and an annual budget of roughly $3,400.

Since June 5, 1971, Eureka has been home to the amusement park long known as Six Flags St. Louis (opened as Six Flags Over Mid-America, and renamed Mid America Adventure in 2026), which draws an average of two to three million visitors a year.

Eureka's population has climbed steadily with suburban growth — 817 people in 1950, 7,676 in 2000, 10,189 in 2010 and 11,646 at the 2020 census.

At the 2010 census Eureka had 3,474 households, and the city has grown to roughly 9.35 square miles through a series of annexations, including the former community of Allenton.

Eureka is served by the Rockwood School District, and its own Eureka High School is the city's namesake public high school.