Welcome to West Prairie ...

West Prairie is located in the Bootheel of Missouri.

West Prairie is located in Dunklin County<1>.

While we don't have a date for the founding of West Prairie, you might consider that their post office opened in 1839.

A typical abbreviation for West Prairie: W. Prairie

Time Zone: West Prairie lies in the Central Time Zone (CST/CDT) and observes daylight saving time

Area Codes for West Prairie: 573 & 235<2>

Communities Also Named West Prairie ...

For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for West Prairie.

Adding West Prairie to Our Gazetteer ...

We originally found mention of West Prairie in the GNIS. For more information, see the Referenced GNIS Codes section on our Miscellaneous Page.

From our notes, the earliest published mention we've found for West Prairie was in the document titled List of Post Offices from Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<3>

From that list, the West Prairie post office opened in 1839.

We also found West Prairie in the book titled List of Post Offices in the United States (1870).

For more details, see References and Mentions for West Prairie.

Footnotes ...

<1>	If you're interested in how the shape of Missouri's counties, including Dunklin, have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.
<2>	When there's a risk of an area code running out of phone numbers, an 'Overlay Area Code' is created that has the same geographic boundaries as the existing area code. In this case, the 573 code has been Overlayed with the 235 area code. New phone numbers in the West Prairie area will be assigned with one of these codes: 573 or 235. As a result, placing a call in the West Prairie area will require 10-digit dialing (where you enter both the area code and then the phone number).
<3>	A copy of their list with background information can be found at: https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/