Joplin is located in the southwestern part of the state of Missouri and is a city in Jasper and Newton counties that is a part of the Ozark region. The town sits adjacent to Webb City, which is near Kansas and Oklahoma. The area where the present-day Joplin stands were settled around the 1840s by John Cox, who came from Tennessee and named the area Joplin after his friend Reverend Harris Joplin who was a Methodist missionary and is one of the early settlers. The discovery of lead and zinc ores in the middle of the 1800s in the area brought prosperity and development, and Joplin was then merged with Murphysburg in 1873. However, the mining boom started to collapse in the 1930s. Yet, other economic industries were developed.