Boone County is located in the U.S. state of Missouri. Centrally located in Mid-Missouri, its county seat is Columbia, Missouri's fourth-largest city and location of the University of Missouri. As of the 2020 census, the population was 183,610, making it the state's eighth-most populous county. The county was organized November 16, 1820 and named for the then recently deceased Daniel Boone, whose kin largely populated the Boonslick area, having arrived in the 1810s on the Boone's Lick Road.