Cameron is a city in Clinton, DeKalb and Caldwell counties in the U.S. state of Missouri.

[4] The Clinton and Caldwell counties portion of Cameron are part of the Kansas City, MO–KS Metropolitan Statistical Area, while the DeKalb County portion is part of the St. Joseph, MO–KS Metropolitan Statistical Area.

When the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (a line whose founders included the father of Mark Twain and which was to deliver the first mail of the Pony Express) proposed coming through the area, the line claimed the area around Somerville was too steep for the rail, so he platted a new community 1.5 miles to the west in what is now Downtown Cameron just one year after the founding of Sommerville in 1855 .

Since the Hannibal and St.Joseph Railroad Company could not come through Sommerville McCorkle had Judge Stokes and his son Edmund D. Stokes move all the buildings from Sommerville to the new town of Cameron that was named for the maiden name of his wife, Malinda Cameron.

During the 1860s, as fierce competition raged for the starting point of the First transcontinental railroad, there was competition to get the Hannibal & St. Joseph (which at the time was the farthest west railroad connected to the main rail network) to cross the Missouri River.

Omaha, Nebraska was to win the fight when the Union Pacific started the railroad west from there.

Founded as the Cameron Institute, it became Missouri Wesleyan College, operated by the Methodist Church until 1930.

A building on the campus would become Cameron High School until being torn down in the 1960s, when a new high school was built on a site a few blocks south; the campus grounds are now used as parking for the nearby football field.

Cameron's character has evolved with the intersection of limited access highways.

It has expanded to the north towards and past U.S. Route 36 (which in 2007 was proposed to be part of Interstate 72).

[6] More than two thirds of the community is in Clinton County, south of NE Platte/8th Street/County Road 56.

This area includes the original olde town center, Cameron High School and Veterans Home.

In addition, portions of the community stretch east to the Caldwell County line.

With Caldwell County on the east side of Cameron, that means that street name extensions in Caldwell County on the far east side have a prefix of Northwest such as Northwest Old Highway 36.

Snow falls during the winter months, while late spring and early summer are the wettest time of the year.

The 2020 United States census[9] counted 8,513 people, 2,414 households, and 1,338 families in Cameron.

[12] Intercity bus service to the city is provided by Jefferson Lines.