It was developed by late Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt via Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development, Inc., with the trademarked phrase World's Largest Underground Business Complex.

Dug into the Bethany Falls limestone mine, SubTropolis is up to 160 feet (49 m) beneath the surface.

His extensive business dealings in Clay County contributed to the Chiefs establishing a training camp site as Liberty's William Jewell College from the franchise's relocation from Dallas in 1963, until 1991.

Other facilities like SubTropolis exist, although not on the same scale, such as the abandoned mine in Butler, Pennsylvania used by Corbis and the US Federal Government for secure storage.

As the room and pillar mining method is used to extract limestone throughout the Midwest, many companies are looking at ways to utilize the hundreds of millions of square feet created in this manner, such as for mushroom farming and crude oil stockpiling.