The founders of the Unity spiritual movement, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, purchased a 58-acre farm in 1919 as a weekend getaway for employees of their downtown Kansas City headquarters.

[4] The farm produced fruits and vegetables, including 7,500 apple trees, a 400-tree peach orchard, 12 acres of grapevines, cherry and plum trees, and fields of oats, corn, wheat, strawberries, asparagus, and soybeans.

On March 15, 1953, the State of Missouri officially incorporated the land as Unity Village.

The Tower and an office building then used for the Silent Unity Prayer Ministry opened in 1929 and are on the National Register of Historic Places.

A crew of 100 men built a concrete buttress dam, the only one of its kind in Missouri and one of the few west of the Mississippi River, at a cost of $100,000 to form the lake.

The lake is 42 feet deep and covers 21 surface acres, holding about 75 million gallons of water.

Unity Village is 15 miles (24 km) southeast of downtown Kansas City, at 38°56′47″N 94°23′58″W / 38.94639°N 94.39944°W / 38.94639; -94.39944 (38.946283, -94.399311).

The racial makeup of the village was 85.9% White, 7.1% African American, 2.0% Asian, and 5.1% from two or more races.

There were none of the families and 11.9% of the population living below the poverty line, including no under eighteens and none of those over 64.