St. Joseph gained population during the first eight years of the decade, but not to the extent of some of Missouri's suburban communities.

One of them, O'Fallon, located in the western sprawl of St. Louis, supplanted St. Joseph as the state's seventh-largest municipality, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today.

By the bureau's estimate, St. Joseph had a July 2008 population of 76,197. That represents 2,207 more people in the city limits than in the decennial census eight years earlier.

That 3 percent growth trails the Missouri-wide increase of 5.6 percent, but it reflects an affirmative bump in a city that has known population declines (down from 78,588 residents in 1950) and with an often wary view of the federal bureau's work.

During the same time, however, O'Fallon became the largest community in St. Charles County, growing by a remarkable 66 percent. Its population estimate for last year was 76,819, up more than 30,000 residents since 2000.

The numbers came from the bureau's release of sub-county population estimates, the last before next year's constitutionally mandated census. They take into account actual in-boundary residents, not the metropolitan additions of outlying municipalities.

Tom Mesenbourg, the agency's acting director, said the estimates "provide a sense of the population trends throughout the decade."

Missouri's largest cities, the report said, are: Kansas City, 451,572; St. Louis, 354,361; Springfield, 156,206; Independence, 110,440; Columbia, 100,733; and Lee's Summit, 84,208.

Last year, St. Joseph had a successful appeal of an interim population estimate, submitting statistics to Washington that supported a higher occupancy rate of residential dwellings than the Census Bureau counted.

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.