Shawnee Mission, Kansas is a place-name created in the 1960s by the United States Postal Service to denote a large postal coverage area at the northeastern tip of Johnson County, Kansas which contains numerous towns, and to structure management of the post offices located therein. Effectively, these towns' post offices are subsidiaries of the Shawnee Mission Main Post Office, located in Mission, Kansas. Properly, a mailing address may indicate the delivery "place" as either Shawnee Mission, or the actual town name, and be treated the same.
The following towns are included in the postal area known as Shawnee Mission:
Countryside
Fairway
Lake Quivira
Leawood
Lenexa
Merriam
Mission
Mission Hills
Mission Woods
Overland Park
Prairie Village
Roeland Park
Shawnee
Stanley
Westwood
Westwood Hills
Parts of southern Overland Park are not part of Shawnee Mission, as they were later annexed from the town of Stillwell which was already covered by ZIP Code 66085. Additionally, delivery to the eastern edge of Overland Park was assigned to the Post Office in Prairie Village, with ZIP Code 66208, and the Prairie Village post office was not managed under the Shawnee Mission designation until 2012.