For this born Hoosier, the very thought of Utah or any of its neighbors being midwest is utterly ridiculous.
Here’s a hint: if you have to water the lawn, it’s NOT the midwest.
Somehow, it was always said, while I was growing up, that Ohio was midwest, but I never understood that. I preferred the designation “Great Lakes area”, given that we lived MUCH closer to the nearest Great Lake than anywhere that might be “midwest”.
I’m curious as to why anyone would ever think that Utah is the Midwest?
Or, maybe I should ask why you feel the need to let people know this.
Ian, I read people referring to Utah as the Midwest OFTEN – in major publications.
Since leaving the West 20+ years ago for the East, I’ve been amazed at how little Easterners know about Western geography, history and culture.
I’ve heard that Iowa and Idaho are the same place more times than I can count. I’ve heard surprise that Utah is not a backwoods theocracy. I’ve heard people wonder if Wyoming was really a state. People need to be told Ian – oh yes they need to be told.
To be fair though – while serving my mission in So. Utah, I heard on numerous occasions that everything east of the Mississippi is “straight city”.
Ian, because apparently some people don’t know, however bizarre that sounds.
John, I think it depends how far west you are when you say it.
I spent some time growing up in Chicago. At a work lunch I made the mistake of saying I grew up in the Midwest. When those seated with me at lunch heard, they scoffed at the idea of Illinois being in the Midwest. They were from Iowa and Missouri. “Illinois is not the Midwest,” they scolded.
I guess they were Midwest purists. Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…
I think my favorite was in a discussion that took place with a young man in Idaho.
“Where are you from?”
“Illinois”
“What state is that in?”
“Illinois.”
Confused look.
“You know, like Chicago, Illinois?”
“Oh Chicago–in Chicago.”
“No, not even remotely. Chicago is not a state.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
Pity for the future of our country.
Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…
I always used to state that I lived in the DFW area in Texas. I was taught, though, to state that I live in North Texas, to separate myself from the Hill Country, the Gulf area, West Texas, East Texas, the Panhandle region, or Dallas.
“You know, like Chicago, Illinois?”
“Oh Chicago–in Chicago.”
“No, not even remotely. Chicago is not a state.”
To be fair to the geographically challenged, most of the Chicagoans I know and love never consider themselves to be really part of Illinois, they consider themselves Chicagoans. That Chicago is part of Illinois is considered an inconvenience to them… :)
Sometimes when people say “Midwest” they mean “flyover.”
The designation “Midwest” has more to do with history and human geography than it does physical geography. Anybody who does not understand why there is a university in Chicago called “Northwestern” will never understand why Utah is not in the Midwest (note the capital M).
Likewise, the university in Cleveland called Case Western Reserve University, because it was located in what was originally called the Western Reserve…
#11, sadly, true. But because of Chicago, we all get Casimir Pulaski day off (or did–I’m in NC now and totally miss it). But most people at least know where Chicago is (kind of) on a map, and that it is in Illinois. Well, except for this kid.
Does anyone here from the Midwest ever do a map? My sister and I have also gotten used to people saying, “Oh, Illinois–like Chicago?” And then you take your left hand, point it downward, and on the back of it point out, “No, here is Chicago; here is St. Louis [Here is Nauvoo–for a member of the church]. We live here,” and point to the middle of the back of the hand. I figure that Michigan people who live in the mitten do the same thing, kind of.
#8, Being from Iowa and Illinois (9 years in both states), I struggle with the idea of Ohio, Nebraska, and especially the Dakotas being Midwest. Weird. . .
On that note–how South is South? I know people who think Virginia and points South are south, but some who think you don’t truly get south until you hit South Carolina or Georgia even. Thoughts?
Maryland is south! The Mason Dixon Line is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. I live in the Pacific Northwest, but I know where the Northwest Territories were, and the Western Reserve. And New Mexico is not a foriegn country for U.S. citizens, it is foreign for Mexicans.
The problem comes about because of folks thinking “Midwest” means “Middle of the West” rather than “Midway Between the East and the West”.
I have never met anyone who felt that Illinois was not part of the Midwest (I have lived in Illinois for the vast majority of my life).
Casimir Pulaski Day is a wonderful day to celebrate the contributions of a little-known Polish Revolutionary War hero. Thank you, Polish community of Chicago!
When we moved to central Illinois 10 years ago, we were so confused when people told us we moved “down south”. I even got out the map and checked. We moved from Denver, Colorado to Jacksonville, IL which on the map is exactly on the same horizontal line. We were only “down south” if you consider Denver part of the south, which we don’t. Finally a kind neighbor explained that in Illinois, if you didn’t live in Chicago, you were “down south” no matter where you were on the map. I immediately started paying attention to Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck jokes and came to appreciate that yes, in many ways we did live “down south”.
Now we live in central Missouri, on the center line between St. Louis and Kansas city. We get to be in the Midwest, and further down south. it is a culture clash.
memo to Utahns:
The rest of the world ain’t Babylon. You can get out of your bubble now.
The line of demarcation is the 100th meridian. You can grow without irrigation east of it, but west until you hit the Sierra and Cascade region is “The West”. Anything with a coastline is “the West Coast”. This has been an issue ever since JW Powell’s days. Get used to eastern misinformation.
My father had a conversation years ago with a Manhattanite who thought the “West” was New Jersey, didn’t know where Idaho was, and had never lived anywhere except Manhattan. The bubble is not unique to Utah.
The US is a far, far bigger country than most people (including its citizens) realize. I have loved maps since the 2nd grade, but most people seem to have only a very hazy knowledge of geography.
I found it pretty funny trying explain to people on mission in Ireland where I was from. Most people confused Idaho with Iowa and had a vague idea that it was near Missouri. One of my companions from Utah would say that he was from Utah which is next to California. That explanation worked pretty good.
I was talking with a coworker in California once who was from California and mentioned that I was from Idaho. He immediately said “Oh, in the Midwest.” I said no, Idaho was in the Rockies and at least 1500 miles west of Ohio. He then protested that the Rocky Mountains were in Colorado. At this point I just had to groan.
I always laugh when I read these articles discussing how “backward” the US is for not having the same broadband deployment as, say, Belgium or Lichtenstein. It’s a huge country, indeed.
I’m also always amused at the people who think they’re well-traveled because they’ve been to 2-3 European countries, but have never been to more than 5-6 US states.
If Midwest means “Midway Between the East and the West” then it can just as easily be called Mideast, because it is midway between the East and the West.
I prefer to think of Midwest similarly to the compass direction southwest, meaning halfway between south and west. As one who grew up in California I declare Utah to be the midwest — halfway between the middle (around the Mississippi) and the west, California/Oregon/Washington.
Burianto obviously didn’t learn his/her US history in an eastern state, where at least when I was a kic I was taught that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created the original Northwest Territory, which became Ohio/Indiana/Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin.
(a commentary on California schools, eh?)
But buraianto, why would we want another Middle East?
I always bridled when someone said Ronald Reagan was a westerner. He was from the midwest (Tampico, Illinois) and lived most of his life in Southern California (except for a couple of brief stays elsewhere). As any real westerner knows, Southern California is a world unto itself and ain’t the real west by any stretch of the imagination.
I know folks who worry that people coming from New Mexico might be illegal immigrants, and are proud that their own ancestors came from the fine old State of New England.
Seeing how many states I could name without forgetting any was one of the ways I passed the time between doors while tracting as a missionary. (Hm. Was it necessary for me to specify that tracting was a missionary activity? Have I been tracting since that time?)
One could, however, understand why some people think Utah is in “Dixie.”
Which brings me to a geography trivia quiz. Match the following colleges and universities to the states in which they are located:
Midwestern State Colorado
Northeastern State Louisiana
Northern State Oklahoma
Northwestern State South Dakota
Western State Texas
OK, that’s really two lists, but HTML doesn’t recognize my spaces. Let me do them sequentially instead.
Midwestern State
Northeastern State
Northern State
Northwestern State
Western State
Colorado
Louisiana
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Texas
A friend told me that he hosted a friend from Guatemala who flew up to Salt Lake. My friend asked him what he planned to do with the rest of his week vacation, and the Guatemalan brother said he was going to rent a car and drive to Disneyland, Seattle, Yellowstone, Palmyra, and Washington, DC. My friend told him it was too far to do all that driving, but the man protested, “Look, my map of the USA is the same size as my map of Guatemala!”
I thought “How quaint”, until I met an attorney who came out to eastern Washington to be interviewed to fill the job I was vacating. He thought he could drive to Denver in three hours, a distance of 1,000 miles. (He was hired.)
Once I moved to my new job in Idaho, I was listening to a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia to the University of Idaho Law School, which is located, confusingly enough, in Moscow. It is a hard slog of at least 5 hours on two-lane roads to get there from Boise. As Scalia closed his address (an interesting and informal explanation of his views on identifying the “original intent” of the creators of the Constitution), he told us all thanks for inviting him to Iowa.
Come on, everyone knows that nothing in between California and the east coast matters at all. If it’s not within 100 miles of the Atlantic or Pacific (Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes do NOT count), it is completely irrelevant and worthless – it’s all just farms and national parks.
Utah is definitely western. Not Midwestern. Idaho is pacific northwest/uninhabitable.
These are my categorizations:
New England – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut
Mid-Atlantic – New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia
The (kinda) South –Virginia
The (actual) South – Kentucky , Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina , Georgia , Alabama , Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
Imaginary – North Dakota (seriously, do people actually live in ND?)
West –Colorado, Utah, Wyoming , Nevada, Montana
Southwest – Arizona , New Mexico
Texas – Texas
West Coast – California
Pacific Northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho
Misfits – Alaska, Hawaii
The US is huge?
There was a time when the Utah Jazz were in the Midwest Division of the NBA. I wondered once if that might have been the source of some of the confusion.
Of course, there was also a time when the Atlanta Braves were in the Western Conference of the National League. (If you don’t believe me, check out who played the Mets in the 1969 LCS–that’s right, it was the Braves.)
I’ve always been amazed at the complete geographical ignorance of most New Yorkers. East and West don’t exist in the city–tell them to go east on 34th Street and they’ll look at you as if you’re just arrived from Mars. Tell them that it’s twice as far from Chicago to SLC as it is from NYC to Chicago, or that from Denver to SLC is as far as from NYC to Cleveland, and they’ll know for certain that you’re lying. Or just plain nuts.
My parents live in California. One day my dad mentioned going “back east” for a managers’ meeting and admiring all the greenery. His secretary said, “Back east? I’ve been back east before, and I didn’t like it at all.”
“Oh yeah?” my dad asked. “Where back east did you go?”
“Texas.”
I grew up in Florida, Ohio, and California. And now I live in Utah. Megan is right, Florida is just Florida, but when my family moved to Ohio when I was 12, my new classmates and teachers all considered me to be a southerner because I had a distinct north Florida twang (Jacksonville). At first I thought the idea that I was from the south was absurd. But eventually I embraced the notion, and mourned the loss of my accent.
We moved to California when I was 17, and I when I told people I was from Ohio, I got one of three responses: “Where’s that?”; “Oh, the South” ; or “So did you live on a farm?”
I went to college in California and once had a heated argument with my roommate who insisted that Colorado was part of the Midwest. She was a life-long Californian (and yes, I mean that in a negative way).
Now I am 34, living and teaching in Utah, and a few times my students have told me that I have an accent, but they can’t place it.
I’ve never considered Utah to be part of the Midwest, but the accent here and in Idaho is slightly reminiscent of the milder, Ohio Midwestern accent (except that Ohioans don’t drop their T’s or say “may-zhure” or “pitcher” when talking about a photo). Many of the vowel pronunciations are the same, though.
Traditionally, I believe most would consider any of the 11 states belonging to the Confederacy as the South. Those states are: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. The states of Missouri and Kentucky were never part of the Confederate States, but were represented with stars on the Confederate flag because of strong public support in each state. So many would argue that Missouri and Kentucky should also be considered as part of the South.
Also, I live in Boise, and I do not consider Idaho to be in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe the people in the Idaho panhandle up north would, but not southern Idaho. Idaho is part of the West.
I have always believed that the true demarcation between East and (mid)West is where Soda magically changes to Pop.
Well, provincialism only goes so far, now, doesn’t it?
I’m from the South. Here we call sodas cokes. It’s a generic term.
The South includes the Florida panhandle, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina. By the time you get to Gainesville, you’re on the border of the North again. Anything south of Gainesville is Yankee territory, (just listen to how they talk), except for Miami which is part of Latin America.
In southern Louisiana they talk funny too, in a cute way, so that’s also border territory. Kentucky is border. I mean, seriously, it snows there. And why would anyone think North Carolina was in the south? It’s Yankee territory as is Maryland. Arkansas and Missouri are also border. Texas is its own place. It doesn’t count as the South at all.
See? It’s easy as sweet potato pie. =)
Being Idahoan by birth, I can authoritatively state that Idaho is not in the Pacific Northwest. Nor is it just part of the West. It is positively in the Mountain West, or if you want to be more specific, the Intermountain West. And, Idahoans do NOT have an accent. :) Just wanted to make sure everyone got it all straight.
I’ve heard that Iowa and Idaho are the same place more times than I can count. I’ve heard surprise that Utah is not a backwoods theocracy. I’ve heard people wonder if Wyoming was really a state. People need to be told Ian – oh yes they need to be told.
One of my BYU professor’s was on the east coast judging a poetry contest. She was introduced as “Jean Jenkins from the ‘ootuh.'”
On that note–how South is South? I know people who think Virginia and points South are south, but some who think you don’t truly get south until you hit South Carolina or Georgia even. Thoughts?
All I know is that if you go south long enough, you end up north without even getting wet. When we moved to Boca Raton, Florida (between West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale) we thought we were going to the deep south. We later learned we were in both New York and New Jersey, simultaneously.
Re 25: “If Midwest means ‘Midway Between the East and the West’ then it can just as easily be called Mideast, because it is midway between the East and the West.”
1) There is already a Mideast.
2) The names were given by folks living in the East watching their friends go to the West. There was no Eastward Expansion in American history.
“Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…”
Does being in Northern Virginia even count as being in Virginia? I tend to think of the state sort of beginning at the Rappahanock rather than the Potomac… (So says this formerly northern and now southern Virginian…)
I served a mission in Ohio. Once at a Zone Conference my mission president began talking about the need to know and understand the Bible, because “in the South, everybody knows the bible”. He repeated the word “South” multiple times. I wonder how many Ohio regiments in the Civil War thought they came from the “South”.
Tatiana: Only in the “deep South” do they think that Arkansas is in the north. Taking a holistic approach, anything that was in the Confederacy is definitely in the South.
As far as the Midwestern debate goes—is there really a debate? I think the wikipedia map sums it up. The Great Lakes states and the plains states are the Midwest, any argument otherwise is uninformed.
The definition of the South is difficult. Say you start with the Confederacy as a definition. Does this include Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma? Both representatives from both Kentucky and Missouri sat in the Confederate congress. On the other hand, other than early Confederate occupations of southern Missouri and central Kentucky, both states remained under federal control through out the war. Okalahoma was not a state at the time, but the territory was claimed by the Confederacy and many Cherokees allied themselves with the CSA. If we look in terms of claimed Confederate territory, we would also need to include southern New Mexico and Arizona. Do we include states that had units in the Confederate army? In that case, we need to include everything south of the Mason Dixon line, sweeping Maryland into the South. Perhaps a better definition would be states where slavery was legal in 1860, which would sweep up all of the states that had units in the C.S. Army.
Another way of defining the south would be in terms of short-staple cotton production, which produced the Gone-With-The-Wind plantation culture. This would exclude NC, Tenn., Va., Mo., Md., and Ky. I actually suspect that agriculture is the best way of defining the south, but rather than short staple cotton, I would expand it to regions dependent on slave-labor monoculture in the early 19th century. This would pick up Tennessee, and NC. It would also pick up most of Virginia and large parts of Del. and Md. Interestingly, however, it would exclude Appalachia and large chunks of Virginia that moved to wheat rather than tobacco after the Revolution.
Incidentally, if we go by regions where “Coke” is the term for soda, then it looks as though much of Illinois is in the South. See this map.
Crick: I lived in the Arkansas, and actually there is a divide in the state. The eastern half of the state along the Mississippi is devoted to cotton production and is definitely in the south. The northern and western parts of the state, however, are culturally different. The region around the Ozarks was Unionist in the Civil War, and the western half of the state in some ways has much more in common with the southern, plains and Western oriented culture of Oklahoma than with say Alabama. Little Rock sits right at the dividing line. East and south of Little Rock is definitely The South. West and North of Little Rock, however, is a different matter.
And, don’t forget that the army commanded by General Lee was the Army of Northern Virginia. I doubt that any of the men in the Army of the Potomac thought their foes were Yankees too.
Whenever people talk about the south, there’s lots of confusion between Appalachian and southern culture. The two are distinct, almost opposed to each other (historically, at the individual level, this is literally true: they didn’t like each other). This is why some people think that southern Ohio is “southern,” it’s not, it’s Appalachian–just like West Virginia, East Tennessee, much of Kentucky, parts of Arkansas, and the hill country in NC (much of the rest of the state has also been subject to Northern invasion, as with Atlanta (the only part of Georgia not in the south) and Northern Virginia).
Nate, Paul Greenberg agrees with you. According to him (publisher of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette), the South stops at the Ozarks.
Another instance of geographic misdirection.
I was attending Ricks, and was having a conversation with someone from California
“Where you from?”
“A town back east that you have never heard of.”
“Try me!”
“Ok, I am from Ottawa”
“You are right, I never heard of it!”
By only calling my hometown Ottawa, I gave the option of allowing them to choose among the many competing Ottawas that are east of Idaho; Ottawa KS, Ottawa IL, Ottawa, OH, Ottawa, WI, or the correct choice in my case, Ottawa, ON the little-known capital of Canada.
Proof that Ohio is not the South: When my dad told his Louisiana-born mother that he was marrying a girl from Cleveland, she openly lamented that he was marrying a yankee.
TMD, I would agree with your comment about southern Ohio, with the qualification that it is specifically southeastern Ohio that is Appalachian. Southwestern Ohio (Cincinnati and its suburbs) is very Midwestern, in speech and culture.
Actually, taking Ohio as a whole, it really is quite a mix of the Midwest, the south, and the east. They all seem to converge there. It reminds me of Texas. I always thought of Texas as the south until someone contradicted me and said it was the southwest. I’ve been to Texas several times and after thinking about it decided that in a way this person was right. Texas is south meets southwest meets Mexico, making for a unique and indefinable state. I like Texas. Ohio, too.
34 – Thanks for recognizing that Texas is its own geographic region.
53 – The most unfortunate thing about the story is that she associated Cleveland with the term “yankee”. Clevelanders hate Yankees and their fans (and Red Sox and fans as well). But most native Ohioans consider Cincinnati to be Northern Kentucky, not Ohio. (Just like they haven’t decided if they want to give Toledo back to Michigan). But as you say, I like Ohio. And Texas. But Texas is not the Southwest.
Tell [New Yorkers] that it’s twice as far from Chicago to SLC as it is from NYC to Chicago, or that from Denver to SLC is as far as from NYC to Cleveland, and they’ll know for certain that you’re lying. Or just plain nuts.
– El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
– El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
Neither of these statements is true. Consult Mapquest.
Re: #55 and 56. The actual fact is that the community in the northeast corner of Texas, Texarkana, is closer to Chicago than it is to El Paso, and El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to Texarkana.
Someone, for whatever reason, started replacing Texarkana with Dallas in noting the size of Texas, and it’s a pretty commonly repeated mistake.
Only in the “deep South” do they think that Arkansas is in the north. Taking a holistic approach, anything that was in the Confederacy is definitely in the South.
Hmm. I think its pretty obvious that only the eastern parts of Texas are in the South.
56.- El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
Neither of these statements is true. Consult Mapquest.
Both statements are true, depending on what part of the comparison you think is elided.
Road distances, according to Google Maps:
El Paso to LA: 801 miles
El Paso to Dallas: 638 miles
El Paso to Port Arthur, TX: 843 miles
That may be so, but is Chicago still “back east”?
Exclamation Point! Underscore!
For this born Hoosier, the very thought of Utah or any of its neighbors being midwest is utterly ridiculous.
Here’s a hint: if you have to water the lawn, it’s NOT the midwest.
Somehow, it was always said, while I was growing up, that Ohio was midwest, but I never understood that. I preferred the designation “Great Lakes area”, given that we lived MUCH closer to the nearest Great Lake than anywhere that might be “midwest”.
I’m curious as to why anyone would ever think that Utah is the Midwest?
Or, maybe I should ask why you feel the need to let people know this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States
Ian, I read people referring to Utah as the Midwest OFTEN – in major publications.
Since leaving the West 20+ years ago for the East, I’ve been amazed at how little Easterners know about Western geography, history and culture.
I’ve heard that Iowa and Idaho are the same place more times than I can count. I’ve heard surprise that Utah is not a backwoods theocracy. I’ve heard people wonder if Wyoming was really a state. People need to be told Ian – oh yes they need to be told.
To be fair though – while serving my mission in So. Utah, I heard on numerous occasions that everything east of the Mississippi is “straight city”.
Ian, because apparently some people don’t know, however bizarre that sounds.
John, I think it depends how far west you are when you say it.
I spent some time growing up in Chicago. At a work lunch I made the mistake of saying I grew up in the Midwest. When those seated with me at lunch heard, they scoffed at the idea of Illinois being in the Midwest. They were from Iowa and Missouri. “Illinois is not the Midwest,” they scolded.
I guess they were Midwest purists. Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…
I think my favorite was in a discussion that took place with a young man in Idaho.
“Where are you from?”
“Illinois”
“What state is that in?”
“Illinois.”
Confused look.
“You know, like Chicago, Illinois?”
“Oh Chicago–in Chicago.”
“No, not even remotely. Chicago is not a state.”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
Pity for the future of our country.
Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…
I always used to state that I lived in the DFW area in Texas. I was taught, though, to state that I live in North Texas, to separate myself from the Hill Country, the Gulf area, West Texas, East Texas, the Panhandle region, or Dallas.
“You know, like Chicago, Illinois?”
“Oh Chicago–in Chicago.”
“No, not even remotely. Chicago is not a state.”
To be fair to the geographically challenged, most of the Chicagoans I know and love never consider themselves to be really part of Illinois, they consider themselves Chicagoans. That Chicago is part of Illinois is considered an inconvenience to them… :)
Sometimes when people say “Midwest” they mean “flyover.”
The designation “Midwest” has more to do with history and human geography than it does physical geography. Anybody who does not understand why there is a university in Chicago called “Northwestern” will never understand why Utah is not in the Midwest (note the capital M).
Likewise, the university in Cleveland called Case Western Reserve University, because it was located in what was originally called the Western Reserve…
#11, sadly, true. But because of Chicago, we all get Casimir Pulaski day off (or did–I’m in NC now and totally miss it). But most people at least know where Chicago is (kind of) on a map, and that it is in Illinois. Well, except for this kid.
Does anyone here from the Midwest ever do a map? My sister and I have also gotten used to people saying, “Oh, Illinois–like Chicago?” And then you take your left hand, point it downward, and on the back of it point out, “No, here is Chicago; here is St. Louis [Here is Nauvoo–for a member of the church]. We live here,” and point to the middle of the back of the hand. I figure that Michigan people who live in the mitten do the same thing, kind of.
#8, Being from Iowa and Illinois (9 years in both states), I struggle with the idea of Ohio, Nebraska, and especially the Dakotas being Midwest. Weird. . .
On that note–how South is South? I know people who think Virginia and points South are south, but some who think you don’t truly get south until you hit South Carolina or Georgia even. Thoughts?
Sorry, meant to include this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Pulaski_Day
Maryland is south! The Mason Dixon Line is the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland. I live in the Pacific Northwest, but I know where the Northwest Territories were, and the Western Reserve. And New Mexico is not a foriegn country for U.S. citizens, it is foreign for Mexicans.
The problem comes about because of folks thinking “Midwest” means “Middle of the West” rather than “Midway Between the East and the West”.
I have never met anyone who felt that Illinois was not part of the Midwest (I have lived in Illinois for the vast majority of my life).
Casimir Pulaski Day is a wonderful day to celebrate the contributions of a little-known Polish Revolutionary War hero. Thank you, Polish community of Chicago!
When we moved to central Illinois 10 years ago, we were so confused when people told us we moved “down south”. I even got out the map and checked. We moved from Denver, Colorado to Jacksonville, IL which on the map is exactly on the same horizontal line. We were only “down south” if you consider Denver part of the south, which we don’t. Finally a kind neighbor explained that in Illinois, if you didn’t live in Chicago, you were “down south” no matter where you were on the map. I immediately started paying attention to Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck jokes and came to appreciate that yes, in many ways we did live “down south”.
Now we live in central Missouri, on the center line between St. Louis and Kansas city. We get to be in the Midwest, and further down south. it is a culture clash.
memo to Utahns:
The rest of the world ain’t Babylon. You can get out of your bubble now.
The line of demarcation is the 100th meridian. You can grow without irrigation east of it, but west until you hit the Sierra and Cascade region is “The West”. Anything with a coastline is “the West Coast”. This has been an issue ever since JW Powell’s days. Get used to eastern misinformation.
My father had a conversation years ago with a Manhattanite who thought the “West” was New Jersey, didn’t know where Idaho was, and had never lived anywhere except Manhattan. The bubble is not unique to Utah.
The US is a far, far bigger country than most people (including its citizens) realize. I have loved maps since the 2nd grade, but most people seem to have only a very hazy knowledge of geography.
I found it pretty funny trying explain to people on mission in Ireland where I was from. Most people confused Idaho with Iowa and had a vague idea that it was near Missouri. One of my companions from Utah would say that he was from Utah which is next to California. That explanation worked pretty good.
I was talking with a coworker in California once who was from California and mentioned that I was from Idaho. He immediately said “Oh, in the Midwest.” I said no, Idaho was in the Rockies and at least 1500 miles west of Ohio. He then protested that the Rocky Mountains were in Colorado. At this point I just had to groan.
I always laugh when I read these articles discussing how “backward” the US is for not having the same broadband deployment as, say, Belgium or Lichtenstein. It’s a huge country, indeed.
I’m also always amused at the people who think they’re well-traveled because they’ve been to 2-3 European countries, but have never been to more than 5-6 US states.
If Midwest means “Midway Between the East and the West” then it can just as easily be called Mideast, because it is midway between the East and the West.
I prefer to think of Midwest similarly to the compass direction southwest, meaning halfway between south and west. As one who grew up in California I declare Utah to be the midwest — halfway between the middle (around the Mississippi) and the west, California/Oregon/Washington.
Burianto obviously didn’t learn his/her US history in an eastern state, where at least when I was a kic I was taught that the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created the original Northwest Territory, which became Ohio/Indiana/Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin.
(a commentary on California schools, eh?)
But buraianto, why would we want another Middle East?
I always bridled when someone said Ronald Reagan was a westerner. He was from the midwest (Tampico, Illinois) and lived most of his life in Southern California (except for a couple of brief stays elsewhere). As any real westerner knows, Southern California is a world unto itself and ain’t the real west by any stretch of the imagination.
I know folks who worry that people coming from New Mexico might be illegal immigrants, and are proud that their own ancestors came from the fine old State of New England.
Seeing how many states I could name without forgetting any was one of the ways I passed the time between doors while tracting as a missionary. (Hm. Was it necessary for me to specify that tracting was a missionary activity? Have I been tracting since that time?)
One could, however, understand why some people think Utah is in “Dixie.”
Which brings me to a geography trivia quiz. Match the following colleges and universities to the states in which they are located:
Midwestern State Colorado
Northeastern State Louisiana
Northern State Oklahoma
Northwestern State South Dakota
Western State Texas
OK, that’s really two lists, but HTML doesn’t recognize my spaces. Let me do them sequentially instead.
Midwestern State
Northeastern State
Northern State
Northwestern State
Western State
Colorado
Louisiana
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Texas
A friend told me that he hosted a friend from Guatemala who flew up to Salt Lake. My friend asked him what he planned to do with the rest of his week vacation, and the Guatemalan brother said he was going to rent a car and drive to Disneyland, Seattle, Yellowstone, Palmyra, and Washington, DC. My friend told him it was too far to do all that driving, but the man protested, “Look, my map of the USA is the same size as my map of Guatemala!”
I thought “How quaint”, until I met an attorney who came out to eastern Washington to be interviewed to fill the job I was vacating. He thought he could drive to Denver in three hours, a distance of 1,000 miles. (He was hired.)
Once I moved to my new job in Idaho, I was listening to a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia to the University of Idaho Law School, which is located, confusingly enough, in Moscow. It is a hard slog of at least 5 hours on two-lane roads to get there from Boise. As Scalia closed his address (an interesting and informal explanation of his views on identifying the “original intent” of the creators of the Constitution), he told us all thanks for inviting him to Iowa.
Come on, everyone knows that nothing in between California and the east coast matters at all. If it’s not within 100 miles of the Atlantic or Pacific (Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes do NOT count), it is completely irrelevant and worthless – it’s all just farms and national parks.
Utah is definitely western. Not Midwestern. Idaho is pacific northwest/uninhabitable.
These are my categorizations:
New England – Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut
Mid-Atlantic – New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia
The (kinda) South –Virginia
The (actual) South – Kentucky , Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina , Georgia , Alabama , Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
Florida – Florida
Midwest – Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota
Imaginary – North Dakota (seriously, do people actually live in ND?)
West –Colorado, Utah, Wyoming , Nevada, Montana
Southwest – Arizona , New Mexico
Texas – Texas
West Coast – California
Pacific Northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho
Misfits – Alaska, Hawaii
The US is huge?
There was a time when the Utah Jazz were in the Midwest Division of the NBA. I wondered once if that might have been the source of some of the confusion.
Of course, there was also a time when the Atlanta Braves were in the Western Conference of the National League. (If you don’t believe me, check out who played the Mets in the 1969 LCS–that’s right, it was the Braves.)
I’ve always been amazed at the complete geographical ignorance of most New Yorkers. East and West don’t exist in the city–tell them to go east on 34th Street and they’ll look at you as if you’re just arrived from Mars. Tell them that it’s twice as far from Chicago to SLC as it is from NYC to Chicago, or that from Denver to SLC is as far as from NYC to Cleveland, and they’ll know for certain that you’re lying. Or just plain nuts.
My parents live in California. One day my dad mentioned going “back east” for a managers’ meeting and admiring all the greenery. His secretary said, “Back east? I’ve been back east before, and I didn’t like it at all.”
“Oh yeah?” my dad asked. “Where back east did you go?”
“Texas.”
I grew up in Florida, Ohio, and California. And now I live in Utah. Megan is right, Florida is just Florida, but when my family moved to Ohio when I was 12, my new classmates and teachers all considered me to be a southerner because I had a distinct north Florida twang (Jacksonville). At first I thought the idea that I was from the south was absurd. But eventually I embraced the notion, and mourned the loss of my accent.
We moved to California when I was 17, and I when I told people I was from Ohio, I got one of three responses: “Where’s that?”; “Oh, the South” ; or “So did you live on a farm?”
I went to college in California and once had a heated argument with my roommate who insisted that Colorado was part of the Midwest. She was a life-long Californian (and yes, I mean that in a negative way).
Now I am 34, living and teaching in Utah, and a few times my students have told me that I have an accent, but they can’t place it.
I’ve never considered Utah to be part of the Midwest, but the accent here and in Idaho is slightly reminiscent of the milder, Ohio Midwestern accent (except that Ohioans don’t drop their T’s or say “may-zhure” or “pitcher” when talking about a photo). Many of the vowel pronunciations are the same, though.
Traditionally, I believe most would consider any of the 11 states belonging to the Confederacy as the South. Those states are: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. The states of Missouri and Kentucky were never part of the Confederate States, but were represented with stars on the Confederate flag because of strong public support in each state. So many would argue that Missouri and Kentucky should also be considered as part of the South.
Also, I live in Boise, and I do not consider Idaho to be in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe the people in the Idaho panhandle up north would, but not southern Idaho. Idaho is part of the West.
I have always believed that the true demarcation between East and (mid)West is where Soda magically changes to Pop.
Well, provincialism only goes so far, now, doesn’t it?
I’m from the South. Here we call sodas cokes. It’s a generic term.
The South includes the Florida panhandle, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina. By the time you get to Gainesville, you’re on the border of the North again. Anything south of Gainesville is Yankee territory, (just listen to how they talk), except for Miami which is part of Latin America.
In southern Louisiana they talk funny too, in a cute way, so that’s also border territory. Kentucky is border. I mean, seriously, it snows there. And why would anyone think North Carolina was in the south? It’s Yankee territory as is Maryland. Arkansas and Missouri are also border. Texas is its own place. It doesn’t count as the South at all.
See? It’s easy as sweet potato pie. =)
Being Idahoan by birth, I can authoritatively state that Idaho is not in the Pacific Northwest. Nor is it just part of the West. It is positively in the Mountain West, or if you want to be more specific, the Intermountain West. And, Idahoans do NOT have an accent. :) Just wanted to make sure everyone got it all straight.
One of my BYU professor’s was on the east coast judging a poetry contest. She was introduced as “Jean Jenkins from the ‘ootuh.'”
All I know is that if you go south long enough, you end up north without even getting wet. When we moved to Boca Raton, Florida (between West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale) we thought we were going to the deep south. We later learned we were in both New York and New Jersey, simultaneously.
Re 25: “If Midwest means ‘Midway Between the East and the West’ then it can just as easily be called Mideast, because it is midway between the East and the West.”
1) There is already a Mideast.
2) The names were given by folks living in the East watching their friends go to the West. There was no Eastward Expansion in American history.
“Kinda like how I delineate myself from Virginians by clarifying that I am from Northern Virginia…”
Does being in Northern Virginia even count as being in Virginia? I tend to think of the state sort of beginning at the Rappahanock rather than the Potomac… (So says this formerly northern and now southern Virginian…)
I served a mission in Ohio. Once at a Zone Conference my mission president began talking about the need to know and understand the Bible, because “in the South, everybody knows the bible”. He repeated the word “South” multiple times. I wonder how many Ohio regiments in the Civil War thought they came from the “South”.
Tatiana: Only in the “deep South” do they think that Arkansas is in the north. Taking a holistic approach, anything that was in the Confederacy is definitely in the South.
As far as the Midwestern debate goes—is there really a debate? I think the wikipedia map sums it up. The Great Lakes states and the plains states are the Midwest, any argument otherwise is uninformed.
The definition of the South is difficult. Say you start with the Confederacy as a definition. Does this include Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma? Both representatives from both Kentucky and Missouri sat in the Confederate congress. On the other hand, other than early Confederate occupations of southern Missouri and central Kentucky, both states remained under federal control through out the war. Okalahoma was not a state at the time, but the territory was claimed by the Confederacy and many Cherokees allied themselves with the CSA. If we look in terms of claimed Confederate territory, we would also need to include southern New Mexico and Arizona. Do we include states that had units in the Confederate army? In that case, we need to include everything south of the Mason Dixon line, sweeping Maryland into the South. Perhaps a better definition would be states where slavery was legal in 1860, which would sweep up all of the states that had units in the C.S. Army.
Another way of defining the south would be in terms of short-staple cotton production, which produced the Gone-With-The-Wind plantation culture. This would exclude NC, Tenn., Va., Mo., Md., and Ky. I actually suspect that agriculture is the best way of defining the south, but rather than short staple cotton, I would expand it to regions dependent on slave-labor monoculture in the early 19th century. This would pick up Tennessee, and NC. It would also pick up most of Virginia and large parts of Del. and Md. Interestingly, however, it would exclude Appalachia and large chunks of Virginia that moved to wheat rather than tobacco after the Revolution.
Incidentally, if we go by regions where “Coke” is the term for soda, then it looks as though much of Illinois is in the South. See this map.
Crick: I lived in the Arkansas, and actually there is a divide in the state. The eastern half of the state along the Mississippi is devoted to cotton production and is definitely in the south. The northern and western parts of the state, however, are culturally different. The region around the Ozarks was Unionist in the Civil War, and the western half of the state in some ways has much more in common with the southern, plains and Western oriented culture of Oklahoma than with say Alabama. Little Rock sits right at the dividing line. East and south of Little Rock is definitely The South. West and North of Little Rock, however, is a different matter.
And, don’t forget that the army commanded by General Lee was the Army of Northern Virginia. I doubt that any of the men in the Army of the Potomac thought their foes were Yankees too.
Whenever people talk about the south, there’s lots of confusion between Appalachian and southern culture. The two are distinct, almost opposed to each other (historically, at the individual level, this is literally true: they didn’t like each other). This is why some people think that southern Ohio is “southern,” it’s not, it’s Appalachian–just like West Virginia, East Tennessee, much of Kentucky, parts of Arkansas, and the hill country in NC (much of the rest of the state has also been subject to Northern invasion, as with Atlanta (the only part of Georgia not in the south) and Northern Virginia).
Nate, Paul Greenberg agrees with you. According to him (publisher of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette), the South stops at the Ozarks.
Another instance of geographic misdirection.
I was attending Ricks, and was having a conversation with someone from California
“Where you from?”
“A town back east that you have never heard of.”
“Try me!”
“Ok, I am from Ottawa”
“You are right, I never heard of it!”
By only calling my hometown Ottawa, I gave the option of allowing them to choose among the many competing Ottawas that are east of Idaho; Ottawa KS, Ottawa IL, Ottawa, OH, Ottawa, WI, or the correct choice in my case, Ottawa, ON the little-known capital of Canada.
Proof that Ohio is not the South: When my dad told his Louisiana-born mother that he was marrying a girl from Cleveland, she openly lamented that he was marrying a yankee.
TMD, I would agree with your comment about southern Ohio, with the qualification that it is specifically southeastern Ohio that is Appalachian. Southwestern Ohio (Cincinnati and its suburbs) is very Midwestern, in speech and culture.
Actually, taking Ohio as a whole, it really is quite a mix of the Midwest, the south, and the east. They all seem to converge there. It reminds me of Texas. I always thought of Texas as the south until someone contradicted me and said it was the southwest. I’ve been to Texas several times and after thinking about it decided that in a way this person was right. Texas is south meets southwest meets Mexico, making for a unique and indefinable state. I like Texas. Ohio, too.
34 – Thanks for recognizing that Texas is its own geographic region.
53 – The most unfortunate thing about the story is that she associated Cleveland with the term “yankee”. Clevelanders hate Yankees and their fans (and Red Sox and fans as well). But most native Ohioans consider Cincinnati to be Northern Kentucky, not Ohio. (Just like they haven’t decided if they want to give Toledo back to Michigan). But as you say, I like Ohio. And Texas. But Texas is not the Southwest.
Tell [New Yorkers] that it’s twice as far from Chicago to SLC as it is from NYC to Chicago, or that from Denver to SLC is as far as from NYC to Cleveland, and they’ll know for certain that you’re lying. Or just plain nuts.
– El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
– El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
Neither of these statements is true. Consult Mapquest.
Re: #55 and 56. The actual fact is that the community in the northeast corner of Texas, Texarkana, is closer to Chicago than it is to El Paso, and El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to Texarkana.
Someone, for whatever reason, started replacing Texarkana with Dallas in noting the size of Texas, and it’s a pretty commonly repeated mistake.
Only in the “deep South” do they think that Arkansas is in the north. Taking a holistic approach, anything that was in the Confederacy is definitely in the South.
Hmm. I think its pretty obvious that only the eastern parts of Texas are in the South.
56.- El Paso, TX is closer to Los Angeles than Dallas.
– Dallas is closer to Chicago than El Paso.
Neither of these statements is true. Consult Mapquest.
Both statements are true, depending on what part of the comparison you think is elided.
Road distances, according to Google Maps:
El Paso to LA: 801 miles
El Paso to Dallas: 638 miles
El Paso to Port Arthur, TX: 843 miles
Dallas to Chicago IL: 965 miles