The biggest county in the contiguous United States is San Bernardino County, CA. At 20,105 square miles, it’s roughly 3 times the size of St. Louis County in Minnesota (6,860 square miles). In fact, many counties in the western states area beat that, including the seven largest counties in Arizona (Coconino County is the second largest):
We have to say “contiguous” United States in case somebody wants to count Alaskan Boroughs.
And the area between the Catskills and the Delaware River has no individual identity at all.
I lived in a bit of Sullivan County forest as a kid. 
As for definitions, everyone north of Westchester and Rockland thinks they’re upstate, but until you get at least to the Catskills or Albany, everyone further out thinks the ones closer in are nuts.
And if you live in the city, everything north of the Cross County Parkway is upstate.
Alaska has no “upstate”, but it’s a huge place. It’s usually divided into regions: Southeast, South Central, Interior, Arctic, Southwest, Aleutians.
Oregon’s dividing line is the Cascades for east and west (both physical and political boundary). And people refer to The Coast as its own region.
Absolutely it exists. From the perspective of southeastern Pennsylvania, “upstate Pennsylvania” is everything in eastern Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and its immediately surrounding counties (Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery). So Reading, for example, is upstate.
What Pennsylvania and New York have in common is that they have a major metropolitan center in their far southeastern corner. Other states with this geographic phenomenon (broadly speaking) are Florida (Miami), Wisconsin (Milwaukee), Michigan (Detroit) and Maine (Portland), but I never hear the word “upstate” used in reference to those states.
Why is the southeastern corner so significant, as opposed to, say, the southwestern corner? Or a south-centrally located metro?
They’re the only places in those states that have, or could have, ocean ports, and that’s why they developed major cities with civilized cultures there.
What’s the situation in Georgia? That’s a state where the major city (Atlanta) is located in the northern part of the state. Do people talk about Upstate Georgia? Or does the default reverse itself and Georgia gets divided into Atlanta and Downstate?
In college, I dated a girl who lived in Screven County (between Augusta and Savannah) and she just called that part of the state “southern Georgia.” Of course, Georgia Southern is right around the corner, so that may be a regional thing.
Yep, used to work there. It was Upstate Medical Center when I was a kid. Then they renamed it SUNY Health Science Center (University Hospital) for a bit, though my family still called it Upstate. Now, I see, they just said, “Fuck it.” and called it Upstate University Hospital.
I live in Upstate NY. (actually in the western part of the state). The term upstate is used to refer to any part of the state not in the New York City metropolitan area (basically anywhere north of Westchester County). Culturally and mentally we have absolutely little in common with the NYC area and in a way upstate is kind of like (and should have been) a whole separate state.
Google hits for the phrase:
“Upstate New York” 13,400,000
“upstate Pennsylvania” 52,400
“Upstate Wisconsin” 15,400
“Upstate Florida” 15,700
“Upstate Michigan” 32,000
“Upstate Maine” 24,400
Usage in NY is 3 orders of magnitude greater than usage in geographically similar states.
Why is it critical to have an ocean port? There are many states whose commercial centers are not historically ocean ports.
Cincinnati is in the southwestern corner of Ohio. It was once a major river port and was the commercial and administrative center of the state. Or Cleveland, in the northeast, was a major lake port that was in a different era the state’s engine of commerce.
Why not consider Minneapolis, Davenport, Omaha, Kansas City (Kansas), and other inland commercial hubs?
And even if you go with the ocean port requirement, why neglect places like Savannah, Jacksonville, Pensacola, Biloxi, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), or Seattle. These are all places that are or at one point were commercial powerhouses for their regions.
And, really, this whole issue doesn’t really have to do with literal directional geography. It has to do with terms that the commercial/administrative/cultural capital of a region uses to describe a nearby hinterland. There’s no logical reason why a term like “upstate” should be restricted to a state that has a major commercial center (or ocean port) in the southeast. Any major commercial metropolis can have an upstate.
And for another matter, “north” and “up” aren’t synonymous anyway. “Up” is more logically applied to altitude than compass direction.
This is certainly the case in South Carolina.
And, as I understand it, the Nile River valley.
It doesn’t have to be an ocean port. But I think all of them are river ports, and that transportation link is/was very critical to their economy.
I’d say that most residents of Sullivan, Ulster and Dutchess counties don’t associate themselves with upstate. Upstate = Canada border or rednecks (no offense to that poster (can’t remember which) that throws a tizzy every time someone calls hicks rednecks). Even those in Delaware, Greene and Columbia are distinct from those way out in Eerie or Clinton. That’s why the whole concept of ‘downstate’ exists–to distinguish between The City, downstate (still within a couple hours of civilization), and upstate (those who are closer to Canada or the midwest than NYC).
I would say it’s more everything north of Bay City. Flint is certainly north of the Detroit Metro Area, but not part of Northern Michigan, or Up North as it’s also commonly called.
That tends to explain Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. They are actually ocean ports. I read somewhere that, due to the curvature of the earth, Chicago is a shorter distance from Liverpool than Baltimore (consider that such a distance takes into account traveling through the Mackinac Straits). In the same sense, Duluth, Cleveland, Toronto and Montreal can be considered ocean ports.
Same here. Been in CA over 50 years and I have never heard any one say
“up state” referring to northern CA.
Maui has an “up country” that refers to the higher elevation portion of the island.
Having lived more in the south-central portions of Pennsylvania (Schuylkill and Lancaster counties), I can’t recall the term “Upstate Pennsylvania” being all that common…certainly not in the way one hears “Upstate New York.”
That said, my wife’s family always talked about going “up county,” which meant, for them, traveling to their cabin “up” in Tioga “County,” which borders NY in Pennsylvania’s “Northern Tier” (another term I’ve heard for upstate PA). It drove me nuts, because I heard this not as a shortening of a phrase but as an adjective. I then started using the word “upstate” to describe our trips there, but I don’t think it ever really caught on.
Incidentally, my father-in-law has a great book of upstate PA folktales that poke fun at the differences between “ridgerunners” and “flatlanders.”