My nephew and his friend just asked me about west Asian geography. I hope they sustain interest even when it doesn’t relate to breaking news but know that’s a lot to expect of 10 year olds. I try to have it make sense to them.
With respect to your profession, I gotta disagree with you on both counts. Lifelong Chicagoan with 2 kids in Denver, and who used to do a lot of work in Ohio. It might be tough to really define the Midwest - or any region, but driving to Denver from Chicago you sure go through a heck of a lot of NOT-Midwestern Nebraska before you get to CO. Plenty of cowboy and bronco imagery abounds to signify Denver as “western.” Illinois and Indiana are clearly Midwest and Ohio is right next door, sharing a Great Lakes orientation, industrial rust belt cities, and IMO very common culture and language. And, of course, in US history, Ohio was originally the distant West.
WRT TN, I imagined the use of East Coast reflected the firm’s internally defined regions. Perhaps they initially expanded only to the East Coast. Then, when they added a few TN stores, it made more sense to fold them into the EC region of operations than their West Coast.
Somewhat recently we had a discussion as to what constitutes the Midwest. As I recall, we reached no general agreement outside of a limited “core.”
WRT this type of discussion, it comes down to how many “regions” you wish to define. The fewer regions, the more problematic states at the border will become. I would probably offer Midwest, Plains, NE, SW, SW, and West Coast.
when I moved to Cleveland after 20 years in California, I did go through “culture shock” before I adjusted (and I’m a Midwest boy), but I grew to like it, especially after they grew more diverse culinary-wise. Cleveland is similar to ST Louis, with the racial divide east-west compared to north-south in STL. But what impressed me about Clevland is that they didn’t abandon their downtown like STL did, letting Dept stores run down, etc. I actually miss Cleveland, especially Lakewood, which had perfect location with EVERYTHING I needed available on 1 bus line (I mean 7 supermarkets in one city!) sigh, now I’m back home to face the reality of my home town
Sure, once you get on the other side of the continental divide. The majority of the population lives east of the continental divide.
I realize this isn’t a history rant thread, but that didn’t work out all that well for the Romans.
Which is definitely still an issue with Colorado since it has characteristics of both Plains, West (only if “Mountain” can’t be it’s own category), and also Southwest in the extreme southern part.
Yes, we are pretty much everything. The plains of eastern Colorado make Kansas exciting.
And desert of course. One of the things we wanted when moving out of the mountains was no cacti. We walk our dogs a lot.
The Great Lakes is a distinct region, both geographically and culturally. At least the cities on the shorelines. The problem is usually the rest of the state is very different.
Born in Chicago, grew up in central Ill. Boy, oh boy is it ever differnet.
I remember being stunned to find small cactus paddles poking through snow on my first visit to big mountains in Colorado Springs.
South West Colorado, and the western slope have them too. I have a friend with a dog that has had problems with it.
I was stunned too. And I do not want to deal with that.
Sure. We can always pick nits - especially at the borders. But my initial comment stands - outside of enipla, I can’t recall ever hearing anyone suggest CO was Midwest. If CO is midwest, I assume Wyoming is as well, and possibly NM and MT?
Born in Chicago, grew up in central Ill. Boy, oh boy is it ever differnet.
Geographically? Am I missing the mountains around me?
I am a GIS application engineer. Spatially, CO would fit better into Midwest as a description of it’s location. Socially it does not of course.
If your going to have East/Mid/West Colorado is Mid. Everything west of the continental divide is ‘West’
I guess on the cusp really. Socially/culturally I consider myself a ‘westerner’ Texans do too. Which is not a subject that I want to pursue.
Why do you choose the continental divide? And if the divide splits a state, why choose one side or the other?
Looking at the map, if I were 2 divide it into 3ds, I’d put the Midwest/West split along the line E of Montana/Wyoming/CO/NM. Looks to me like an approx 1/3 WRT area. I could imagine population as well.
The Eastern border of Midwest could run along the western border of Penn/WVa/VA/NC/GA/FLA. The East would probably get shortcut on area. Maybe we could give them AL/TN/KY/OH. But, as I said before, I think OH is Midwest, and the OP started with the presumption that TN is not East.
That is just eyeballing things. But everything in my past 65 years living exclusively in IL and IN tells me Colorado, Tennessee, and Texas are NOT the Midwest.
And then, do we consider Alaska and Hawaii part of the West?
We’ll never resolve this to everyone’s agreement.
This is true. As a Chicagoan, I feel kinship with Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, even as far east as Buffalo more so than anything south of I-80 or west of, I dunno, Route 47? Definitely by I 39.
Except that northern Ohio is Inland North. That’s my dialect. I’m very conscious of the dialectal difference between there and the rest of Ohio. Once on the way to kindergarten we passed a creek and another kid said “There’s a crick.” I said, “No, it’s a creek.” The other kid insisted that it is, in fact, “crick.”
As we’re seeing, the parsing of the USA into regions by geographic logic, cultural logic, or linguistic logic result in at least 3 different subdivisions. And for sure those divisions have almost nothing to do with the state governmental boundary lines.
In any partitioning of anything, the first question to answer is “what question are we trying to answer?” The second is “With what precision and rigor?” Once those are settled we can dig into carving up the problem space with some hope of a useful outcome. Some. Hope.
So, pour a glass of water on the ground:
Drains into the Atlantic - east;
Drains into the Gulf of Mexico or Great Lakes - mid;
Drains into the Pacific or Great Basin - west?
As a geophysical rubric that’s IMO a winner. Works badly for most other purposes, but it’s darn good at answering the question it’s aimed at.
You can say that, but then you end up with overlapping regions. Because if there’s any city that’s absolutely definitely Midwestern, it’s Chicago.
Maybe overlapping regions are the way to go. Because most places aren’t, in fact, one and only one thing.
In my dialect (Cleveland with strong western PA influences), a “creek” and a “crick” both exist, but refer to slightly different things. A “crick” is small enough that you can step over it. A “creek”, you might be able to jump over, with a running start, or cross on stepping stones.