I’d read, somewhere, that “The West”, c. Abe Lincoln was west of the Ohio Valley.
I don’t know where I had read that, but, it seemed authorotative at the time. I believe it was the ‘West’ of which Horace Greeley spoke. Could be full of shit, tho.
I live in Dallas and have always considered Dallas to be part of the American South. Most people who are from Dallas consider themselves Southern and identify with other Southern states. But just on the other side of the Airport is Fort Worth which is part of the American West and not the south. If you’ve ever been to DFW and visited Fort Worth and Dallas, you’ve probably noticed how different the two cities are. Yes even though they are literally fused together into one Metroplex, they are way to different to be considered one. Everything about Fort Worth fits in with the West, but Dallas doesn’t really fit that. And just about everything about Dallas fits in with the South, and FW doesn’t.
Interstate 35 splits into two highways as it passes through DFW. I-35 East runs right through the middle of Dallas, and I-35 West runs right through the middle of Fort Worth, and it joins up in Denton to the north and Hillsboro to the south. So as even the name suggests everything east of 35 is East and everything west of 35 is West.
In Texas, cities like Dallas and Houston are South and cities like Fort Worth and San Antonio are West.
Damn! I count 8 Dallas’ in the post.
I am no longer Jonesing.
I totally agree. I cannot understand how an area that is in the eastern half of the country can be called ANY version or variant of “west,” regardless of what modifiers are used.
The ONLY proper definition of the mid-west is the stack of states from North Dakota through Texas.
So, when you hear “Middle East,” what countries do you think of?
In 1700, Illinois was not “mid” West, it was just solidly West: well beyond the mountains, reserved for Indians, only occasionally traversed by Europeans.
The population center of the United States didn’t even get west of Virginia until the late 1850s. It’s in Missouri now.
I always thought it was weird that literally every state in the Mid-West is in the eastern half of the continent. But at the time it was given that nickname it was in the middle of where most of the population of the country was on the east coast and the vast unsettled west. Now that the population of the country has moved much further west and south, it’s not really in the middle anymore. But the name stuck. The real mid-west would be the states that are actually in the middle of the western half like Colorado and Wyoming. But the entire western half of the country is still pretty much just considered the West while the East includes at least most of the Midwest
Logically speaking, why do only the northeastern states get to be called “The North”, when Washington and North Dakota are just as North, and “The South” is only the states in the southeast? Why is only one country in the Americas called America? Because that’s how everyone calls it, so that’s what it is.
I also go with the time-dependent answer.
If you are talking about the era of the mid to late 1800s when the US was rapidly moving westward, the next tier over from the Mississippi is the dividing line. (Lousiana, for instance, wasn’t in the West at that time.) Hence if you make a movie set in Dodge City or Lubbock in that era, it’s a Western.
Now, it’s the states west of the Rockies.
Other eras, other dividing lines.
There’s a sign in Huron, South Dakota that says it starts there. So I’m going with that.
The continental divide seems to be the most natural boundary for the west and the middle portion of the country and the appellations the boundary between the middle and the east.