Idaho.
My brother and a friend (native Virginians like myself) went on a road trip to the West Coast. Their ‘southern’ accents caught everyone’s attention, so they were constantly being asked where they were from. Evidently they got a big kick out of saying, “Virginia-you know, Mother of Presidents.”
Back on topic, I’d say Delaware.
Yeah, but its most noteworthy claim-to-fame took place before it was even a state. “Montana” as we now know it just lucked out on that one. 
Louisiana gets my vote. What a bleak state, are there even any hills? All of my customers seem to be grumpy, southern hospitality? To be fair, all three towns have paper mills…jeez, what a terrible odor.
Honorable mention goes to Mississippi, can you say sharecropper shacks along a major interstate?
Between the beer, the sausage, and the cheese, I have to say Wisconsin is number one in my heart.
In college during really boring classes I would see if I could write down all fifty states and the capitals off the top of my head. The two I would forget the most often were Maryland and Minnesota.
I gotta say for me, its an easy North Dakota. Nothing happens there! It’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, “Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out.”
Not around here.
Arkansas is one of the states I would forget as a kid when trying to name all 50. I mean, what do they have there, besides the Clintons (usedtabe)? I don’t think of the school integration that often, and there’s no big city there.
I do admit that I don’t think about Delaware much at all. Except that George Thorogood used bill his band as The Delaware Destroyers.
All off the top of my head. Make of it what you will:
AK - Eskimoes, snow
HI - Surfing, Beaches, Volcanoes
CA - L.A., Hollywood, Golden Gate bridge, Bloods and Crips, the Eagles, G-Funk
OR - Matt Groening, Mt. Hood, rain
WA - Space Needle, coffee, rain, evergreens, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St Helens
ID - Potatoes
MT - Big Sky country
WY - Brokeback mountain
CO - Mile high city
NV - Gambling
AZ - Golf, desert, Grand Canyon
NM - Adobe, Area 51, Roswell
UT - Mormons
TX - Don’t Mess With, Lone Star State, G.W. Bush, Enron, Oil, death row
OK - OK City bombing, Hanson
KS - Wizard of Oz, Geographic center of the country
NE - Corn, About Schmidt, Saddle Creek
SD - Mt. Rushmore, Black Hills
ND - Badlands
IA - Bill Bryson
MN - Bob Dylan, Prince, Twin Cities, Fargo (the movie, not the city)
WI - Beer, Green Bay Packers, cheese
IL - Chicago, Blues, Lincoln, Playing in Peoria
IN - Big car race
MI - Detroit, cars, Roger & Me, looking like a mitten, Motown, Eminem, rock city, techno
OH - 2004 election, football teams, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
NY - NYC, 9/11, Long Island, Cornell, hip hop
VT - Lakes, colleges.
NH - Granite, John Irving, “Live Free or Die”
ME - Lobsters, Kennebunkport
MA - Red Sox/Fenway, Cheers, St. Patrick’s Day, Chowdah, Harvard, the Kennedys, Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere
RI - Being tiny, Family Guy
CT - Yale, Gilmore Girls
NJ - the Garden State, blue collar/suburbia, Bon Jovi, Sopranos, Brick City
PA - Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cheesesteak, Philly Soul
DE - Credit card companies
MD - Bodymore Murdaland, The Wire, drugs, Baltimore Club, the Beltway
VA - Arlington, Virginia Tech, the Beltway
WV - Appalachia, Breaking away from Virginia
NC - Charlotte, Kitty Hawk
SC - Charleston
GA - New South, Atlanta, Macon, peaches, crunk, Midnight Train to, Gone With the Wind
FL - Miami, Scarface, Everglades, gators, hanging chads, old people
MS - the blues, being named after a big river, deep south
AL - Birmingham, Mobile
LA - New Orleans, Jazz, Bounce, Creole, Cajun, Katrina, A Streetcar Named Desire
AR - Bill Clinton
MO - Gateway arch, Cardinals, Budweiser, Huck Finn, Show Me!
TN - Country music, Stax, MLK
KY - Bluegrass, Fried Chicken
Wisconsin is notable as a center of German culture and the dairy-based agriculture that came with it, as well as beer, sausage and other German foods. But people don’t think of German-Americans as being as “ethnic” as other groups, so they forget about this.
Indiana is known for basketball, Bob Knight, and limestone quarries, as well as the Indy 500.
My vote goes to Delaware, which I’ve always thought is the most obscure and little-talked-about state.
What do you mean ‘as well?’ You’re the first person to mention it. And not that I’m biased or anything, but we have a lot going on:
Maple Syrup, Phish, Grateful Dead, Howard Dean, Ben and Jerry’s, about half a dozen beers that are popular and well known in New England and New York.
Oh, and Springfield, VT is the “semi-official” home of “The Simpsons”, thanks to the movie premiere there last weekend.
Missouri is a strange state, we are in the heart of the bible belt and yet have almost unlimited access to hardcore fireworks.
If you drive down I-70 you will see billboards about adult superstores.
Yet nearly 1/3 of the counties are dry.
I can’t decide if the fundies are taking over or the rednecks
I’m honestly not surprised to hear this suggestion in this thread. Still, here’s a short list of things that the great state of Oklahoma has to contribute:
- Rodgers and Hammerstein set one of the most popular musicals in history here. I forget the name of it, but I think our state song came from it.
- Some guy bombed a building with fertilizer over a decade ago. It was a big deal until some other guys destroyed some towers in New York City.
- Will Rogers and James Garner came from here, and they’re pretty cool
- We have waving wheat, which can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain.
- We gave the world shopping carts, and also Sonic drive-ins.
- The whole Indian Territory thing was kind of important in American history.
- Frank Lloyd Wright built a pretty cool highrise in Bartlesville, which I think is his only one. There’s some pretty sweet art deco buildings in downtown Tulsa also, owing to the vast amount of money in Tulsa during the height of the art deco movement.
- Weird Al’s movie UHF was shot in Tulsa, including a bunch of extras from the area including me
- Ned Flanders graduated from Oral Roberts University.
- Tulsa recently unearthed a Plymouth Belvedere from 1957. It would have been in better shape if those 1950s guys weren’t incompetent and the vault hadn’t flooded.
- Oklahoma City has a variety of positive attributes to contribute, I’m sure.
- John Steinbeck wrote a book about wrath and grapes that was pretty popular.
- There’s a cool runestone near Heavener, Oklahoma
That’s about it off the top of my head. Personally, my vote is for either Nebraska or Delaware.
Hey (way off topic, but this crowd probably would be interested)…
Is St. Louis proper still as bad in crime as it was a couple years ago, when it led the nation in violent crimes per capita for cities over 100k people? What’s so bad about there? Does it spill over into the suburbs?
I have to agree that it does depend on where you are from. When I name the states, I either forget Wisconsin or Delaware, but then I’m from the west so I would never forget Montana or Wyoming. Montana is gorgeous, Wyoming has Yellowstone, what is there to forget.
I do think Patty O’Furniture messed up on his nomination. In naming his reasons for not choosing states, he names every state in the Rockies except Idaho. I’m thinking he finds Idaho so forgetable, he can’t even remember to forget it. Sadly, no one does ever remember that there is more to Idaho than just potatoes. Maybe the potatoes really are that good. 
Heck, if you remembered all that stuff, then it’s not forgettable, is it?
My vote: Idaho.
Sorry, Beer Can Dave.
Wyoming.
As a non-American who’s pretty good at geographical trivia, when I do the “name every state” thing I tend to get to 49 and get stuck, convinced that I must have named every one. The missing state? It’s always Minnesota. Which I guess means that I now remember it as that state which I never remember.
But really, I couldn’t state a single fact about Minnesota apart from that Minneapolis is in it. Wyoming? Why, Devil’s Tower of course. World famous. North Dakota’s a bit of struggle. Don’t know much about Oregon, but it looks quite scenic from the photographs I’ve seen.
It has the largest shopping mall in the United States (though not the largest in North America). I’ve been to both the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis, and the West Edmonton Mall, and they are both memorable for being – really big!
Non-American, but I fail to see what’s so great about Idaho. It has absolutley nothing to associate with it. At least the Bee Gees mentioned Nebraska in a song. Idaho even sounds like “I don’t know”. 'Tis clearly a naughty state.