And the Springsteen album.
I’d have to go with West Virginia.
Spoken as by someone who’s never hiked in the Wind River Range. Or the Teton Range. Or Flaming Gorge. Or sailed on Fremont Lake. Or climbed Devils Tower. Or driven the Beartooth Highway. Or through Hoback River Canyon. Or rafted the Snake River Canyon. Or the Wind River.
Sure, it’s forgettable if you’ve never seen it.
Another vote for Delaware. I have absolutely nothing to say about Delaware, good or bad. The Dakotas? North Dakota is very blah, though I will admit South Dakota is quite nice. (Even though we make fun of it all the time. Brown grass and Harley boys, anyone?) I honestly wouldn’t mind living in Sioux Falls or Rapid City.
Oh, and for those who forget about Minnesota, go ahead. I’m more than happy to keep all these beautiful lakes to myself. 
Now I must tell my dad’s two favorite state jokes.
How do you get to Iowa?
Walk south until you step in something.
What do they call a state park in South Dakota?
A pine tree and a farm pond.
But West Virginia at least has an interesting origin, and is famous for being really poor and having coal mining disasters.
Delaware is nothing. Nobody is from there. It claims a population of over 800,000, but they’re just making that up; it actually has a population of maybe fifty or sixty people who hand out the corporate charters. It doesn’t even have its own, independent network TV station. It has no cities anyone cares about, no schools, no sports teams, and even educated people have trouble remembering precisely where it is.
An actual quote from Wikipedia:
There’s no particular reason why it should even exist. It should be handed over to Maryland and they should make Puerto Rico a state to keep the flag the same.
Love the chance to go associative. Doubt I’ll reach a conclusion, though.
New Mexico - Georgia O’Keefe
Wyoming - really cool mesas - just beautiful
Delaware - Lawrence Welk Show flashback (Bass singer: “What did Della Wear, boys, what did Della Wear?*”
Montana - Glacier National Park and visiting relatives with a Shetland pony ranch. You can’t beat that for a kid.
New Hampshire - primaries
Utah - Great Salt Lake, (are the Bonneville Salt Flats there, too?), Mormons, and a statue with a couple of golden sea gulls on a pillar (Mormon related)
Indiana - The Music Man
Ohio - divorced there, wish it was more forgettable
Maine - Steven King and Dark Shadows
Wisconsin - cheese, beer, and “Walkin’ ‘Cross Wisconsin Tryin’ to Find my Chevrolet” (Possibly spelled differently)
Idaho - potatoes and my Mom lives there now.
Oklahoma - looks like a frying pan - always easy to fill in when doing the States Map Puzzle as a child
Missouri - Arch thing - send-off location for wagon trains heading West
Vermont - skiing, maple syrup, and leaves
Minnesota - land of a thousand lakes - Wobegon
Must have played with that map puzzle too much as a child, though. It’s hard to think of a forgettable State. If pressed, I’d have to say Maryland.
*she wore a New Jersey
So far here are the unofficial tallies. I only counted the states if the poster’s context indicates a definite “vote”:
Alabama, 1
Alaska, 0
Arizona, 1
Arkansas, 4
California, 0
Colorado, 0
Connecticut, 3
Delaware, 16
Florida, 0
Georgia, 0
Hawaii, 0
Idaho, 9
Illinois, 0
Indiana, 3
Iowa, 5
Kansas, 7
Kentucky, 0
Louisiana, 2
Maine, 1
Maryland, 3
Massachusetts, 0
Michigan, 0
Minnesota, 3
Mississippi, 2
Missouri, 1
Montana, 4
Nebraska, 8
Nevada, 0
New Hampshire, 0
New Jersey, 0
New Mexico, 2
New York, 0
North Carolina, 0
North Dakota, 11
Ohio, 1
Oklahoma, 4
Oregon, 1
Pennsylvania, 0
Rhode Island, 1
South Carolina, 1
South Dakota, 6
Tennessee, 0
Texas, 0
Utah, 2
Vermont, 1
Virginia, 0
Washington, 1
West Virginia, 1
Wisconsin, 3
Wyoming, 5
And the top ten are:
Delaware, 16
North Dakota, 11
Idaho, 9
Nebraska, 8
Kansas, 7
South Dakota, 6
Iowa, 5
Wyoming, 5
Arkansas, 4 (tie)
Montana, 4 (tie)
Oklahoma, 4 (tie)
For those of you who think only of potatoes when you think of Idaho, there’s more to our state than that. We have beautiful forests, mountains and lakes here. We have Hell’s Canyon, the deepest gorge in North America (granted, we share this distinction with Oregon). Trouble is, most people who see Idaho probably only see it from Interstate 84, along which few of our state’s more outstanding geographical and scenic features are seen. I-90 up in the northern part of the state is more scenic, but the run through Idaho is only for 67 miles.
I vote for Delaware, too.
I’m not sure what this says about me, but a few years ago I took 4 separate vacations over 2 years and the destination each time was North Dakota. There actually are things to see there. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is beautiful, and in the Prairie Pothole region is some of the best duck hunting in the US.
You forgot Jerry West.
I was going to ask. But I say Delaware, too. I live in the NE and I can’t place it on a map easily, and can’t remember a damn thing about it, and don’t even remember the capital city off-hand. All of the states mentioned above bring some imagery to me.
So add another vote for Delaware. I missed it; did any Delaware-ians check in?
Raise my hand for Delaware. I know a LOT about history and geography, and still…Delaware draws a blank. I can’t even picture a sterotypical image. It’s…
a vague intellectual oddity, at best.
Aw, you’re just belligerent because he’s ripping on your favorite state for lactic delicacies!
-Cem
West Dakota.
North Dakota. 50th place in tourism. The flickertail state. Largest city is Fargo which is barely in the state. I live in a neighboring state and I never think about North Dakota. It’s flat and empty (now with fewer people than Alaska). Wall Drug? Mt. Rushmore? Black Hills? All in SD.
Dude, there’s clearly no hope for you if you aren’t impressed with Ned Flanders’ alma mater
We also have:
- Convenient pan shape for easy recognizability
- Birthplace of CHUCK NORRIS
- Eleventy bajillion miles of turnpike
Now Nebraska? What have we got there?
- Corn
- Cornhuskers
- Warren Buffett & Fred Astaire
Actually, those are all pretty cool things too. I’m casting my vote decidedly in favor of Delaware. First State my ass, as far as I’m concerned you’re dead last :mad:
Tornadoes, The Music Man, a kick-ass writer’s program at the University of and AuntiePam, I believe.
Delaware has the “first state” thing going for it, plus if you learned the states in alphabetical order, it’s close to the front of the list.
And even though I can think of nothing interesting about North or South Carolina, that there is a “North” and a “South” means they’re never left off of a mental list of states. Neither are the Dakotas. They’re remembered as big, rectangular, dull states, but they are remembered.
New Hampshire, on the other hand, gets lost between New Jersey and New York. When it is remembered, it tends to get confused with Vermont a lot. I can’t think of any cities other than the capital and even their quarter was boring. Not even bad in an embarrassing way - just nothing.
After that, Wyoming.
I’ll vote against Delaware, if only because if it weren’t there, Connecticut would be the second smallest state, instead of third smallest as it is now. Instead, I vote for Montana, since I figure you can merge most of the M states without missing much.
Washington.
Mention “Washington” to most non-Americans and they think you’re talking about Washington DC. Most probably don’t even know there’s a state of that name, and it’s not even close to DC.
Seattle, grunge rock, hipsters, camping, logging, and the setting of The Goonies.
Beyond the name confusion, it’s pretty well recognized at least among the people I know.
Edit: noticed you said Non Americans. In that case you’re probably right.
Neighbor!
Brandwine-milled flour went to the four corners of the globe. The Duponts made a gawd-awful amount of gunpowder here, which made an impression on a lot o’ folks as was gittin’ unfriendly with us. If you take that ‘little purple pill,’ well, the US headquarters for that company is here… And if you have a Roth IRA, best you tip your hats in thanks to lil’ ol’ Delaware & the late Senator Bill Roth.
Heck, this year, we even have a semi-viable Presidential candidate!
I like it here too. And so do a number of mostly-lapsed 'Dopers, including Intaglio, hedra, epeepunk - all from Newark.
That’s New-Ark, not Newwerk. Newwerk is located in that state across the bay.
Edit:
Oh, and it’s the home of Military Airlift Command, the place where young men and women in uniform, killed overseas, first return to their homeland.