I and others forget how far west western WV is. DC-area folks know how far east it goes; we have MARC commuter trains bringing people from eastern WV to DC. When I went to ~Huntington recently, that’s a 6.5 h drive from DC, which shocked a lot of people. That’s about how long it takes me to get to meetings in CT if I drive. Nobody question my flying to Hartford, but many assumed I’d drive for this trip.
There’s only one flight per day to/from Charleston, so if the timing hadn’t worked out, I might have driven.
My first reaction to this statement was to roll my eyes, until I looked at the map. Indeed, the westernmost point of West Virginia is farther west than Cleveland, and almost as far west as Detroit.
The northern panhandle is one of the two panhandles in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is a culturally and geographically distinct region of the state. It is the state’s northernmost extension, bounded by Ohio and the Ohio River on the north and west and the state of Pennsylvania on the east. Its unusual configuration is the result of the Revolutionary-era claims of Virginia’s former Yohogania County boundary lying along the Ohio River, conflicting with interpretations of the Colony of Pennsylvania’s royal charter. The conflict was settled by compromise in the 1780s.
This isn’t so much a geographical misconception as a state of geographical vagueness I have never been able to resolve. Though I grew up in L.A. and lived much of my adult life there, I could never nail down where the areas north of downtown along I-5 turn into the San Fernando Valley (SFV). Burbank is definitely in the SFV, but is Glendale? Some parts of Glendale do look and feel like it, but other areas don’t. Forest Lawn Glendale is definitely not in the SFV, yet Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills definitely is, according to my sense of geography, and the character of the surrounding area. Yet the moniker “Hollywood Hills” suggests the hilly residential areas to the southwest, which are definitely not in the SFV. To be fair, I never did spend a lot of time in that area.
I live in Oregon almost ten degrees north of my friend in New Mexico, so if he can see the northern lights then I should likewise be able to. But in recent months he’s seen them twice and I haven’t seen anything. I know the usual pattern of northern lights after a major CME favors the middle of the country much more than the coasts, but still!
The term “Midwest” was defined back about 1850. When the USA ended just barely past the Mississippi river. And the westernmost parts of the region between the Mississippi and the Atlantic were the mostly west but not fully west. Which got them the name “Midwest”.
If we were inventing new names for the regions today based on the 50-state version of the USA, we’d sure not call that eastern area the Midwest.
Right. We should add that the time zone system started in 1883 (final version codified in 1918). In any case, there’s no logical reason why time zones should coincide with vernacular/cognitive regions like “Midwest.” The basic template for the world’s zones derives from 0 degrees longitude (Greenwich, UK). Within the US, this was adjusted first to conform to state boundaries, and then fine-tuned to avoid zone boundaries cutting through major metro areas.
As for giving the name “Eastern” to that time zone (which incudes part of the Midwest), I think it works pretty well. Overall, that’s obviously the easternmost segment of the US. It may not be the perfect name, but I can’t think of a better one – can you?
By some measures, “Midwest” has been expanded as far as most of Nebraska and the Dakotas. The Central time zone may be used as a western boundary of “Midwest”, though there seems to be a southern cutoff somewhere around St Joe or KC where the terminology changes to “Plains states”.
Back to the original question: for a long time, I thought the Gulf of California went far enough north to separate California from Arizona at the southern end of their border (and it was impossible to get from Baja California to the rest of Mexico by land without going through those two states).
Actually, that land bridge was a concession that Mexican negotiators demanded from the US in order to settle up the Mexican-American war. (There had been money set aside by the US to buy Baja California outright, but the Mexicans said heck no to that idea.)
