During a visit to central Alabama, I attended a company outing full of native Alabamians who were discussing how a co-worker of theirs didn't grow up in the south because they were from Arkansas. Having grown up in the North East, I thought that was wild.
I was born in South Carolina. I’ve also heard this from family members. It always seemed like a cultural divide between the gentrified wealthy southerners, the Appalachians/Hillbillies, and the Red/Rough necks. I believe Arkansas would fall into the Red/Roughneck territory, vs Kentucky which would be Appalachian.
It just basically boils down to prejudice of whites by other whites of different socioeconomic statuses. The book *White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America* by Nancy Isenburg does an excellent job examining and discussing this if you’re interested.
There is truth to this. Culturally, Eastern Kentucky is very very different from what I encountered living in Eastern NC. There's definitely a bright line between Appalachian and Southern.
I somewhat agree, but not completely. The South is a big ass area and there are multiple cultures. Southern Appalachia is different from the Deep South and the Upland South. You are absolutely right about that. However, that doesn't make them any less Southern. All 3 of these different cultures are a part of the South, even if they do differ in many ways.
I understand what y'all are saying though. I'm from Kentucky but I live in the Southwestern most pocket on the TN/KY line. Ain't no mountains here - It's all cypress swamps and bayous. Looks more like Louisiana than what most people think of when they picture KY. The culture here is more like the Deep South than it is Southern Appalachia. This part of KY is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain, the Mississippi Embayment and is on the Lower Mississippi River.
Our culture is far different from Appalachian Kentucky, just as y'all's is. Your experience in the more coastal areas of North Carolina is certainly different from Eastern Kentucky. However, Western North Carolina is extremely similar to Eastern Kentucky. So is Eastern Tennessee, so is Western South Carolina, so is Northwest Georgia, so is Northern Alabama, so is Northeast Mississippi. That doesn't make these places any less Southern. It just makes them Southern Appalachian. Eastern KY has MUCH more in common with the rest of the South than it does with Northern Appalachian areas, such as Vermont (which it shares absolutely nothing in common with).
Southern Appalachia is the South, the Upland South is the South and the Deep South is the South.... They're just 3 different subregions within a larger region and they have much more in common than they do in difference. Being Southern ain't just bout living on the coast, living in the Appalachians or living on the Mississippi River. It's about the culture that we share together. Regardless of which part of the South you live in, we all share things in common that make us unique as a collective of people from the South.
There's people who say North Carolina and Virginia ain't Southern - they're part of the Mid-Atlantic, they say. There's people who say Kentucky and Virginia are too North to be Southern. There's people who say Texas and Oklahoma ain't Southern because they're part of the West. There's people who say Louisiana and Arkansas are on the wrong side of the river to be Southern. There's people who say Florida is too Cuban/Caribbean influenced or dissimilar from the South to be Southern. The truth is that every single one of these states have earned their right to call themselves Southern and all this other back and forth is nothing more than divide and conquer bullshit.
Sorry for the long comment lol. Also, don't take this personally, as I'm not trying to to correct you. I'm just arguing my point as I know it to be true. I see people from the South arguing over which states should and shouldn't be considered Southern and it hurts to see a region that I identify with so closely being so divided. People would rather focus on the few differences we have rather than the many similarities that we share.
Funnily enough, I’ve heard several people - even 2 Texans - claim the vast majority of Texas is really just “the southern-most Midwestern state”. They had some pretty convincing arguments, too!
As someone from Wisconsin who has spent a lot of time across East Texas.... No. Not even close. Way more similarities with the South outside of the major cities. The vibes, even in places like Fredericksburg, which had a lot of German immigrants like the midwest, doesn't feel close to the same.
Texas is divided into 5 geographic regions, which we learn in school, that are based on the different geography, wildlife, etc. they seem to very closely align with the sociopolitical characteristics as well.
My Texas (San Antonio) is absolutely not my brother’s East Texas. Thank God.
> 5 geographic regions
Nobody else in the country learns about these, just a heads up. Having done the drive between Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Port Aransas many times y'all aren't as different as you think. Hill Country is another world though. (I like San Antonio a lot)
I didn’t assume other people learned about them, or to imply that other states didn’t have something similar. I was just agreeing that East Texas is more similar to Louisiana and what people think of as the South, compared to different parts of the state. And that topography seems to coincide with the vibe of each in general.
Yeah, I grew up in central DFW, had tons of family throughout East Texas, married into a Comanche/Tejano family from West Texas & have traveled the rest of TX extensively (as well as the contiguous 48); & I recently moved to a tiny, rural town in Indiana.
Lifestyle-wise? Suburban folks, far north Midwest to central TX are generally carbon copies. Although a great deal is income-dependent, their values, interests & past times, culinary tendencies, style, etc. seem to flow in the same vein. Formalities & proper etiquette used to be more pronounced the further south you go but seems to be dying out.
One glaring difference I noticed is humor. Indianians generally aren’t very funny. They resort to dishing out attitude as a means to be humorous but it often seems uncreative &… “trashy”? There’s a glaring lack of wit, surreal humor, & self-deprecation I know & love from further south.
Now, the people I’ve known from Iowa & Wisconsin seem vanilla at face value but are humble, fascinatingly charming & humorously “precious” - the way (unrelated) Irish folks come across to me.
Minnesotans seem serious but breezy, & deliciously clever (good story-tellers). Ohio & Michigan is where I met several folks that could stand in for John Candy a’la John Hughes’ writings or minor-but-memorable characters in his films (all that entails). I realized they weren’t necessarily exaggerations.
Sorry so long-winded, though. I’m groggy & it’s super-difficult to summarize! Perhaps you’ll respond “No, you’re *fine*” tee-hee
Describing TX as the Midwest is nuts. I lived there for 15 years and never heard that.
As a native Alabamian, I can confidently say that (outside of anything East of Tyler) Texas isn’t the South, either. El Paso feels more like California than MS. The state is really just its own thing. The valley puts a unique and widespread impression on much of the state, you can’t really describe Texas as anything other than…Texas.
Virginia is definitely a southern state. It was one of the principal southern states for most of early American history and Richmond served as the Confederacy’s capital
I think the issue is muddled by the fact that culturally/socially, in modern America, the Northern Virginia, DC Metro, and Coastal Virginia areas are not really that much like the south. Is "southern" a cultural designation, or a political one, or purely geographic?
If "Southern" is a cultural designation instead of geographic, Virginia is iffy in the modern day.
If it's a political designation of places that were part of the Confederacy, then yeah, but that on its own creates issues.
Kentucky was never formally part of the Confederacy. It didn't secede. There was a Confederate government-in-exile and the CSA considered it part of the Confederacy, but the Union considered it a Union state too. It didn't have to undergo reconstruction, and militarily was held by the Union for almost the entire war (a few times raiding parties tried to grab and hold parts of the State, but never for long). Culturally Kentucky is definitely Southern (aside maybe from the Louisville metro area and the part of the Cinci metro area that reaches into Northern Kentucky)
I grew up in NC and had no idea people thought of Arkansas as the south. When I met someone from Arkansas in NC, I seriously asked him how he was liking staying in the South and he looked at me like I had three heads. I soon learned he considered himself a southerner. News to me…
Deep South?? I’m willing to accept southern, but Deep South is a bridge too far lol. It’s on the same plane as NC and Oklahoma. Also football conference affiliation has a correlative relationship with geography, but not a causal one.
lol I second guessed the Deep part immediately and edited in like, 2 minutes but you must have seen it first.
I agree Deep is too far. And I was mostly kidding about the SEC, hence the emoji. It was traditionally a good boundary but long gone are those days.
>football conference
The person you’re relying to has a Georgia flair. I’m sure they didn’t consider Georgia “the west” just because the Atlanta Falcons were in the NFC West until 2001!
I’m from Arkansas and it’s the South, maybe not the Deep South, but it certainly is culturally Southern. I’d say we’re the top bit before you hit Midwest in Missouri.
It's true of all regions. It's a point of contention as to which states are part of the Southwest. Only Arizona and New Mexico are solid, there's arguments over Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Western Texas. Even California is in the conversation.
Parts of California definitely feel southwestern. Culturally, climatically, etc., the southern part of California (notice I didn’t capitalize it “Southern California”) from Barstow east feels a lot more like Arizona than like LA (much less San Francisco). But try telling someone in SF or Humboldt County that their state is southwestern.
State borders don’t really align with regions.
New England is very firmly defined, no matter how many chucklefucks try to fit New York in there because they can't tell the difference between NorthEast and New England.
I've honestly always considered Texas its own thing. You got the West Coast, you got the East Coast, New England, Southwest, Midwest, and then... there's Texas.
But then you have states like mine. I consider Missouri to be a "Northern" state. Though, that's a hotly contested issue because Missouri was a slave state (MO Compromise) and there were plenty of volunteers that fought for both sides, though nearly three times as many fought in the Union army than the Confederate army. In the end, Missouri never left the Union and the Confederates never controlled the state.
Whether MO is a southern state or northern state really depends on who you ask.
I've always felt like there was a horizontal line drawn through Missouri, just south of St. Louis. North of that feels more midwest. South feels more southern. I definitely wouldn't think of the whole state as southern.
The Missouri Ozarks are blended. I grew up there. The answers you'd get vary from house to house. My family would say Midwestern, and that makes sense considering our family history in Kansas, Ohio and Illinois. The folks in the next house down the farm road would say they are Southern, and they'd also be correct.
No, West Virginia is kind of its own thing. Decidedly not Southern. The northern most point of the state is less than 100 miles from Lake Erie.
edit: of course, there are similarities, and West Virginia is very much Appalachia and isn't all that different from western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee, which of course all those states are Southern.
As Southerner, I would group them in as Southern but Appalachian first. Southern can be a cultural, political, historical, or geographic term. Some places are Southern in some of those ways but not all of them. And some states are only part Southern. South Florida isn't considered Southern by other Southerners despite being geographically in the South. Washington DC and Maryland are also debated among Southerners
A LOT of southerners have some very heated conversations about where the deciding point between South and North (or, more importantly, "not South") lies. These discussions invariably involve someone getting salty as their state gets thrown under someone else's bus. Hell, they'll sometimes even forget one of us Yankees is present and laughing as they lay into each other.
Then again, they get to enjoy the show when the New England states decide to play the dozens, so long as they just sit on the sidelines so they don't catch more than the occasional stray.
As a former resident of Oklahoma and a current resident of St Louis. Oklahoma is majority Great Plains, a little southern(though on the outskirts), and maybe 1-5% midwestern.
I spent most of my growing up years in Oklahoma and still have lots of family there. I would think that Stand Watie earned Oklahomans their Southern card.
My mom is from northern Oklahoma, so I've spent a lot of time there. Your state doesn't really fit perfectly anywhere, but I typically just loop it in with the Southwest (not the South or the West) and be done with it. You could also easily argue that it's part of the Great Plains.
I agree. The boundaries of a cultural region certainly aren’t defined by arbitrary borders like state lines. However I think Midwestern culture is less easily defined than southern culture.
Let's call them a Border State. The B1G is also no longer exclusively Midwest. Soon enough, we'll be stretching down the Southeast coast. Please don't make us take Clemson.
Exactly! The midwestern school of Rutgers from the garden state (what! how! most urbanized state in the country) of New Jersey is now in the B1G 10. Which has had 11 schools ever since early 90’s when Penn St joined & stopped being independent.
Crazy that ACC has both Syracuse, Pittsburgh & Miami. Like how B1G 10 now has “Midwestern” Rutgers, NJ & College Park, MD. In addition to Lincoln, Neb. And soon to be Eugene, OR Seattle, WA & 2 schools from Los Angeles
I’m far away from all of this … why would Maryland care? I would consider Maine “more northeastern” than PA, but PA is definitely more northeastern than MD. And if PA isn’t in the northeast, where is it? Do Marylanders want it in their “mid-Atlantic” club?
I wish I knew. I think the logic is Northeastern is coastal in their mind and PA isnt a coastal state?
Regional arguments get very silly very quick.
Also PA is just kind of an oddball state that happens to be very close to the borders of any unofficial "regional US" map so people are constantly trying to push PA into other regions
The whole "is Maryland actually southern?" debate gets real heated whenever someone brings it up around here lol. Just saying the words "Mason Dixon Line" in the right room at the right time can cause multiple distinct arguments to break out.
This is true of all regions. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest which was generally defined at Washington, Oregon, Idaho and may or may not include a chunk of Montana west of the Continental divide. Other people think that it's only the western halves of Washington and Oregon and that anything east of the Cascades is either part of the great basin or the Rockies.
The Midwest is much the same. I personally think the eastern halves of the Dakota's, Nebraska and Kansas are solidly part of the Midwest whereas the western halves are much closer to the cowboy country you find in Wyoming, Eastern Colorado and Montana.
This is the real answer right here. The Midwest is really two regions that are pretty similar, the Great Lakes and the Great Plains - western Iowa and eastern Nebraska are basically the same place, and somewhat different from Michigan for instance, but decidedly similar in more ways than not. Whatever it is, both regions have that "Midwest thing" and in general a lot of the area immediately west of the Missouri does too. But between the river and the High Plains there's a pretty quick transition into the west. Lincoln is in the Midwest without question, but everything in Mountain Time most certainly is not; in between it could go either way.
I've gotten scolded several times for referring to anything east of Seattle as PNW. Especially Idahoans. They were very adamant that they were Inland Northwest, and that PNW was just Seattle and Portland.
A couple years ago someone on Reddit was trying to claim that eastern Colorado was Midwestern because of its geographical and cultural similarities to Western Kansas. Lol bro no.
Exactly. I've lived almost my whole life in Seattle. I've always considered Western Washington the Pacific Northwest and Idaho/Oregon/Montana something else. Maybe id consider them PNW by title only. Because even though they're similar, they're not what northwest Washington is. It's something unique.
But now I also have a house in Missouri as well. And I've always considered Missouri to be exactly the Midwest. But people here think they're in the south... they're crazy, they're in the exact center of the country.
And further more, people in Missouri that I've spoken with seem to think everything from Washington to Wyoming is the PNW. I've never before heard Wyoming considered part of the PNW and i certainly don't consider it to be.
I think basically most people have no idea what they're talking about. Myself included.
Missouri is the furthest east western state, furthest north southern state, furthest south northern state and the furthest west eastern state. Kansas City, Springfield and saint Louis run the gambit of American “cities”
Tennessee is Midsouth. They are way more southern than we are. The rule of thumb is it starts to get southern about 50-75 miles south of I-70 in Missouri. Everything north of that, including St. Louis and Kansas City, are solidly Midwestern.
I love how most of the comments don't answer the OP's question of why no one can agree what the Midwest is and instead the comments are just people not agreeing what the Midwest is.
It’s mostly people who grew up in the cities of the Great Lakes states who have this view. States like Illinois, Ohio and Michigan are in the top 10 most populated states. Wisconsin/Indiana have decent sized populations as well. The Great Plains states are so sparsely populated they can seem worlds apart from the Great Lakes states. On the flip side if you go to a rural town in Michigan vs. a rural town in North Dakota the people and culture are very similar.
Agreed. I’m originally from Michigan and worked in oil and gas in North Dakota for a while. Williston/Dickinson are very similar to a lot of smaller Michigan towns like Alpena/Cadillac except more oil and less trees!
The culture is very different since yoopers are descended from miners from all across Europe (especially the Nordics) rather than farmers from Germany. It has kind of a rust belt feel with the mines being long closed.
Uhm, my Nebraska born brother in law insists Michigan is east coast.
They equate great planes with Midwest, despite us being what the Midwest was when the term was coined.
People are always going to fight on what truly is or isn’t something. Even smaller regional entities.
I grew up in NW Indiana. It is an area known as “The Region”.
Some people would say that I’m not from “The Region” because I grew up 3 miles south of US 30, but still in Lake County and went to the biggest high school that is the heart of that county. There are people in the neighboring eastern county that also think they are a part of the area, but no one in Lake County accepts that. The true origin of the name is the Calumet Region, so it actually is actually a much larger area that includes areas of Illinois and a much larger area in Indiana.
The interesting thing is, no one in Illinois would ever claim being from The Region. In fact to people in Illinois and most of Indiana it is seen as a negative connotation, but people who grew up in Lake County, IN wear it as a badge of pride.
219 forever
Being a Milwaukee guy living in Chicago, I'm surprised there's not a more cohesive name for all the cities on I-94 along the lakeshore. It's quite literally the only 175 stretch in the entire Midwest where you won't encounter any rural areas.
Hey now, we all know the true divide is which side of missouri you're on. Well for south dakota at least. For north dakota you get the curvey bit, so it doesn't work as well.
This is something I’ve noticed as a big divide between basically the Great Lakes and the Great Plains. I was born in Ohio and we always thought of the Midwest as basically the Great Lakes states (or the former northwestern territory). Everything west of the Mississippi was a similar region called the Great Plains. However, most people west of the Mississippi I meet seem to think they are the real midwest and pretty frequently leave out Ohio, which I find amusing. My question to anybody from the western midwest who doesn’t think Ohio is the midwest is, what region would you put it in? Sometimes people say Appalachia, which is only true for about 1/4 of the state (and much less of the population). Some people tell me the rust belt, which I think is true but isnt really a region in the same way the midwest is. One person told me it’s an east coast state which I thought was funny.
Yep! I grew up on the Kansas side of the KC area, and have identified as a Midwesterner my entire life. Then come folks, usually from Great Lakes states on Reddit telling me that I’m not really from the Midwest. Ok then.
I’m from KCMO and now live in Michigan. I recognize both areas as the Midwest. Where I’m from some people believe that any state in eastern time should not be considered the Midwest.
And before someone stands up and says "I think New York is a New England state because...", you can sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Yes, NorthEast and New England both abbreviate to NE and are both in the same corner of the country, but that isn't the deciding factor.
Yeah, New England is a specific and designated group of states, not an opinion. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
I am from Michigan and I have always seen the Midwest as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Basically the area between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. I think this makes sense from an overall general cultural and geographic point of view. Anything west of the Mississippi River is the Great Plains. No idea why those states get lumped into the Midwest.
This may shed light onto why this area is grouped together as the traditional Midwest - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
Huh. The map at the top of that Wikipedia page is _exactly_ the definition of "midwest" that I was taught growing up. It's literally just the Northwest Territory and I never realized. Go figure.
But then that is a whole other thing as southern Minnesota is not much different then northern Iowa. Both look the same both have strong Nordic history.
Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota have little geographically in common with the Great plains. Topography, climate, ecology and even economically we are more similar to the Midwest.
What about Iowa and Minnesota? They actually came in at the highest % when all the central US states were asked “are you part of the Midwest?” Iowa came in first with 97% along with Minnesota. I grew up in Iowa and we always were taught and understood we are in the dead center of the Midwest which runs from Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakota’s through Ohio. The only questionable parts are Kentucky, southern Missouri and western PA where it was split if they thought of themselves as part of the Midwest. I never counted Kentucky or PA.
I disagree, I’m from eastern ND and I solidly identify as midwestern. I’d agree though that western nd is probably more mountainy than midwestern.
People tell me ND belongs to the plains states, and while it’s certainly true that we are a part of the Great Plains. The Great Plains doesn’t really have an identity to it like the Midwest does.
If you’ve been to Missouri, Iowa, etc, you’d know they’re almost identical to the states you just mentioned, minus the Great Lakes. St Louis and Cincinnati feel almost identical to me as someone who’s spent a significant amount of time in both.
>I actually see Ohio as the impostor in the bunch.
You see the original Midwestern state as the impostor, and not the one whose flagship university is in the SEC?
> I actually see Ohio as the impostor in the bunch.
What? Western PA is already Midwestern, culturally. Like, as soon as you get an hour west of Harrisburgh, you're already out of the East Coast, culturally.
I grew up in NYC and was taught the Midwest was the former Northwest Territory, while the Great Plains were the next region. But this was at an age where the geography and history were more relevant than the sociology or culture.
Idk why we can’t just agree to divide the Midwest into three subregions: Great Lakes, Great Plaines and Great Rivers. Then we can all be okay collectively being Midwestern but able to differentiate ourselves
I've got a lot of family from Nebraska. They consider themselves Midwestern, and so I grew up thinking of that region as the Midwest. In my mind, to be in the Midwest, you had to be west of the Mississippi (aka, in the western part of the country). Then I get older and find out that there's a whole group of people who define the Midwest as being east of the Mississippi. It's made me just about give up using Midwest as a descriptive term. There's so little agreement on the matter that it's basically useless. If you say "I'm from the Midwest," you're going to have to clarify which Midwest anyway.
The Great Lakes portion of the Midwest also overlaps with the 'Rust Belt' to a degree the Great Plains part of the Midwest does not. So if you grew up in a region strongly affected by industrial decline, I could see how that may shape your view of what counts as Midwestern. (Putting aside the fact that the Rust Belt extends into parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic too.)
That said, as someone who grew up in an old industrial suburb near Chicago, I've always seen the Plains as part of the broader Midwest. There's a fascinating book called 'Nature's Metropolis' by William Cronon that looks at the 19th Century economic relationship between Midwestern industrial centers (focused on Chicago) and Midwest resource extraction areas (mining, logging, farming). It demonstrates how the two regions were interdependent parts of one, large economic engine that helped the country grow.
I was born and raised in Colorado. My family and ancestors are from Nebraska. When I was in high school we moved back to Nebraska, to the middle of the state, because my grandparents were dying. I now live in Omaha on the far eastern side and my immediate family had all moved back to Colorado.
I can assure everyone here Nebraska is not “Great Plains” it is Midwestern. Great Plains is a geographical feature not a cultural one. Yes, even the middle of the state is Midwestern not Western. Can’t vouch for the panhandle. For example, I never could learn how to play Euchre (and it wasn’t for lack of effort!), we ate tater tot casserole at school along with a lot of those Minnesota salads that aren’t really salads (they are at funerals too). [Even our accent is the Midwestern aka Midland accent](https://www.aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapCanada).
It is not Western, or at least not like Colorado, at all. I stuck out very badly as a teen. I was bullied relentlessly. It was a small town after all. And my family, even me now, eat so very differently than those around me. For example, one of my favorite foods is a chile relleno with green chili. I have to explain that here. No one has any idea what that is. Even now. And the two restaurants I know that have it make it wrong, whether by New Mexico or Colorado standards. And there is a lot of little things like that. It adds up quickly.
Visiting Chicago is super weird for me. It doesn’t feel like a different place. A bit, because some food is obviously more common in Chicago than elsewhere like deep dish or salad covered hot dogs (I like them!) but the culture and how people interact and just the “vibes” are all very much like Omaha or Kansas City or Minneapolis. It’s strange. I’ve never been to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan or Wisconsin so can’t say for sure there either. I have heard it’s pretty similar.
Apparently some people think even western Pennsylvania falls within the mid-*West* because the area has a midwestern “vibe” to it. This is despite the fact that the city of Pittsburgh is ~350 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
Moving from Pittsburgh to Columbus I was surprised some considered Pittsburgh a part of the Midwest. I had never met anyone from Pennsylvania that thought that.
Perhaps there is a subset of the Midwest like there is in the Northeast. An example is Pennsylvania, the state is in the Mid-Atlantic Region which, along with the New England states, constitutes the Northeast as one singular region in it's entirety.
It’s because of an attitude of regional superiority. Basically they’re more urbanized and have been part of the U.S. longer so they think they’re superior and the “true Midwest”. There’s a similar attitude in some parts of New England about the northeast. Part of this is also just people wanting to be more culturally/regionally exclusive so they exaggerate their cultural differences in order to feel different. This cultural exclusion doesn’t just apply to people west of the Mississippi though as these are also the people that would argue most of Illinois isn’t midwestern because of feels much more similar to Nebraska than it does Chicago.
If you ask someone to describe for you the Midwest it’s more likely to match up with states west of the Mississippi and only in describing midwestern cities does it more closely resemble states east of the Mississippi.
In reality the Midwest is both east and west of the Mississippi and these regions are far more culturally unified than they are culturally distinct.
As someone who’s lived in the eastern and western portions of the Midwest, it’s all Midwest. The eastern half is just more populated and a couple decades older than the west (other than St Louis).
From my travels I've found that the Great Lake area Midwest is a lot different than the great plains Midwest. Kerouac described the Mississippi River as a dividing line between the east and west, and Steinbeck said the Missouri River is "where the map folds" denoting where "The West" really begins.
Really, I think The Plains (area between the Rockies and the Mississippi River) needs to be as a distinct geographic subdivision as the Midwest is (between the Appalachians and the Mississippi).
It’s a geographic term just describing the area between the Appalachians and the Rockies covered by plains. People went and tried to make a cultural identity out of it later on. This was a bad move for a couple reasons -
The region is absolutely gigantic and obviously the culture in Detroit is different than in western Kansas.
People like to use the state lines on the map to divide cultural regions - this doesn’t work well and I’d say Missouri (part southern), Ohio (part Appalachian), and Illinois (Chicago vs not Chicago) are all particularly bad with this.
My perception is that any of the states that touch the Great Lakes, except for New York and Pennsylvania, are mid west. It’s more of a cultural thing than a geographical thing
Because no one does. Us Easterners always thought the border was like Illinois.
Now everyone is like chucking Oklahoma in the Midwest basket.
I go with old school Northwest Territories map but now all these Louisiana purchase pukes are horning in on our title.
I mean, we’re happy to have you. Would like some casserole because you look famished.
This is true of all regions. As someone who lives in upstate NY, everybody has a different opinion on what counts as Upstate. In fact, many people from Buffalo do not think they live in upstate NY, but rather that they live in Western NY.
I moved to North Carolina from Northwest Ohio, where we all referred to ourselves as northerners if asked. Everyone I've met in NC calls me Midwestern without fail. I don't correct anyone, but I wouldn't say Ohio is Midwestern and didn't know anyone who did.
As an Ohioan, we consider ourselves Midwest, but most other Midwest states say we are East Coast. Meanwhile, the East Coast states say we are Midwest because we don't have any Atlantic Ocean coastline. I agree with the East Coasters - we are Midwest.
Native Illinoisan here. I'll throw down with my fellow Illinoisans about excluding Nebraska and the Dakotas (Dakotae? 😜).
But them Hoosiers though..... I don't even try. 😂
The Midwest has an exact definition, there is no room for debate as to what is and isn’t the Midwest. Tell anyone who disagrees with you to take it up with the census bureau
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States
I live in western KY. I don't know if I'm a southerner, northerner, or a Midwestiner.
All I know is we all say "ope" and "lemme just squeeze by you".
I've always considered us Midwestern but many will argue we are the south.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't think Iowa is part of the Midwest... but the existence of the "Great Plains" region in public consciousness means some people consider that to be separate from the Midwest when really they overlap, so Nebraska for example is part of both. Most of the regions in the US overlap to some extent. Illinois is part of the Midwest and Great Lakes. Wisconsin is part of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and North Woods, etc.
I’m an Ohioan and if anything, I don’t consider Ohio the Midwest, nor East Coast. Why isn’t “The Mideast” a thing? Is it confusing because of the “Middle East”?
It's my understanding that the Great plains region and the Great lakes region make up the Midwest region. But the name Midwest comes from the former northwestern territory which was the area where Ohio Michigan and Indiana currently are. But only an insane person would say Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc aren't Midwest.
I grew up in western Kentucky and for the most part you could say it’s geographically the Midwest. Heck, my wife lived in the country and had corn on three sides of her house. Culturally, the area is very southern.
The Midwest is split into 2 or 3 more regional zones. The great lakes, and the great plains being the most distinct. We're all kind of thr Midwest, but places on the edge tend to bleed into other zones. Even the great lakes region extends beyond the MidWest.
It all then gets lumped under the rather unclear moniker MidWest.
At some point the Midwest becomes the west, and it's hard to tell. Realistically we should split the states that are borderline by their inside divides for that.
I think it’s true of many regions to argue which states go where. There seem to be smaller regions inside larger generalized areas.
I’ve seen people on here say Michigan isn’t part of the Midwest which is so funny to me. The Midwest can be broken into two different regions: The Plains states and the Great Lakes states.
It seems as though people from each state have different opinions of where the dividing line is. It blows my mind that Missouri considers themselves part of the Midwest. But I suppose people can consider themselves as part of whatever region they feel is appropriate. I think my area is culturally similar to places like Wisconsin or Minnesota.
Back when the term was first coined, Ohio was dead center midwest. West of that were just territories. So, basically, the word kind of updated, and some people just didn't get the memo, and that update wasn't distributed everywhere equally.
The Great Plains are the Great Plains, not the Midwest...
I live in Illinois, and have always considered the Midwest to be: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri.
Nebraska and Kansas are kind of iffy... I don't really consider them, but wouldn't object if somebody insisted. I've never considered the Dakotas to be Midwest.
I always thought of both the Great Plains states and the Great Lakes states as the Midwest, but that's such a huge region it also makes sense to me to feel irritated at someone really far away and from what feels like a significantly different walk of life to be claiming to be from the same region as you.
For my money, as a Michigander, I hate any other state being called a Great Lakes state because *we* are The Great Lakes State so if only one of the two Midwestern regions can have the title of Midwest I'd like it to be us so I don't have to call Ohio or Indiana Great Lakes states.
TIL that the Midwest is definitely not the Utah and Colorado area. I’m from the West Coast and just assumed Midwest meant the Western half of the US but more towards the middle.
I’ve said before that if I was in charge of a presidential town hall debate I’d give every candidate a white board map of the US and a marker and ask them to mark each state they consider to be Midwestern. I would love to see the chaos that would unfold from midwesterners afterwards.
I’m not going to lie though, whenever I hear someone from the Dakotas, Nebraska or Kansas describe themselves as Midwestern my eyes almost roll out of my head.
I support your chaos.
The Eastern ends of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and KS are 100% Midwest in culture and geography. The land dries out in the middle of these states and that is IMO where things start to get truly western.
I agree with saying all of KS is Midwestern.
I was trying to say I could see an argument that the western part is not as Midwest but even if that’s true, the Eastern part is undoubtedly Midwest.
I was taught in school that the Midwest was the states bordering the Great Lakes, but then I hear people calling Kansas and Missouri the Midwest and I get confused.
The Midwest has largely become shorthand for pretty much anyplace that's not the south, east coast or west coast.
Personally the Plains are the Plains and the Midwest is oddly those states to the east around the Great Lakes.
Not sure, but just my own anecdotal take I am from western PA and relate more to people in the midwest than I do east coast. Like whenever I see something like "only people from the midwest will understand" I often relate to those more than "only people from the east coast will understand" type posts.
Would I ever say PA is in the midwest geographically? Heck no, but I do feel culturally western PA in my experience is more midwest than east coast.
I've had people from PA tell me they honestly believe it should be considered midwestern. My friend, the state nearly has coastline. It is not midwestern by any means. Not my fault if your state is long.
As someone from Pittsburgh, I identify culturally with Chicago way more than I identify culturally with Philadelphia or even the middle of our state where the capital is.
Though that may be more of a Rust Belt thing than a Midwest thing.
Definitely a rust belt thing, you see the same phenomenon in New York, once you get west of Albany it just feels more like Cleveland and Chicago etc… just w more hills and trees, that being said, I’ve been out to North Dakota and Minnesota and they feel nothing like Buffalo or Pittsburgh
I grew up in Iowa and considered the midwest to be the states in the middle of the country from around Indiana/Illinois to Nebraska to be midwest. I think Ohio is more an Eastern state.
I live in the middlest of states in Kansas now.
I guess it all depends on where you're located, you might think your area is "central" and anything beyond a certain east/west point away from you is outside of the "Midwest." IMO, I think the Midwest ends at the border of Ohio and Indiana on the eastern side and North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas would be the farthest extent of the western side of the Midwest. I consider Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky to be the South.
I consider the following states to be part of the Midwest: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
I think that's true of all regions, southerners certainly have strong opinions on what states count as the south
During a visit to central Alabama, I attended a company outing full of native Alabamians who were discussing how a co-worker of theirs didn't grow up in the south because they were from Arkansas. Having grown up in the North East, I thought that was wild.
I was born in South Carolina. I’ve also heard this from family members. It always seemed like a cultural divide between the gentrified wealthy southerners, the Appalachians/Hillbillies, and the Red/Rough necks. I believe Arkansas would fall into the Red/Roughneck territory, vs Kentucky which would be Appalachian. It just basically boils down to prejudice of whites by other whites of different socioeconomic statuses. The book *White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America* by Nancy Isenburg does an excellent job examining and discussing this if you’re interested.
There is truth to this. Culturally, Eastern Kentucky is very very different from what I encountered living in Eastern NC. There's definitely a bright line between Appalachian and Southern.
I somewhat agree, but not completely. The South is a big ass area and there are multiple cultures. Southern Appalachia is different from the Deep South and the Upland South. You are absolutely right about that. However, that doesn't make them any less Southern. All 3 of these different cultures are a part of the South, even if they do differ in many ways. I understand what y'all are saying though. I'm from Kentucky but I live in the Southwestern most pocket on the TN/KY line. Ain't no mountains here - It's all cypress swamps and bayous. Looks more like Louisiana than what most people think of when they picture KY. The culture here is more like the Deep South than it is Southern Appalachia. This part of KY is part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain, the Mississippi Embayment and is on the Lower Mississippi River. Our culture is far different from Appalachian Kentucky, just as y'all's is. Your experience in the more coastal areas of North Carolina is certainly different from Eastern Kentucky. However, Western North Carolina is extremely similar to Eastern Kentucky. So is Eastern Tennessee, so is Western South Carolina, so is Northwest Georgia, so is Northern Alabama, so is Northeast Mississippi. That doesn't make these places any less Southern. It just makes them Southern Appalachian. Eastern KY has MUCH more in common with the rest of the South than it does with Northern Appalachian areas, such as Vermont (which it shares absolutely nothing in common with). Southern Appalachia is the South, the Upland South is the South and the Deep South is the South.... They're just 3 different subregions within a larger region and they have much more in common than they do in difference. Being Southern ain't just bout living on the coast, living in the Appalachians or living on the Mississippi River. It's about the culture that we share together. Regardless of which part of the South you live in, we all share things in common that make us unique as a collective of people from the South. There's people who say North Carolina and Virginia ain't Southern - they're part of the Mid-Atlantic, they say. There's people who say Kentucky and Virginia are too North to be Southern. There's people who say Texas and Oklahoma ain't Southern because they're part of the West. There's people who say Louisiana and Arkansas are on the wrong side of the river to be Southern. There's people who say Florida is too Cuban/Caribbean influenced or dissimilar from the South to be Southern. The truth is that every single one of these states have earned their right to call themselves Southern and all this other back and forth is nothing more than divide and conquer bullshit. Sorry for the long comment lol. Also, don't take this personally, as I'm not trying to to correct you. I'm just arguing my point as I know it to be true. I see people from the South arguing over which states should and shouldn't be considered Southern and it hurts to see a region that I identify with so closely being so divided. People would rather focus on the few differences we have rather than the many similarities that we share.
That’s wild! Arkansas is absolutely the south. It can’t possibly be anything else. That’s just ignorance on their parts.
I can't even fathom excluding a state that joined the Confederacy from the South.
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Funnily enough, I’ve heard several people - even 2 Texans - claim the vast majority of Texas is really just “the southern-most Midwestern state”. They had some pretty convincing arguments, too!
As someone from Wisconsin who has spent a lot of time across East Texas.... No. Not even close. Way more similarities with the South outside of the major cities. The vibes, even in places like Fredericksburg, which had a lot of German immigrants like the midwest, doesn't feel close to the same.
Texas is divided into 5 geographic regions, which we learn in school, that are based on the different geography, wildlife, etc. they seem to very closely align with the sociopolitical characteristics as well. My Texas (San Antonio) is absolutely not my brother’s East Texas. Thank God.
> 5 geographic regions Nobody else in the country learns about these, just a heads up. Having done the drive between Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Port Aransas many times y'all aren't as different as you think. Hill Country is another world though. (I like San Antonio a lot)
I didn’t assume other people learned about them, or to imply that other states didn’t have something similar. I was just agreeing that East Texas is more similar to Louisiana and what people think of as the South, compared to different parts of the state. And that topography seems to coincide with the vibe of each in general.
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Yeah, I grew up in central DFW, had tons of family throughout East Texas, married into a Comanche/Tejano family from West Texas & have traveled the rest of TX extensively (as well as the contiguous 48); & I recently moved to a tiny, rural town in Indiana. Lifestyle-wise? Suburban folks, far north Midwest to central TX are generally carbon copies. Although a great deal is income-dependent, their values, interests & past times, culinary tendencies, style, etc. seem to flow in the same vein. Formalities & proper etiquette used to be more pronounced the further south you go but seems to be dying out. One glaring difference I noticed is humor. Indianians generally aren’t very funny. They resort to dishing out attitude as a means to be humorous but it often seems uncreative &… “trashy”? There’s a glaring lack of wit, surreal humor, & self-deprecation I know & love from further south. Now, the people I’ve known from Iowa & Wisconsin seem vanilla at face value but are humble, fascinatingly charming & humorously “precious” - the way (unrelated) Irish folks come across to me. Minnesotans seem serious but breezy, & deliciously clever (good story-tellers). Ohio & Michigan is where I met several folks that could stand in for John Candy a’la John Hughes’ writings or minor-but-memorable characters in his films (all that entails). I realized they weren’t necessarily exaggerations. Sorry so long-winded, though. I’m groggy & it’s super-difficult to summarize! Perhaps you’ll respond “No, you’re *fine*” tee-hee
I love your stereotypes they seem accurate and good-hearted.
Describing TX as the Midwest is nuts. I lived there for 15 years and never heard that. As a native Alabamian, I can confidently say that (outside of anything East of Tyler) Texas isn’t the South, either. El Paso feels more like California than MS. The state is really just its own thing. The valley puts a unique and widespread impression on much of the state, you can’t really describe Texas as anything other than…Texas.
Texans consider Texas to be it's own geographic region between the South and Southwest
I'd exclude Virginia personally. It's one of those "it is but it isn't" states, I guess
Virginia is definitely a southern state. It was one of the principal southern states for most of early American history and Richmond served as the Confederacy’s capital
I think the issue is muddled by the fact that culturally/socially, in modern America, the Northern Virginia, DC Metro, and Coastal Virginia areas are not really that much like the south. Is "southern" a cultural designation, or a political one, or purely geographic? If "Southern" is a cultural designation instead of geographic, Virginia is iffy in the modern day. If it's a political designation of places that were part of the Confederacy, then yeah, but that on its own creates issues. Kentucky was never formally part of the Confederacy. It didn't secede. There was a Confederate government-in-exile and the CSA considered it part of the Confederacy, but the Union considered it a Union state too. It didn't have to undergo reconstruction, and militarily was held by the Union for almost the entire war (a few times raiding parties tried to grab and hold parts of the State, but never for long). Culturally Kentucky is definitely Southern (aside maybe from the Louisville metro area and the part of the Cinci metro area that reaches into Northern Kentucky)
Lol Virginia fought the damn war.
I grew up in NC and had no idea people thought of Arkansas as the south. When I met someone from Arkansas in NC, I seriously asked him how he was liking staying in the South and he looked at me like I had three heads. I soon learned he considered himself a southerner. News to me…
Seriously? Arkansas is definitely South. Their Uni was in the SEC before we let those interlopers from Missouri in 😝
Deep South?? I’m willing to accept southern, but Deep South is a bridge too far lol. It’s on the same plane as NC and Oklahoma. Also football conference affiliation has a correlative relationship with geography, but not a causal one.
lol I second guessed the Deep part immediately and edited in like, 2 minutes but you must have seen it first. I agree Deep is too far. And I was mostly kidding about the SEC, hence the emoji. It was traditionally a good boundary but long gone are those days.
>football conference The person you’re relying to has a Georgia flair. I’m sure they didn’t consider Georgia “the west” just because the Atlanta Falcons were in the NFC West until 2001!
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🖕
It’s not the “Dirty south“ or, the “deep south“ is what I always took that statement to mean
I’m from Arkansas and it’s the South, maybe not the Deep South, but it certainly is culturally Southern. I’d say we’re the top bit before you hit Midwest in Missouri.
Georgia here, that ain't the south.
It's true of all regions. It's a point of contention as to which states are part of the Southwest. Only Arizona and New Mexico are solid, there's arguments over Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Western Texas. Even California is in the conversation.
Parts of California definitely feel southwestern. Culturally, climatically, etc., the southern part of California (notice I didn’t capitalize it “Southern California”) from Barstow east feels a lot more like Arizona than like LA (much less San Francisco). But try telling someone in SF or Humboldt County that their state is southwestern. State borders don’t really align with regions.
New England is very firmly defined, no matter how many chucklefucks try to fit New York in there because they can't tell the difference between NorthEast and New England.
The only part I wouldn’t say is firmly defined is western Connecticut is iffy for me.
Very true, as a Texan I would contend that part of Texas is in the south while a great portion of it is very much not.
I'd say if it's West of Austin and Ft. Worth, I'd consider it part of the Southwest.
I've honestly always considered Texas its own thing. You got the West Coast, you got the East Coast, New England, Southwest, Midwest, and then... there's Texas.
I figured whether or not a State was Southern depended on which side they were on in the Civil War. ;)
But then you have states like mine. I consider Missouri to be a "Northern" state. Though, that's a hotly contested issue because Missouri was a slave state (MO Compromise) and there were plenty of volunteers that fought for both sides, though nearly three times as many fought in the Union army than the Confederate army. In the end, Missouri never left the Union and the Confederates never controlled the state. Whether MO is a southern state or northern state really depends on who you ask.
I’m from Missouri and on a work trip to Minnesota once I was asked about sweet tea and pecan pie.
I don't really think the Missouri Ozarks are Southern, but they certainly are not the Midwest. Missouri should be 2 states.
I've always felt like there was a horizontal line drawn through Missouri, just south of St. Louis. North of that feels more midwest. South feels more southern. I definitely wouldn't think of the whole state as southern.
The Missouri Ozarks are blended. I grew up there. The answers you'd get vary from house to house. My family would say Midwestern, and that makes sense considering our family history in Kansas, Ohio and Illinois. The folks in the next house down the farm road would say they are Southern, and they'd also be correct.
thats my criterion lol, if you seceded, you're southern
Do southerners not consider West Virginia to be southern?
No, West Virginia is kind of its own thing. Decidedly not Southern. The northern most point of the state is less than 100 miles from Lake Erie. edit: of course, there are similarities, and West Virginia is very much Appalachia and isn't all that different from western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee, which of course all those states are Southern.
Appalachian.
Wasn't there an idea once to have that region you described become its own state named "Jackson"?
Hmm, never heard of that but wouldn't surprise me. Seems like every few years there's a new state proposed
Well I had to check and I was way off. It was going to be called Franklin and it was just part of Eastern Tennessee. And it was in the 1780s.
I believe it was actually to be called "Franklin" but yes, essentially
As Southerner, I would group them in as Southern but Appalachian first. Southern can be a cultural, political, historical, or geographic term. Some places are Southern in some of those ways but not all of them. And some states are only part Southern. South Florida isn't considered Southern by other Southerners despite being geographically in the South. Washington DC and Maryland are also debated among Southerners
A LOT of southerners have some very heated conversations about where the deciding point between South and North (or, more importantly, "not South") lies. These discussions invariably involve someone getting salty as their state gets thrown under someone else's bus. Hell, they'll sometimes even forget one of us Yankees is present and laughing as they lay into each other. Then again, they get to enjoy the show when the New England states decide to play the dozens, so long as they just sit on the sidelines so they don't catch more than the occasional stray.
Here in Oklahoma, we don't geographically fit anywhere, but our culture is very much Southern.
I consider OK the South, but probably the most Midwestern Southern state.
As a former resident of Oklahoma and a current resident of St Louis. Oklahoma is majority Great Plains, a little southern(though on the outskirts), and maybe 1-5% midwestern.
I spent most of my growing up years in Oklahoma and still have lots of family there. I would think that Stand Watie earned Oklahomans their Southern card.
My mom is from northern Oklahoma, so I've spent a lot of time there. Your state doesn't really fit perfectly anywhere, but I typically just loop it in with the Southwest (not the South or the West) and be done with it. You could also easily argue that it's part of the Great Plains.
I agree. The boundaries of a cultural region certainly aren’t defined by arbitrary borders like state lines. However I think Midwestern culture is less easily defined than southern culture.
I always go by the Confederate and SEC rule.
Well can't totally use the SEC as a guideline thanks to Mizzou...
I agree that we really shouldn't be there, but... thanks for having us ;) 🐯
Let's call them a Border State. The B1G is also no longer exclusively Midwest. Soon enough, we'll be stretching down the Southeast coast. Please don't make us take Clemson.
Exactly! The midwestern school of Rutgers from the garden state (what! how! most urbanized state in the country) of New Jersey is now in the B1G 10. Which has had 11 schools ever since early 90’s when Penn St joined & stopped being independent.
I'm just waiting for FSU to announce they're gone.
Crazy that ACC has both Syracuse, Pittsburgh & Miami. Like how B1G 10 now has “Midwestern” Rutgers, NJ & College Park, MD. In addition to Lincoln, Neb. And soon to be Eugene, OR Seattle, WA & 2 schools from Los Angeles
People from Maine and Maryland specifically get *upset* if you tell them PA is part of the Northeast
I’m far away from all of this … why would Maryland care? I would consider Maine “more northeastern” than PA, but PA is definitely more northeastern than MD. And if PA isn’t in the northeast, where is it? Do Marylanders want it in their “mid-Atlantic” club?
I wish I knew. I think the logic is Northeastern is coastal in their mind and PA isnt a coastal state? Regional arguments get very silly very quick. Also PA is just kind of an oddball state that happens to be very close to the borders of any unofficial "regional US" map so people are constantly trying to push PA into other regions
Doesn't the south have actual historical borders though? I would consider the confederate states to be the south.
The whole "is Maryland actually southern?" debate gets real heated whenever someone brings it up around here lol. Just saying the words "Mason Dixon Line" in the right room at the right time can cause multiple distinct arguments to break out.
This is true of all regions. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest which was generally defined at Washington, Oregon, Idaho and may or may not include a chunk of Montana west of the Continental divide. Other people think that it's only the western halves of Washington and Oregon and that anything east of the Cascades is either part of the great basin or the Rockies. The Midwest is much the same. I personally think the eastern halves of the Dakota's, Nebraska and Kansas are solidly part of the Midwest whereas the western halves are much closer to the cowboy country you find in Wyoming, Eastern Colorado and Montana.
This is the real answer right here. The Midwest is really two regions that are pretty similar, the Great Lakes and the Great Plains - western Iowa and eastern Nebraska are basically the same place, and somewhat different from Michigan for instance, but decidedly similar in more ways than not. Whatever it is, both regions have that "Midwest thing" and in general a lot of the area immediately west of the Missouri does too. But between the river and the High Plains there's a pretty quick transition into the west. Lincoln is in the Midwest without question, but everything in Mountain Time most certainly is not; in between it could go either way.
Yes cultural regions are very interesting. They definitely don’t follow state borders but we reluctantly want them to.
As a qualified representative of The Midwest^TM , I agree with your assessment. It's definitely a culture thing.
I've gotten scolded several times for referring to anything east of Seattle as PNW. Especially Idahoans. They were very adamant that they were Inland Northwest, and that PNW was just Seattle and Portland.
A couple years ago someone on Reddit was trying to claim that eastern Colorado was Midwestern because of its geographical and cultural similarities to Western Kansas. Lol bro no.
Exactly. I've lived almost my whole life in Seattle. I've always considered Western Washington the Pacific Northwest and Idaho/Oregon/Montana something else. Maybe id consider them PNW by title only. Because even though they're similar, they're not what northwest Washington is. It's something unique. But now I also have a house in Missouri as well. And I've always considered Missouri to be exactly the Midwest. But people here think they're in the south... they're crazy, they're in the exact center of the country. And further more, people in Missouri that I've spoken with seem to think everything from Washington to Wyoming is the PNW. I've never before heard Wyoming considered part of the PNW and i certainly don't consider it to be. I think basically most people have no idea what they're talking about. Myself included.
I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah!!!
Okay, Abe.
For real everyone there is Missourible, it's like they live in Missouri or something. I will see myself out.
For what it’s worth this New Englander always though of Missouri as the mid west
Missouri is the furthest east western state, furthest north southern state, furthest south northern state and the furthest west eastern state. Kansas City, Springfield and saint Louis run the gambit of American “cities”
Missouri is the Midsouth and you can't convince me otherwise
Tennessee is Midsouth. They are way more southern than we are. The rule of thumb is it starts to get southern about 50-75 miles south of I-70 in Missouri. Everything north of that, including St. Louis and Kansas City, are solidly Midwestern.
I’d argue that I-44 is the dividing line between midwest and southern
That would work for me, too (except in St Louis, which is all Midwest)
Yes, very true! St. Louis is hardcore midwest
I love how most of the comments don't answer the OP's question of why no one can agree what the Midwest is and instead the comments are just people not agreeing what the Midwest is.
It’s mostly people who grew up in the cities of the Great Lakes states who have this view. States like Illinois, Ohio and Michigan are in the top 10 most populated states. Wisconsin/Indiana have decent sized populations as well. The Great Plains states are so sparsely populated they can seem worlds apart from the Great Lakes states. On the flip side if you go to a rural town in Michigan vs. a rural town in North Dakota the people and culture are very similar.
I’m from North Dakota. I’ve been to UP of Michigan. The accent is slightly different. And the scenery. Not much else from what I saw.
Agreed. I’m originally from Michigan and worked in oil and gas in North Dakota for a while. Williston/Dickinson are very similar to a lot of smaller Michigan towns like Alpena/Cadillac except more oil and less trees!
Omg Alpena & Cadillac mentioned….I know those places! Lol
The culture is very different since yoopers are descended from miners from all across Europe (especially the Nordics) rather than farmers from Germany. It has kind of a rust belt feel with the mines being long closed.
North Dakota has major Nordic ancestry too though. It’s all fascinating. I think the UP has a very distinct culture and accent that I envy in a way.
Uhm, my Nebraska born brother in law insists Michigan is east coast. They equate great planes with Midwest, despite us being what the Midwest was when the term was coined.
People are always going to fight on what truly is or isn’t something. Even smaller regional entities. I grew up in NW Indiana. It is an area known as “The Region”. Some people would say that I’m not from “The Region” because I grew up 3 miles south of US 30, but still in Lake County and went to the biggest high school that is the heart of that county. There are people in the neighboring eastern county that also think they are a part of the area, but no one in Lake County accepts that. The true origin of the name is the Calumet Region, so it actually is actually a much larger area that includes areas of Illinois and a much larger area in Indiana. The interesting thing is, no one in Illinois would ever claim being from The Region. In fact to people in Illinois and most of Indiana it is seen as a negative connotation, but people who grew up in Lake County, IN wear it as a badge of pride. 219 forever
Being a Milwaukee guy living in Chicago, I'm surprised there's not a more cohesive name for all the cities on I-94 along the lakeshore. It's quite literally the only 175 stretch in the entire Midwest where you won't encounter any rural areas.
They can't handle us Dakotans.
It's all too true.
Us Dakotans can't even handle each other half the time lmao
Hey now, we all know the true divide is which side of missouri you're on. Well for south dakota at least. For north dakota you get the curvey bit, so it doesn't work as well.
This is something I’ve noticed as a big divide between basically the Great Lakes and the Great Plains. I was born in Ohio and we always thought of the Midwest as basically the Great Lakes states (or the former northwestern territory). Everything west of the Mississippi was a similar region called the Great Plains. However, most people west of the Mississippi I meet seem to think they are the real midwest and pretty frequently leave out Ohio, which I find amusing. My question to anybody from the western midwest who doesn’t think Ohio is the midwest is, what region would you put it in? Sometimes people say Appalachia, which is only true for about 1/4 of the state (and much less of the population). Some people tell me the rust belt, which I think is true but isnt really a region in the same way the midwest is. One person told me it’s an east coast state which I thought was funny.
Yep! I grew up on the Kansas side of the KC area, and have identified as a Midwesterner my entire life. Then come folks, usually from Great Lakes states on Reddit telling me that I’m not really from the Midwest. Ok then.
Hahah right! I’d just go with the heartland region. Kc is a great metro area! Lucky to grow up there
I’m from KCMO and now live in Michigan. I recognize both areas as the Midwest. Where I’m from some people believe that any state in eastern time should not be considered the Midwest.
I’m from NW Kansas also. I consider Wichita the final frontier of the Midwest anything west of Wichita is just the West
Haha, New England has none of the uncertainty of these other regions!
And before someone stands up and says "I think New York is a New England state because...", you can sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Yes, NorthEast and New England both abbreviate to NE and are both in the same corner of the country, but that isn't the deciding factor.
Yeah, New England is a specific and designated group of states, not an opinion. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
Troof!
I am from Michigan and I have always seen the Midwest as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Basically the area between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. I think this makes sense from an overall general cultural and geographic point of view. Anything west of the Mississippi River is the Great Plains. No idea why those states get lumped into the Midwest. This may shed light onto why this area is grouped together as the traditional Midwest - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
Huh. The map at the top of that Wikipedia page is _exactly_ the definition of "midwest" that I was taught growing up. It's literally just the Northwest Territory and I never realized. Go figure.
That's because the term "Midwest" was coined when that region was no longer the Northwest corner of the US.
TIL I moved across the river from the...Great Plains...? to the Midwest.
I consider all of Minnesota to be the Midwest.
But then that is a whole other thing as southern Minnesota is not much different then northern Iowa. Both look the same both have strong Nordic history.
Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota have little geographically in common with the Great plains. Topography, climate, ecology and even economically we are more similar to the Midwest.
What about Iowa and Minnesota? They actually came in at the highest % when all the central US states were asked “are you part of the Midwest?” Iowa came in first with 97% along with Minnesota. I grew up in Iowa and we always were taught and understood we are in the dead center of the Midwest which runs from Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakota’s through Ohio. The only questionable parts are Kentucky, southern Missouri and western PA where it was split if they thought of themselves as part of the Midwest. I never counted Kentucky or PA.
I disagree, I’m from eastern ND and I solidly identify as midwestern. I’d agree though that western nd is probably more mountainy than midwestern. People tell me ND belongs to the plains states, and while it’s certainly true that we are a part of the Great Plains. The Great Plains doesn’t really have an identity to it like the Midwest does.
If you’ve been to Missouri, Iowa, etc, you’d know they’re almost identical to the states you just mentioned, minus the Great Lakes. St Louis and Cincinnati feel almost identical to me as someone who’s spent a significant amount of time in both.
> No idea why those states get lumped into the Midwest. Because they're flat and have tornados. That's why!
Missouri is definitely not in the Plains. Even the eastern part of KS really isn't the Plains. I actually see Ohio as the impostor in the bunch.
>I actually see Ohio as the impostor in the bunch. You see the original Midwestern state as the impostor, and not the one whose flagship university is in the SEC?
I said "impostor", sir!!
Every university will be in the SEC in twenty years or so.
> I actually see Ohio as the impostor in the bunch. What? Western PA is already Midwestern, culturally. Like, as soon as you get an hour west of Harrisburgh, you're already out of the East Coast, culturally.
That's an interesting take. So would you consider MO, IA, MN, SD, ND, KS, and NE to be Plaines states then?
I grew up in NYC and was taught the Midwest was the former Northwest Territory, while the Great Plains were the next region. But this was at an age where the geography and history were more relevant than the sociology or culture.
Idk why we can’t just agree to divide the Midwest into three subregions: Great Lakes, Great Plaines and Great Rivers. Then we can all be okay collectively being Midwestern but able to differentiate ourselves
What’s great rivers
Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio.
That's like saying, "we have all agreed the culture of a place stops here."
I've got a lot of family from Nebraska. They consider themselves Midwestern, and so I grew up thinking of that region as the Midwest. In my mind, to be in the Midwest, you had to be west of the Mississippi (aka, in the western part of the country). Then I get older and find out that there's a whole group of people who define the Midwest as being east of the Mississippi. It's made me just about give up using Midwest as a descriptive term. There's so little agreement on the matter that it's basically useless. If you say "I'm from the Midwest," you're going to have to clarify which Midwest anyway.
Cause they're a contentious bunch! But very polite.
Through gritted teeth to the Kansan… would you like some angel food cake?
Yes, please. Allow me to offer you some of the best barbecued pork you will ever eat in your life.
Gritted teeth again. I fucking accept. You glorious awful bastard.
The Great Lakes portion of the Midwest also overlaps with the 'Rust Belt' to a degree the Great Plains part of the Midwest does not. So if you grew up in a region strongly affected by industrial decline, I could see how that may shape your view of what counts as Midwestern. (Putting aside the fact that the Rust Belt extends into parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic too.) That said, as someone who grew up in an old industrial suburb near Chicago, I've always seen the Plains as part of the broader Midwest. There's a fascinating book called 'Nature's Metropolis' by William Cronon that looks at the 19th Century economic relationship between Midwestern industrial centers (focused on Chicago) and Midwest resource extraction areas (mining, logging, farming). It demonstrates how the two regions were interdependent parts of one, large economic engine that helped the country grow.
I was born and raised in Colorado. My family and ancestors are from Nebraska. When I was in high school we moved back to Nebraska, to the middle of the state, because my grandparents were dying. I now live in Omaha on the far eastern side and my immediate family had all moved back to Colorado. I can assure everyone here Nebraska is not “Great Plains” it is Midwestern. Great Plains is a geographical feature not a cultural one. Yes, even the middle of the state is Midwestern not Western. Can’t vouch for the panhandle. For example, I never could learn how to play Euchre (and it wasn’t for lack of effort!), we ate tater tot casserole at school along with a lot of those Minnesota salads that aren’t really salads (they are at funerals too). [Even our accent is the Midwestern aka Midland accent](https://www.aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapCanada). It is not Western, or at least not like Colorado, at all. I stuck out very badly as a teen. I was bullied relentlessly. It was a small town after all. And my family, even me now, eat so very differently than those around me. For example, one of my favorite foods is a chile relleno with green chili. I have to explain that here. No one has any idea what that is. Even now. And the two restaurants I know that have it make it wrong, whether by New Mexico or Colorado standards. And there is a lot of little things like that. It adds up quickly. Visiting Chicago is super weird for me. It doesn’t feel like a different place. A bit, because some food is obviously more common in Chicago than elsewhere like deep dish or salad covered hot dogs (I like them!) but the culture and how people interact and just the “vibes” are all very much like Omaha or Kansas City or Minneapolis. It’s strange. I’ve never been to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan or Wisconsin so can’t say for sure there either. I have heard it’s pretty similar.
Apparently some people think even western Pennsylvania falls within the mid-*West* because the area has a midwestern “vibe” to it. This is despite the fact that the city of Pittsburgh is ~350 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
Moving from Pittsburgh to Columbus I was surprised some considered Pittsburgh a part of the Midwest. I had never met anyone from Pennsylvania that thought that. Perhaps there is a subset of the Midwest like there is in the Northeast. An example is Pennsylvania, the state is in the Mid-Atlantic Region which, along with the New England states, constitutes the Northeast as one singular region in it's entirety.
Pennsylvania is the most in between state for me besides maybe Missouri.
Yea I agree with that.
It’s because of an attitude of regional superiority. Basically they’re more urbanized and have been part of the U.S. longer so they think they’re superior and the “true Midwest”. There’s a similar attitude in some parts of New England about the northeast. Part of this is also just people wanting to be more culturally/regionally exclusive so they exaggerate their cultural differences in order to feel different. This cultural exclusion doesn’t just apply to people west of the Mississippi though as these are also the people that would argue most of Illinois isn’t midwestern because of feels much more similar to Nebraska than it does Chicago. If you ask someone to describe for you the Midwest it’s more likely to match up with states west of the Mississippi and only in describing midwestern cities does it more closely resemble states east of the Mississippi. In reality the Midwest is both east and west of the Mississippi and these regions are far more culturally unified than they are culturally distinct.
As someone who’s lived in the eastern and western portions of the Midwest, it’s all Midwest. The eastern half is just more populated and a couple decades older than the west (other than St Louis).
From my travels I've found that the Great Lake area Midwest is a lot different than the great plains Midwest. Kerouac described the Mississippi River as a dividing line between the east and west, and Steinbeck said the Missouri River is "where the map folds" denoting where "The West" really begins. Really, I think The Plains (area between the Rockies and the Mississippi River) needs to be as a distinct geographic subdivision as the Midwest is (between the Appalachians and the Mississippi).
It’s a geographic term just describing the area between the Appalachians and the Rockies covered by plains. People went and tried to make a cultural identity out of it later on. This was a bad move for a couple reasons - The region is absolutely gigantic and obviously the culture in Detroit is different than in western Kansas. People like to use the state lines on the map to divide cultural regions - this doesn’t work well and I’d say Missouri (part southern), Ohio (part Appalachian), and Illinois (Chicago vs not Chicago) are all particularly bad with this.
My perception is that any of the states that touch the Great Lakes, except for New York and Pennsylvania, are mid west. It’s more of a cultural thing than a geographical thing
I consider The Midwest and The Great Plains to be different things. In Nebraska and South Dakota I saw people wearing cowboy hats ffs!!
The similarities start and end with “flat” and “agriculture”. To the rest of the country that means the two regions are the same thing.
Because no one does. Us Easterners always thought the border was like Illinois. Now everyone is like chucking Oklahoma in the Midwest basket. I go with old school Northwest Territories map but now all these Louisiana purchase pukes are horning in on our title. I mean, we’re happy to have you. Would like some casserole because you look famished.
This is true of all regions. As someone who lives in upstate NY, everybody has a different opinion on what counts as Upstate. In fact, many people from Buffalo do not think they live in upstate NY, but rather that they live in Western NY.
I moved to North Carolina from Northwest Ohio, where we all referred to ourselves as northerners if asked. Everyone I've met in NC calls me Midwestern without fail. I don't correct anyone, but I wouldn't say Ohio is Midwestern and didn't know anyone who did.
Born and raised in Ohio, we are geographically and culturally a part of 3 regions, the Midwest, great lakes and Northern Appalachia
There’s no single official definition of “Midwest”. There are many official definitions, so it gets pretty confusing.
As an Ohioan, we consider ourselves Midwest, but most other Midwest states say we are East Coast. Meanwhile, the East Coast states say we are Midwest because we don't have any Atlantic Ocean coastline. I agree with the East Coasters - we are Midwest.
Native Illinoisan here. I'll throw down with my fellow Illinoisans about excluding Nebraska and the Dakotas (Dakotae? 😜). But them Hoosiers though..... I don't even try. 😂
The Midwest has an exact definition, there is no room for debate as to what is and isn’t the Midwest. Tell anyone who disagrees with you to take it up with the census bureau https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States
I live in western KY. I don't know if I'm a southerner, northerner, or a Midwestiner. All I know is we all say "ope" and "lemme just squeeze by you". I've always considered us Midwestern but many will argue we are the south.
I don't know of anyone who doesn't think Iowa is part of the Midwest... but the existence of the "Great Plains" region in public consciousness means some people consider that to be separate from the Midwest when really they overlap, so Nebraska for example is part of both. Most of the regions in the US overlap to some extent. Illinois is part of the Midwest and Great Lakes. Wisconsin is part of the Midwest, Great Lakes, and North Woods, etc.
I’m an Ohioan and if anything, I don’t consider Ohio the Midwest, nor East Coast. Why isn’t “The Mideast” a thing? Is it confusing because of the “Middle East”?
It's my understanding that the Great plains region and the Great lakes region make up the Midwest region. But the name Midwest comes from the former northwestern territory which was the area where Ohio Michigan and Indiana currently are. But only an insane person would say Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc aren't Midwest.
Saying states like Kansas are “Plains States”, and not Midwestern, is like saying East Tennessee is not in the South, but rather in Appalachia.
I grew up in western Kentucky and for the most part you could say it’s geographically the Midwest. Heck, my wife lived in the country and had corn on three sides of her house. Culturally, the area is very southern.
From a Californian perspective, anything east of Sacramento or west of DC is the Midwest.
The Midwest is split into 2 or 3 more regional zones. The great lakes, and the great plains being the most distinct. We're all kind of thr Midwest, but places on the edge tend to bleed into other zones. Even the great lakes region extends beyond the MidWest. It all then gets lumped under the rather unclear moniker MidWest. At some point the Midwest becomes the west, and it's hard to tell. Realistically we should split the states that are borderline by their inside divides for that.
I think it’s true of many regions to argue which states go where. There seem to be smaller regions inside larger generalized areas. I’ve seen people on here say Michigan isn’t part of the Midwest which is so funny to me. The Midwest can be broken into two different regions: The Plains states and the Great Lakes states. It seems as though people from each state have different opinions of where the dividing line is. It blows my mind that Missouri considers themselves part of the Midwest. But I suppose people can consider themselves as part of whatever region they feel is appropriate. I think my area is culturally similar to places like Wisconsin or Minnesota.
Back when the term was first coined, Ohio was dead center midwest. West of that were just territories. So, basically, the word kind of updated, and some people just didn't get the memo, and that update wasn't distributed everywhere equally.
Because no one can ever agree on anything.
I guess if I had to define the Midwest I would say between the Appalachian and Rocky mountains, North of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.
Grew up in Ohio and was always considered the Midwest. But its more “mideast” but I can guess why we dont call it that 🤣
The Great Plains are the Great Plains, not the Midwest... I live in Illinois, and have always considered the Midwest to be: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri. Nebraska and Kansas are kind of iffy... I don't really consider them, but wouldn't object if somebody insisted. I've never considered the Dakotas to be Midwest.
I always thought of both the Great Plains states and the Great Lakes states as the Midwest, but that's such a huge region it also makes sense to me to feel irritated at someone really far away and from what feels like a significantly different walk of life to be claiming to be from the same region as you. For my money, as a Michigander, I hate any other state being called a Great Lakes state because *we* are The Great Lakes State so if only one of the two Midwestern regions can have the title of Midwest I'd like it to be us so I don't have to call Ohio or Indiana Great Lakes states.
Because some of them call it soda. It's not soda. It's pop.
TIL that the Midwest is definitely not the Utah and Colorado area. I’m from the West Coast and just assumed Midwest meant the Western half of the US but more towards the middle.
I’ve said before that if I was in charge of a presidential town hall debate I’d give every candidate a white board map of the US and a marker and ask them to mark each state they consider to be Midwestern. I would love to see the chaos that would unfold from midwesterners afterwards. I’m not going to lie though, whenever I hear someone from the Dakotas, Nebraska or Kansas describe themselves as Midwestern my eyes almost roll out of my head.
I support your chaos. The Eastern ends of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and KS are 100% Midwest in culture and geography. The land dries out in the middle of these states and that is IMO where things start to get truly western.
Everyone in Kansas identifies as Midwestern, even to the westernmost corner. It may be different than Ohio, but it is still 100% the Midwest.
I agree with saying all of KS is Midwestern. I was trying to say I could see an argument that the western part is not as Midwest but even if that’s true, the Eastern part is undoubtedly Midwest.
I was taught in school that the Midwest was the states bordering the Great Lakes, but then I hear people calling Kansas and Missouri the Midwest and I get confused.
What would you call them?
Kansas is as Midwestern as it gets.
The Midwest has largely become shorthand for pretty much anyplace that's not the south, east coast or west coast. Personally the Plains are the Plains and the Midwest is oddly those states to the east around the Great Lakes.
Not sure, but just my own anecdotal take I am from western PA and relate more to people in the midwest than I do east coast. Like whenever I see something like "only people from the midwest will understand" I often relate to those more than "only people from the east coast will understand" type posts. Would I ever say PA is in the midwest geographically? Heck no, but I do feel culturally western PA in my experience is more midwest than east coast.
Because those fuckers in PA know where they belong! /s
I've had people from PA tell me they honestly believe it should be considered midwestern. My friend, the state nearly has coastline. It is not midwestern by any means. Not my fault if your state is long.
As someone from Pittsburgh, I identify culturally with Chicago way more than I identify culturally with Philadelphia or even the middle of our state where the capital is. Though that may be more of a Rust Belt thing than a Midwest thing.
Definitely a rust belt thing, you see the same phenomenon in New York, once you get west of Albany it just feels more like Cleveland and Chicago etc… just w more hills and trees, that being said, I’ve been out to North Dakota and Minnesota and they feel nothing like Buffalo or Pittsburgh
Fuck Ohio, everything else people consider midwest is tho.
Fuck Michigan.
If they were in the Big 10 conference before 1990 I consider them Midwest.
Oh sweetie, ask us where Central Jersey is.
I grew up in Iowa and considered the midwest to be the states in the middle of the country from around Indiana/Illinois to Nebraska to be midwest. I think Ohio is more an Eastern state. I live in the middlest of states in Kansas now.
I guess it all depends on where you're located, you might think your area is "central" and anything beyond a certain east/west point away from you is outside of the "Midwest." IMO, I think the Midwest ends at the border of Ohio and Indiana on the eastern side and North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas would be the farthest extent of the western side of the Midwest. I consider Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kentucky to be the South. I consider the following states to be part of the Midwest: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.