Oh, those silly geographers.....

Half Fast

Half Fast

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Half Fast
As I mentioned in another thread, SWMBO and I are nearing the end of a month-long road trip through some of the western states. We've touched Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, etc., and I became a bit curious about some of the demographics of the west so I did a little googling.

Well, then. It seems there's disagreement about just what constitutes "the West."

Now when I was a boy being raised in Florida, I was pretty sure the West began just a little ways past Pensacola. As the years went by, I got a little book learnin' and I seem to recall from a geography lesson or two that the West was comprised of those states west of the Mississippi River. This sorta made a little sense to me, considering things like the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, so-called "manifest destiny," etc., etc.

But now it seems the West has been defined by the US Census Bureau as comprising Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

1725503302037.png​

Hmm. Hawaii? Hawaii?! I guess that explains all those ladies dancing the hula while wearing pointy-toed western boots and cowgirl hats. Yippe ki yo kalua.

But even more interesting is the states that are NOT part of the American West anymore. It appears Texas is not a western state. Don't tell the Dallas Cowboys. And apparently Tonto and the Lone Ranger weren't really chasing bad guys in the old west. Arkansas isn't in the west, either, so when Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn set out from Yell County, AR after Tom Chaney, the movie wasn't really a western. Other notable absent states include Oklahoma, Kansas (Dodge City and Boot Hill, remember?), and the Dakotas.

Matt Dillon must be rolling in his grave to learn that Gunsmoke wasn't a western after all.....

The silliness of the USG knows no bounds (pun intended).
 
A lifetime ago this Kansas boy was visiting relatives in Indiana and Ohio and got a confused look on his face when they mentioned living in the mid-west. To me, anything east of the Mississippi is "east".
 
Matthew said:
A lifetime ago this Kansas boy was visiting relatives in Indiana and Ohio and got a confused look on his face when they mentioned living in the mid-west. To me, anything east of the Mississippi is "east".
Click to expand...

Apparently, Kansas is now in the midwest, according to the USG.....
 
As a Florida boy, I always figured the west coast referred to the Gulf of Mexico.
 
Half Fast said:
Apparently, Kansas is now in the midwest, according to the USG.....
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As far as I've always been concerned, it's always been "midwest". I didn't realize there's an official definition.

But to your other point, Dodge City is in western KS, so it's probably OK to consider it "west".
 
I certainly consider ND west of the Missouri River as the West as well as western TX, OK, and NE.
 
Matthew said:
As far as I've always been concerned, it's always been "midwest". I didn't realize there's an official definition.

But to your other point, Dodge City is in western KS, so it's probably OK to consider it "west".
Click to expand...

The definition seems to change depending upon who you ask and when, which was kinda the point.
 
Clip4 said:
I certainly consider ND west of the Missouri River as the West as well as western TX, OK, and NE.
Click to expand...

You and I are in agreement, which sets us at odds with the census bureau.
 
Just from looking at the map, Texas, Oklahoma and so on are clearly "The Middle".
 
Half Fast said:
As I mentioned in another thread, SWMBO and I are nearing the end of a month-long road trip through some of the western states. We've touched Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, etc., and I became a bit curious about some of the demographics of the west so I did a little googling.

Well, then. It seems there's disagreement about just what constitutes "the West."

Now when I was a boy being raised in Florida, I was pretty sure the West began just a little ways past Pensacola. As the years went by, I got a little book learnin' and I seem to recall from a geography lesson or two that the West was comprised of those states west of the Mississippi River. This sorta made a little sense to me, considering things like the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, so-called "manifest destiny," etc., etc.

But now it seems the West has been defined by the US Census Bureau as comprising Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.


Hmm. Hawaii? Hawaii?! I guess that explains all those ladies dancing the hula while wearing pointy-toed western boots and cowgirl hats. Yippe ki yo kalua.

But even more interesting is the states that are NOT part of the American West anymore. It appears Texas is not a western state. Don't tell the Dallas Cowboys. And apparently Tonto and the Lone Ranger weren't really chasing bad guys in the old west. Arkansas isn't in the west, either, so when Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn set out from Yell County, AR after Tom Chaney, the movie wasn't really a western. Other notable absent states include Oklahoma, Kansas (Dodge City and Boot Hill, remember?), and the Dakotas.

Matt Dillon must be rolling in his grave to learn that Gunsmoke wasn't a western after all.....

The silliness of the USG knows no bounds (pun intended).
Click to expand...
What would Horace say?
 
Half Fast said:
As I mentioned in another thread, SWMBO and I are nearing the end of a month-long road trip through some of the western states. We've touched Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, etc., and I became a bit curious about some of the demographics of the west so I did a little googling.

Well, then. It seems there's disagreement about just what constitutes "the West."

Now when I was a boy being raised in Florida, I was pretty sure the West began just a little ways past Pensacola. As the years went by, I got a little book learnin' and I seem to recall from a geography lesson or two that the West was comprised of those states west of the Mississippi River. This sorta made a little sense to me, considering things like the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, so-called "manifest destiny," etc., etc.

But now it seems the West has been defined by the US Census Bureau as comprising Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.


Hmm. Hawaii? Hawaii?! I guess that explains all those ladies dancing the hula while wearing pointy-toed western boots and cowgirl hats. Yippe ki yo kalua.

But even more interesting is the states that are NOT part of the American West anymore. It appears Texas is not a western state. Don't tell the Dallas Cowboys. And apparently Tonto and the Lone Ranger weren't really chasing bad guys in the old west. Arkansas isn't in the west, either, so when Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn set out from Yell County, AR after Tom Chaney, the movie wasn't really a western. Other notable absent states include Oklahoma, Kansas (Dodge City and Boot Hill, remember?), and the Dakotas.

Matt Dillon must be rolling in his grave to learn that Gunsmoke wasn't a western after all.....

The silliness of the USG knows no bounds (pun intended).
Click to expand...
You may be confusing geographers with demographers.
 
subjective vs objective

the only definition of West that I can think of that would be objective, with regards to the U.S. is this
A line of longitude that intersects a point = (distance from the Atlantic to the Pacific)/2​
or maybe more precisely it's a zig-zag line defined by such a midpoint as measured at each line of latitude?​
...anyway, regardless....​
Anything West of that line in West​
Anything East of that line is East​
.....and I suppose anything ON that line is midwest.(??)​
​
Seriously though...as someone who was born in CA, and moved around a lot as a young military bratt kid including a 5 year period living on the banks of the Mississippi, and then pretty much grew up from high school onward on the East coast, I've always considered the Mississippi as the dividing line between West and East
and I've always thought of the term midwest as being more of a fuzzy undefinable and generalized subclassification being the area of some undefined distance on either side of the Mississippi
 
Ever since moving to the Midwest, Iowa, I've always been confused how the Mid extends from the Dakotas to Ohio? Iowa makes sense, we are almost as mid as it gets. Maybe east of the MS River should be Mideast.

1725541223977.png
 
Having grown up on the east coast, I always considered California to be west. Colorado (until I moved there) was "midwest." Maryland is kind of ambiguous when it comes to north vs. south.
 
Parts of Texas are farther east than parts of Minnesota.
 
Half Fast said:
… It appears Texas is not a western state...
Click to expand...
Growing up here, Texas was known to me as being in the Southwest. Conference. Otherwise, the southwest was NM, AZ, NV. Texans generally didn’t (and still don’t*) identify regionally as, well, we are a region in and of itself.

*Unless they’re not from around here.
 
When I lived in Cabell County, West Virginia I realized I was north of the Mason-Dixon line.

And I did see some head stones in a cemetery marked Cabell County, Virginia.

And isn't St. Louis known as the gateway to the west.??
 
They honestly need to relabel North Dakota to Texas as just Plains states. They aren't really "Western", they aren't really Mid-Western (like WI/MN/IL).
 
flyingron said:
Having grown up on the east coast, I always considered California to be west. Colorado (until I moved there) was "midwest." Maryland is kind of ambiguous when it comes to north vs. south.
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Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon line so it's southern. I lived there for 4 years and the locals made sure that I understood they were part of the South and not part of the North
 
I bet you guys get really confused when people talk about the Far East.
 
jayhawk74 said:
Maryland is below the Mason-Dixon line so it's southern. I lived there for 4 years and the locals made sure that I understood they were part of the South and not part of the North
Click to expand...
I lived there from 1959 until 1987 (with one year in Colorado). There was south of the Mason Dixon line and then there was the real south.
Having lived in MD (Bowie and Baltimore and its burbs) and Northern Virginia, there's a world of difference between that and the Carolinas and beyond.
 
SoonerAviator said:
They honestly need to relabel North Dakota to Texas as just Plains states. They aren't really "Western", they aren't really Mid-Western (like WI/MN/IL).
Click to expand...
Except now you introduce and have to define terms like the Great Plains, Interior Plains, Southern Plains, Northeastern Plains, High Plains, Western Plains, Prairie Plains,…all of which can be convienient places to base AirPlanes. ;)
 
MauleSkinner said:
Except now you introduce and have to define terms like the Great Plains, Interior Plains, Southern Plains, Northeastern Plains, High Plains, Western Plains, Prairie Plains,…all of which can be convienient places to base AirPlanes. ;)
Click to expand...
You’re just going to end up with 50 different names…wait…
 
I've lived all over the country, from CA to MD and lots of places in between. Now, in OK, I certainly wouldn't consider this a "western" state. South Central makes more sense to me. CA? AZ? Yes, definitely west. OK? Come on, it's physically right on the centerline.

I get what you're saying about "western movies", but that's not the definition I would use. Heck, with that as your yardstick, you really wouldn't consider San Diego beaches as being "Western" either, and clearly they're very West.
 
RussR said:
get what you're saying about "western movies", but that's not the definition I would use.
Click to expand...

Actually, my line of demarcation would be the Mississippi, as I learned in school. But really, the point is that there seem to be MANY definitions. A census taker uses a different line than a historian, for example. A student of Western history and folklore wouldn't omit Dodge just because of what some census taker thinks. A geologist or geographer would use different lines, too. It's mostly a matter of perspective.

TX is pretty much its own region. There's a mix of southern (TX was part of the Confederacy, of course) and western vibes, but also a lot of Mexican culture, and of course Austin is, well, uh, hmmm,......
 
RussR said:
I agree. The Mississippi River is pretty far east of center. Rough guess, I'd say 2/3 of the country is West of the Mississippi.
Click to expand...

"Center" is beside the point, unless you're a geometrist. The Miss makes sense as a demarcation to an historian, for example, stemming from the Louisiana Purchase. Just like the definition of "the South" stems from the Mason-Dixon line and which states seceded. A western historian would likely include Oklahoma as part of the west, for example, because of the importance of the Oklahoma land rush that opened Indian territories to westward expansion.

Many different perspectives.
 
The history of “west” in the US is pretty fascinating. Daniel Boone pushed beyond the boundaries of the original Colonies. The Corps of Discovery pushed from St Louis to the west coast. Eventually railroads opened it all up.
 
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