Biggest 2 state cities? (rates, largest, place, America)

[Cheeriochapgovna]

What are some of the biggest cities where the city is split an exists in 2 different states? Only notable examples I can think of is Kansas City and Texarkana.

[Joakim3]

St. Louis

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Cheeriochapgovna

What are some of the biggest cities where the city is split an exists in 2 different states? Only notable examples I can think of is Kansas City and Texarkana.

You realize, of course, that the cities so situated are legally separate? Cities are subordinate jurisdictions of states and as such cannot cross state lines.

Kansas City is the largest of these two-state next-door neighbor cities, and the only one I know of where the state line is not the main street through the city; it also differs from the others I know of in that the two cities' central business districts are also separate (the floodplain around the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers separates the two; a viaduct across that floodplain, built after a 1903 flood cut the two cities off from each other, connects them). Texarkana is unusual in that its post office building straddles the state line. No other large US city is split by a state line.

The one other two-state city like these that comes to my mind is Bristol, Tenn.-Va., the "Birthplace of Country Music." The main street there is also the state line.

There is a town on the Vermont-Québec border that is split by the Canada-USA boundary; the town's library and opera house are in a building that straddles the border, and the international boundary in that town is a street, Canusa Avenue, that the border runs down the middle of for a distance before the road veers north into Québec as provincial Route 247. However: a quick Google search on that street name reveals that the two towns it runs through have different names: Stanstead, Que., and Derby Line, Vt. (The section of both towns that it runs through, however, has a common name: Beebe Plain.) The street is a residential thoroughfare with houses on both sides of it; this article makes clear that up until the Americans got nervous about border security after 9/11, the residents on both sides of the border behaved as though it didn't exist, and some are upset that the enhanced security, which now requires them to pass through the customs checkpoint when crossing the street, has disrupted their amiable way of life.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Joakim3

St. Louis

Nope. A river separates St. Louis, Mo., from East St. Louis, Ill.

Most large US cities whose metropolitan areas straddle two states have the core city located on the river that serves as the state border.

[SonnyDaze]

Bristol, TN/VA

[Texamichiforniasota]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

Nope. A river separates St. Louis, Mo., from East St. Louis, Ill.

Most large US cities whose metropolitan areas straddle two states have the core city located on the river that serves as the state border.

The OP didn't say the state line couldn't be a river, nor did they say that the cities had to have to have the same name. In fact, the Missouri River forms most of the boundary between Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO (the example the OP gave), though they do share a shorter land border.

Since the two examples the OP gave are cities that have the same name, it isn't clear to me if the OP is under the mistaken belief that those cities share a city government (council, mayor, etc) or history, rather than the actual case, which is that they are two separate cities that are next to each other that just happen to have been given the same name. Historically, each pair cited have always been separate cities withe separate histories despite the shared names.

So the question is either:
1. What metros extend across state lines?
2. What areas have similarly named cities neighbor each other across state lines?

[woxyroxme]

Originally Posted by CincyExpert

Bristol, TN/VA

This is the only legitimate example, every other city is split into two distinct and separate municipalities.

[kdb05f]

Bluefield WV\VA?

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Texamichiforniasota

The OP didn't say the state line couldn't be a river, nor did they say that the cities had to have to have the same name. In fact, the Missouri River forms most of the boundary between Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO (the example the OP gave), though they do share a shorter land border.

Since the two examples the OP gave are cities that have the same name, it isn't clear to me if the OP is under the mistaken belief that those cities share a city government (council, mayor, etc) or history, rather than the actual case, which is that they are two separate cities that are next to each other that just happen to have been given the same name. Historically, each pair cited have always been separate cities withe separate histories despite the shared names.

So the question is either:
1. What metros extend across state lines?
2. What areas have similarly named cities neighbor each other across state lines?

Native Kansas Citian here.

Actually, about half the border between Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., is the Missouri River; from the point where it makes its left turn south to 47th Street (the Wyandotte-Johnson county line on the Kansas side), the state line is either a street (from about 37th Street (KCMo)/Avenue (Rosedale section of KCK) south) or a surveyor's line.

And since the OP phrased his post as asking about "one city in two states," implied in that phrasing is that the two cities in question have the same name. That does rule out East St. Louis, and it also rules out East Chicago, Ind. (which doesn't even touch the Illinois/Indiana border and thus doesn't qualify even somewhat) and West New York, N.J. Perhaps also worth noting here: The populations of the smaller "shared cities" (I'll use this term to refer to two cities that share a state line as a common city limit and have the exact same name) are close to each other. Kansas City, Mo., is about three times as populous as Kansas City, Kan. For the "close but no cigar" similarly-named cities, the city with the compass-point qualifier in its name* is anywhere from 1/12th (East St. Louis:St. Louis) to 1/16th (West New York:New York) the size of the main city. That makes those more appendages and suburbs rather than partner cities.

*There's one of these in Kansas City too: North Kansas City, Mo., a rather handsome industrial suburb across the Missouri River from downtown Kansas City, Mo. Its population is about 1/11th that of Kansas City, Mo., which surrounds it thanks to post-World War II annexations on Kansas City's part. Residents of Kansas City, Mo. who live north of the river (referred to as "the Northland" locally) attend schools in the North Kansas City School District.

I already addressed the issue of governance in my reply.

The question was phrased succinctly in the original once you add the OP's elaboration ("the city is split an exists in 2 different states"): What *cities* extend across state lines? Since that's not legally possible, it becomes "What two adjacent cities share both a name and a state line as a common city limit?"

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by woxyroxme

This is the only legitimate example, every other city is split into two distinct and separate municipalities.

So is Bristol. Cities as legal municipal corporations cannot cross state lines.

And once again, Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Ark., share State Line Avenue (US 59/71 entering the cities from the north) as their main thoroughfare, their downtowns are adjacent, and the post office sits astride the state line. It's an exact analogue for Bristol, which the two Kansas Citys aren't.