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I don't think Nevada truly has a sister state. It doesn't feel like Arizona really, and Utah shares some geography(along with a history of Mormon settlement in some parts of the state) but couldn't more different in some other ways...
Likewise Hawaii stands alone, very alone...
Wow, how could I have forgotten Hawaii?
I agree with your thoughts on Nevada, too (NV's current rate of in-migration could change that much more than I'd personally like to see, however).
I must have missed where American Samoa became a state... Actually they aren't all that alike to begin with considering Hawaii is much more diverse with a large Asian population(Filipino and Japanese and then Chinese) and native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders just being one of many groups and with a much larger population and tourist industry, and American Samoa being all Samoans for the most part and being sort of a forgotten backwater in some ways.
I agree with your thoughts on Nevada, too (NV's current rate of in-migration could change that much more than I'd personally like to see, however).
Yeah Nevada strikes me as a little different than the states surrounding it. It feels more libertarian in some ways, and then Las Vegas is a completely different animal. You have a international gambling/tourist center as your largest city that basically grew in part due from being developed by the Italian Mafia and Jewish gangsters, yet it was originally settled in part by Mormons. And there's a huge divide between the Southern California-lite of much of the Vegas area and suburbs and the really Western feel of most of the rest of the state. The whole legalized gambling industry(along with legalized prostitution) has always given a lot of rural Nevada a slightly different edge to it then other Mountain West states...
Utah on the other hand feels more consistent with it's Mormon dominance of most of the state. The divide in Idaho seems to be more between the Snake River Valley(with big Mormon areas in the southeast of the state itself) and the northern panhandle, but even towards the Nevada border, it feels different than it's neighbor to the south.
I'd have to say that while they aren't sister states in the sense they are alike, i've always felt, eastern Nebraska, Western Iowa, Northwest Missouri, and Northeast Kansas are pretty much the same and feel pretty similar and share a lot of characteristics.
As a whole though i'd say Nebraska and Kanasas might be the closest to each other. Iowa seems pretty similar to illinois, it depends on which part of the state you live in. To me the West is more like Eastern Nebraska and South Dakota, while the East is more like Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
Let's be honest--Montanans tend to think they're pretty special in regard to their state identification, not truly seeing this place as the microcosm that it really is. What's nice is that, by and large, we somehow or another have maintained pretty good cultural cohesion, despite the differences that geography and migration will inevitably cause.
I'm curious to hear more about this. As a Northeasterner I tend to think of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho as fitting together in the same "intermountain West" category, with Wyoming being flatter / ranch land, Idaho more mountainous / wilderness land, and Montana a mixture of the two. But I don't know very much about any of those states, so I'd be interested to hear a native's perspective of what the differences are.
Virginia and Maryland are more like two neighbors with a lot in common, but with a totally different set of values. They smile to each other's face and go to each other's Memorial Day BBQs, but Virginia secretly thinks Maryland is going to hell and Maryland is secretly jealous of Virginia's new SUV and meat smoker.
Lol! This is how I'd describe the relationship between Vermont and New Hampshire, although without the religious angle. But it's a matter of degrees, since those two states still have a lot in common compared to the rest of New England.
I think Maryland's sister states are Delaware, Virginia, and New Jersey (Especially South Jersey).
Agree with this. I spent some time in Vineland, NJ a while back and was surprised at how similar to Maryland it felt and how different it was from what (as a NYer) I think of as "Jersey." The Delaware / Chesapeake region definitely has its own unique culture and vibe.
A big takeaway from this thread is that adjacent regions of neighboring states often have more in common with each other than they do the distant regions of their own states. This is certainly true in New York -- the upstate/downstate divide is pretty stark, but neighborhoods in Nassau or Westchester Counties aren't that different from their counterparts in north Jersey or southwestern Connecticut.
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