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I don't know if this is a duplicate thread. If it is, I'm sorry.
Anyway, I've heard a lot of people on this forum (but not in real life) say that the Great Plains are not part of the Midwest. Usually, these people say it is its own region, or even part of the West (!). As a Midwesterner, I disagree. I'd say the Great Plains fit very nicely in the Midwest. The U.S. Census Bureau agrees with me:
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
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I'm trying to think outside of what I know, and I figured those on the coasts would put the Plains together with the rest of the traditional "Midwest", even though it's culturally more "Western" and was the "Old West" before the "Real West" was founded.
I live in the Great Plains and consider myself Midwestern. I think there's somewhat of a divide in my state. The western part is more western and the eastern part is more midwestern.
^ because most people cut it off on the N.D/S.D/Nebraska/Kansas line as far as Great Plain-Midwestern States.
Colorado and Wyoming are called Mountain States because they're the breakoff. They have some Great Plains in them as a geographical feature - but not if you're going state by state breakdown.
The Great Plain states are Midwestern if you ask me, but obviously a totally different section of the Midwest from say Iowa to Ohio.
It's like saying you're from the Eastern USA. That includes Vermont and Georgia. You obviously have the northeast and the southeast.
The Midwest has the Great Lakes states and the Great Plains. The two toss-ups are Iowa and Missouri. Iowa tends to gravitate much more towards a Great Lakes state, and Missouri tends to gravitate more to the south.
They are probably both technically "in the midwest", according to the official definition of Midwest.
But this is my take, and I think it's unique: When I've crossed into the Great Plains while traveling west, it no longer feels like the eastern United States at all. The big sky and wide-open terrain tells me that I've just crossed into a region that is very different from anything I've seen in the Great Lakes region, Northeast, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Upper Midwest, or whatever. There are parts of Michigan that look similar to Florida, parts of Minnesota that look similar to Ohio, parts of North Carolina that look similar to Vermont, etc. But when you enter the high plains, it just looks completely foreign to me! It happens about halfway through Kansas, or Nebraska, or Texas, or any of those states. Anyone who has made a few long road trips cross-country knows what I'm talking about.
In a weird way, the high plains of western Kansas or Nebraska remind me more of the Nevada desert than they do of anything in the Great Lakes region. There's just something about that huge sky...
You can call the Great Plains part of the Midwest if you want, and it might technically be true, but to me it is the very beginning of "Out West."
Last edited by michigan83; 10-06-2010 at 09:49 AM..
I have a friend from kansas city and she kept talking about how it was so much different that michigan.
With that said i think they're basically 2 different regions in one.
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