Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
North and South Texas are way different from each other.North Texas is around Dallas and Wichita Falls.South Texas is San Antone,Corpus and the Valley and Laredo areas.East and West Texas is highly different from each other also.East Texas is like Tyler and Longview.El Paso, Midland,Odessa,Abilene, and Angelo are way different than East Texas.
Iowa has a political/cultural shift from east to west. Topographically, there's a more defined east/west variation as well, but climate wise, it's more of a north/south thing.
Eastern is much more liberal/moderate politically, with less overt religious influence on local culture. It has a similar European alcohol culture like Wisconsin. Some of the cities along the Mississippi have a strong Rust Belt/eastern US feel, particularly Dubuque and the Quad Cities. They're older than the rest of the state, and the architecture is of a different era and style. These towns had a lot of manufacturing at one time, and still have a strong Union presence. As you go west, the political climate changes, and the topography does too. In the northern half of the state, the transition out of the Driftless Area and into the Plains is fairly dramatic. In about 5 miles you can transition from rugged, semi forested hill country to table-top flat cornfields.
Western Iowa is EXTREMELY conservative. They keep electing a white nationalist (Steve King) to the US Congress, and strict denominations of Evangelical Protestants, usually from Dutch backgrounds, dominate. There are dry cities (no dry counties) in that part of the state, and alcohol use is a lot more closeted or publicly shamed. It's virtually treeless, and there's a lot of large scale livestock operations. There are parts of eastern Iowa, especially in the northern part of the state west of the Driftless that appear this way, but don't have the political alignment of western Iowa.
From north to south, you see less dramatic transitions. Far northern Iowa has a distinct Minnesota/Wisconsin influence in the dialect and accent, and southern Iowa starts to see some twang/Missouri influence. Central Iowa has a very standard Midwestern accent. Topographically, there's less of a general shift, but there's a fairly dramatic shift you see at Des Moines. The glaciers that made north west and north central Iowa really flat ended at that point. South of Des Moines you see a more rolling topography with more trees and cattle ranching. North of Des Moines is treeless flat lands covered in corn, soybeans, and windmills.
I consider Hinckley, MN on I-35 to be the divide between Northern Minnesota and Southern Minnesota. It is also colloquially (not literally) considered the halfway point between the Cities and Duluth. On I-94, Alexandria is about the North-South line.
For East-West, I consider Bemidji the cut-off line.
Oregon is split east/west by the Cascade mountain range. West is a mild, moist climate, with a number of large urban areas like Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, and Roseburg. The east has Bend, Klamath Falls and a few other cities, much smaller then the west. The east is mostly farm land, large ranches and desert.
For Colorado, there dividing line is the south of CO Springs going east / west from there. South of that line in the mountainous west, it's more Texan. In the San Luis Valley, Pueblo, and the Arkansas River Valley it's very Hispanic; it's agricultural, green chile in everything, mariachi, and blue collar. It's also missed out on the boom that the rest of the state has, so it feels like a different economic region as well.
CO Springs is a mish mash of everything due to the military. Denver / Boulder is an island unto itself culturally. The North part of the state is part of the cowboy / oil and gas Rocky Mountain west culture that extends up into Wyoming and Montana.
As far as East / West in CO, well the eastern plains still feel like they are going through the dust bowl, the Front Range is where all the economic action is, and the mountains to the west are primarily tourist focused.
South Louisiana and North Louisiana are culturally very different, with South Louisiana having more of the Cajun and French heritage especially in Acadiana. North Louisiana is more traditional Southern culture though people do move around and cultural influences are a lot more mixed than before. New Orleans is its own separate thing altogether and very different from other parts of South Louisiana too.
However New Orleans people tend to look down on North Louisiana more than they look down on rural areas of Cajun country. Parts of South Louisiana are said to be more similar to North Louisiana like the Florida Parishes and the Northshore areas, the places east of Baton Rouge and north of Lake Pontchartrain. However I think areas like Hammond, St. Francisville, and Denham Springs still have a notable Cajun and Creole influence.
Politically, the divide is between NO and the entire rest of the state. North Louisiana and South Louisiana outside of NO and the immediate city of Baton Rouge vote the same way. However South Louisiana is socially very liberal due to having more Catholics vs Baptists. For example alcohol is widely available and even non-Catholics churches don't seem as strict as elsewhere in America. For example my church in WV preached openly against any kind of alcohol, the lottery, the casino, etc while its less openly denounced here . Here only abortion and gay marriage are openly denounced.
There is a cultural divide about halfway in West Virginia. The southern half is culturally more southern while the northern half is more like the North, though more of a Rust Belt kind of north than the liberal elite NY/Boston kind of north.
Tennessee has three official divisions, West, Middle and East. Overall, it seems like a gradient. Elevation increases as you head East, and Tennessee goes from a Deep South culture to Upland South to Mountain South as you head east.
With that being said, the western 2/3rds of West Tennessee seems different than the eastern 1/3rd of West Tennessee. The eastern 1/3rd of West Tennessee is more similar to Middle Tennessee, in my opinion. Farms go from row crops to livestock rather quickly.
Missouri is a bit more complicated due to its shape & immigration patterns. Overall, I would say the North/South split is more noticeable but there is an East/West split as well. Also, there isn't really a "southern Missouri" in the sense that the southern part of the state isn't really a uniform culture or environment. The Bootheel is a whole different world than the Ozarks. If you ever hear someone talk about "southern Missouri" as a whole they probably aren't originally from the state, or maybe they are talking about the weather.
New York the divide is definitely upstate/downstate. Upstate (North) is everything north of metro NYC and Long Island. Outside of the big city orbit of NYC the state is a very different place.
It's like with Illinois, where you have Chicagoland and then everything else.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.