Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana: Are They In The East or The West? (live, cities)

[manitopiaaa]

Source Wikimedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...a_Purchase.jpg



We've all heard of "the Chef" (the outline made by the states on the Western flank of the Mississippi River), but in the Great East/West battle, where do they fall?

There's the argument that the divider between East/West is the Mississippi River, hence the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis welcoming you to the West. Even Wikipedia states that the Eastern U.S. is the part East of the Mississippi River.

Yet cities like Kansas City market themselves as "a strategic starting point for the American West" and, of course, the Oregon Trail begins at the Western boundary of Missouri, not the Eastern one. Further, geographically, the middle point in the continental U.S. is closer to Kansas City than to Saint Louis.

So where do you place these 5 States: East or West?

(You can also split the baby: for example, I think Minnesota and Louisiana are east because their capitals - Saint Paul/Baton Rouge - are east of the Mississippi River).

[kyle19125]

Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana definitely read more east coast than west. The rest is pretty self-explanatory I think.

[eddie gein]

The Mississippi river is a convenient barrier to use for the divide but the real divide is the dry line which lies between the 98th and 100th meridian. Unfortunately the dry line doesn't follow a straight path but it is consistently between those two lines all the way from Mexico to Canada.

[annie_himself]

I'd argue they aren't part of either. Parts of the Midwest could go to the east, Arkansas and Missouri could go to the west, Louisiana is more gulf oriented.

[Prickly Pear]

The Chef is east, easily

[Prickly Pear]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

The Mississippi river is a convenient barrier to use for the divide but the real divide is the dry line which lies between the 98th and 100th meridian. Unfortunately the dry line doesn't follow a straight path but it is consistently between those two lines all the way from Mexico to Canada.

I like to use Colorado's eastern border, then draw it up and down. I would use the 100th meridian, but certainly not somewhere anywhere east of that.

[TheTimidBlueBars]

The only one that feels even slightly western is Minnesota, and that's more about its lower population density and protected forests (and Minneapolis being a newer-feeling, growing city) than about culture or geography/topography.

[atadytic19]

They are neither. They are all mid/ central states.
Why they gotta be one or the other

[Northeasterner1970]

I would say there’s some parts of western of MN that feel maybe a bit outside of the orbit the rest of the Eastern USA and considering the Minnesota had basically the largest post-trail of tears Native American conflict and that a lot of the state was settled after the civil war, I’d the possibility of MN being more on the western side of things but at the time, St. Paul and Minneapolis to a lesser extent feel a lot more eastern. Though I’ve heard that some people consider Minneapolis the first city of the west and St. Paul the last city of the east.

Also again even though I think they are overall maybe a bit more eastern, cities like Omaha and Kansas City still feel very different compared to cities on the Mississippi like Dubuque, St. Louis etc, so maybe there’s an argument there for some Missouri River based locations being westernish.

[sub]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

The Mississippi river is a convenient barrier to use for the divide but the real divide is the dry line which lies between the 98th and 100th meridian. Unfortunately the dry line doesn't follow a straight path but it is consistently between those two lines all the way from Mexico to Canada.

This is what I’d go with.
Having lived in Missouri and Arkansas, even the western parts, it was never western really. Maybe in the extreme western boarders like Kansas City where there is some old west history. 10 miles to the east, not so much.