If my wife knew about this geography forum, I’d never get laid again.
Is Iowa an Eastern state?
- Thread starter Al_4_State
- Start date
I could almost get on board if he meant Iowa is more like (western) Pennsylvania than Idaho. But it really is nothing like Maryland or Washington. That's dumb.
It's also dumb for people to put Ohio in the Midwest. It is like 2X closer to the Atlantic than the Pacific. They can be the MidEAST.
It's also dumb for people to put Ohio in the Midwest. It is like 2X closer to the Atlantic than the Pacific. They can be the MidEAST.
I’d only quibble with this map maker a little when it comes to renaming the high plains and calling it southern Great Plains.
I'd say more than half of the **** I sub to on Reddit would put me in the same boat.
To answer the real question, the US shouldn't be split into West/East. There are too many variances still. If it must be, the Mississippi is the dividing line. I'd have to say east/west/midwest and south at minimum.
I can see the point wrt the bolded.
Most of the West is dry and brown. Most of the East is wet and green. See pic below.
Has nothing to do with lines on a map at all, but at a fundamental basic look... kinda.
And maybe even just looking at lines on a map, you could easily take the state line western border of Minn, IA, MO, AR, and LA and call that the dividing line. That's probably cleaner than the Mississipi and a more 50/50 split that matches the green/brown better.
yeah, historically it was around that 100th meridian line that divided things. Though that boundary has been shifting to the east as a result of climate change putting more of Nebraska/Kansas etc in the western side of the divide.
I agree that in terms of flora or fauna we are eastern here. For example, the birds you see here in Iowa are almost the same as the birds you'd see in upstate New York or Georgia. But, the birds you find in Colorado, for example, are entirely different. So I suppose if you are only drawing a single line, it does make some sense to group us east, especially in terms of plants and animals. Once you get to western Nebraska, the plant and animal life changes dramatically.
It's the third largest country in the world. It is stupid to just divide into "East" and "West".
I think anyone who makes a "There's only East and West" argument has not spent much time in any of the East, West, or Midwest.
Yeah, I think everyone realizes the Mississippi is east of the exact physical center (which is like the 98th Meridian). The debate wasn't about where the exact mid-line of the US was.
But it's (the Mississippi) has been the historic marker of where the east ended and the west began. To me, states like Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and even Arkansas have more similarity from a cultural standpoint for sure, but even in Iowa's case a geographic/geologic one to points west rather than points east. Our state's history and culture is a lot more "frontier/westward expansion/plowing the prairie/permanently rural" than it is "clearing the vast forests and building giant industrial cities". Plains Indian tribes lived here. The organizers of the Spirit Lake Massacre fought at the Little Big Horn 15 years later. The first train robbery by the James Gang was here. Iowa was nearly 90% prairie at the time of the European contact - that alone is quite a bit more "west" than "east", even if we aren't the arid Great Plains/open range/cowboy country of popular imagination.
The right answer for "what is Iowa" is clearly Midwestern, and my contention is that Midwestern is wholly separate of East or West and has elements of both. But if one insists on a binary, I'd side with west for those reasons.
I agree that Decorah and the river towns feel more Eastern. The Driftless Area as a whole is basically Wisconsin. Thing is, as soon as you leave that part of the state you might as well be in eastern South Dakota or Nebraska.
