It’s the fourth largest country in the world by
land area and the third largest by population, but it’s hard to visualize the true enormity of
the United States. While maps often focus on the contiguous states known as the Lower 48, a massive
swath of land on its own, when you factor in the far flung states of Alaska and Hawaii, along with
numerous inhabited territories as well as desolate island possessions even further from the mainland,
you’re left with the picture of a country that spans the globe. It sits on two continents,
takes up nearly 40% of North America’s land, and has shores on three oceans. It stretches
across both sides of the Equator and the International Date Line, and has land in both the
Tropics and the Arctic Circle. It’s home to three of the five largest lakes on Earth, and though
it has land borders with only two countries, it shares maritime borders with 23, including places
as far apart as Russia and the Bahamas. In fact, you can travel 9,514 miles, or 15,311 kilometers,
from Guam to the US Virgin Islands and still be within the same country. For comparison, you
could go from New York City to nearly anywhere in the world except for Australia and you’d still
be closer than parts of the US are to each other. Even most of Antarctica is closer. Any country as
large as the United States is going to be home to some truly incredible geographic diversity,
but the sheer spread of it places landscapes that seem like different worlds to one
another within the same country. Today, I’ll be diving into the regional differences that
make the US so unique, looking at their history, culture, and most importantly, their geography.
Hello and Welcome to That Is Interesting. I’m your host Carter. Today - the first video
in a two part series on the vast regional differences of the United States, explained. This
video is sponsored by Masterworks, an exciting company that I’ll tell you more about later on.
I’ve broken the US up into 13 different regions, some large, some small. They’re chosen based on
having some amount of geographic and cultural cohesion with one another, but in a country
this large, even these can be further divided and broken down into regions that are starkly
different from one another, in terms of their physical landscapes, history, and cultural
identity. For example, the Eastern Shore of Virginia and the Cajun Country of Louisiana are
both included in my definition of the South, but both are very distinct from one another as well as
from other places in the South, such as Atlanta. Many of these regions are home to enormous
percentages of the US population and take up vast swaths of land, so in breaking the country
up this way, I’m not at all implying that these areas are completely or even mildly homogenous to
one another, only that they share some overarching similarities in geographic features and cultural
identity. For example, I made a similar video to this looking at the regional diversity of
California, and in that video divided the state into nine distinct regions. In this video, the
state is split between just two. On top of that, dividing the country up into regions doesn’t make
it easy to depict overlap between regions that take up the same area. Because of this, there are
other regions I would’ve liked to include on this map and could potentially put on other maps but
I didn’t because they would overlap with other areas. A few places I couldn’t work on to the map
because of this are the Gulf Coast, the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, the Ozarks, the East Coast,
the Sun Belt, and the Rust Belt, to name a few. Also, I don’t want to discount state identity at
all. Residents of most states have a strong sense of state identity, and some larger states, like
Texas, California, New York and Florida seem to stand out culturally in a way that makes it hard
to fit them cleanly into other regions. There were also some places, like Upstate New York,
that didn’t seem to fit cleanly into any of the surrounding regions but that weren’t large and
distinct enough to designate as its own region, so I made a choice with how I grouped them but
I could’ve probably put them with any one of their neighbors. I’m sure many of you will look at
this map and disagree, and that’s perfectly fine. I could’ve redrawn this a hundred different
ways because many of these are very fluid. Unsurprisingly, the edges of regions are
transition zones between one and the other, and anywhere that’s even kind of close
to the borders I’ve drawn between the regions are places that you could probably
consider part of both. With a map though, I had to make a choice. So the regional borders
should be taken as very broad areas of regional overlap and not as clear cut divisions. The US is
so large and there’s so much to talk about, so I split the video into two parts - the second part
will be up very soon, so make sure to go watch it when you’re done. With all that said, let’s get
into the first one on the list - New England. New England has one of the strongest regional
identities of any part of the country, shaped by a long and influential history, and it even
has its own popular regional flag. It consists of six states, all among the smallest in the country
by area - the sparsely populated and mostly rural states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in
the north, and the densely populated and heavily urbanized states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
and Connecticut in the south. Though the entirety of these states are often considered part of
the region, I removed one county - Connecticut’s Fairfield County. It’s a suburban county of New
York City, and is often more closely aligned with its neighboring megacity than it is with the
rest of the region, with many of its nearly 1 million residents commuting out of state to
New York. I also tried not to split up urban areas with this map, so it makes more sense to
place Fairfield in the neighboring Mid-Atlantic. This gives New England a population of 14.16
million people, more than all but 4 states, but still fewer than most other regions on
this list, and only 4.27% of the country’s population. Nearly half of New Englanders live in
the state of Massachusetts. I split urban areas up into two tiers, one with all urban areas
with more than 1 million residents, and one with those home to between 500,000 and a million
people. New England has two cities in this first tier - Boston and Providence. Boston is by far the
region’s powerhouse, it’s the tenth largest urban area in the country and is part of, along with
many of New England’s cities, a large strand of urbanization called the Northeast Megalopolis that
stretches down into DC and Northern Virginia. In the second tier are smaller cities like Hartford,
Springfield, and New Haven. Most of the region’s major cities are located within the smaller
coastal states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and because of that, many are very
close to one another, and their suburbs overlap. Geographically, it’s home to rolling hills
in the south, and tall mountains that bring cold weather and make settlement difficult in
the north. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, are dominated by thick forests and tall mountains,
and as such are sparsely populated, although their proximity to major cities like Boston makes
them popular vacation destinations, along with beaches on the Massachusetts peninsula of Cape
Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. In the southern three states, rolling
hills and flatter land make settlement easier, and the gently hilly topography, with the region
lacking a real coastal plain, gives it excellent ports and harbors, and as such, cities and towns
line the coast. Major rivers like the Connecticut formed fertile agricultural valleys, while
others, such as the Blackstone and the Merrimack, became important early centers of milling and
industry. The six states grew out of some of the earliest colonies to be settled by Europeans, and
were shaped by a number of waves of settlement and immigration after most of their native people were
killed or fled west. English religious groups, such as the Puritans and Pilgrims, founded
colonies in the region that grew and merged into some of the states we know today, while Rhode
Island was founded as a refuge from their stricter religious laws, and Vermont was an independent
country born out of a border dispute that joined the US after the Revolutionary War. It’s one
of the most historic parts of the country, cities like Boston are filled with beautiful old
buildings, and New England is famed for scenic towns and villages which dot the countryside, as
well as popular hiking trails and ski resorts, and lighthouses dotting the islands and cliffs
of the coastline. The region has some of the strongest English influence in the country.
Later waves of immigration continued to shape it, with Boston becoming the national destination of
Irish immigration, western Connecticut attracting Italians who came in through New York, and
Portuguese immigrants flocking to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Bordering Quebec, the
northernmost parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, are dominated by French Canadians, many of
whom still speak French at home. New England has the advantage of time, this was one of the first
centers of colonial settlement in the country, and many of its residents are part of families
that have been there for generations. There’s plenty of old money, and wealthy, leafy suburbs,
more so than maybe anywhere else on this list, though like anywhere else there’s poverty
as well - cities like Hartford have faced major issues with economic decline, and rural
areas in the north of New Hampshire and Maine, geographically isolated and worlds away from other
parts of New England, have faced issues as the logging industry has struggled. Massachusetts
is the second wealthiest state in the country by per capita income, and Connecticut and
New Hampshire are both within the top ten, though Rhode Island and Vermont are more towards
the middle and Maine is on the lower end of state income rankings. It’s famed for having some of
the most elite colleges and universities in the country - home to places like Harvard, Yale,
Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT, just to name a few, and its residents have played an outsized role
in politics, literature, arts, and history. It’s home to distinct accents, like the
Boston accent, and seafood is very popular in a region home to a huge fishing industry,
known for regional foods like clam chowder and lobster rolls. It’s generally more politically
liberal, and is unique for having the lowest rates of religiosity and church attendance
in the country, though some of the highest populations of Catholics, due to immigration from
majority Catholic countries. I’m just glossing over these regions, but if you want a more in
depth look at any of them, I’m nearly halfway through a much more detailed series on each state,
territory, and federal district in the country, called the US Explained, and I’ve made
longer form videos on many of them already. The next region I’ll discuss is the country’s
financial, political, and population powerhouse. The Mid-Atlantic is relatively quite small, it
could fit comfortably into most other US states, but it’s home to 13% of all Americans, 43.16
million people. On this map, I define it as extending from New York City up into the Hudson
Valley of New York, including Connecticut’s Fairfield County, encompassing the entirety of New
Jersey and Delaware, the heavily populated eastern part of Pennsylvania, most of Maryland except the
mountainous sections, as well as Washington DC and its suburbs in Northern Virginia. The cities I’ve
included in the Mid-Atlantic’s first tier include the largest and fifth largest urban areas in the
entire country - New York City and Philadelphia, as well as Washington DC, the country’s
capital and, and Baltimore, the largest city in Maryland. In the second tier are smaller
cities like Bridgeport, Allentown, and Albany. This is the rest of the Northeast Megalopolis
outside of New England, and you’ll often hear the two grouped together as simply the
Northeast. Foothills of the Appalachians and their sub-ranges, like the Catskills, sit on
the region’s fringes, but for the most part it’s flat land sitting not far from the coast. Besides
a few areas like the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and Maryland’s swampy Eastern Shore, most of
the region is flat, fertile, and easy to settle, with large rivers winding through it, and the
Fall Line between the Appalachian foothills and the Atlantic Coastal Plain allowing for industry
to develop along the rivers, and excellent natural ports opening cities up to trade on the Atlantic
of industrial and agricultural goods produced further inland. Because of these geographic
advantages, and because this was one of the first parts of the country to be colonized by Europe,
it quickly became the country’s population center. Some of the first colonies in the region were
Swedish and Dutch, but they eventually fell to British control, as Britain didn’t want other
imperial powers controlling land between their colonies in New England and Virginia. As British
settlers moved to the coastal colonies, they grew in population and importance. Philadelphia
grew into the largest city in the colonies, and New York and Baltimore were major population
centers as well. Later waves of immigrants poured in through New York’s Ellis Island, and today it
remains one of the most popular destinations for immigrants and one of if not the most diverse
cities in the world. Irish, Germans, Italians, as well as Poles and Russians, many of whom were
Jewish refugees, entered through New York and moved throughout the Mid-Atlantic. Today, New York
is far and away the center of America’s Jewish community, the country with either the largest
or second largest Jewish population on Earth, depending on how you look at it. Black
Americans from the South, fleeing racial discrimination moved north and built a new
life in Mid-Atlantic cities like Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Newark,
and New York, and migrants from Puerto Rico, as well as immigrants from the Dominican Republic
and other parts of the Caribbean came to New York City, where they’ve played an important role
in shaping the city’s history and culture. Altogether, this makes the Mid-Atlantic a place of
strong racial and cultural diversity. Philly was a center of resistance in the American Revolution,
and today is, along with Boston, one of the most historically significant major cities in the
country. The Constitutional Convention was held there, and both the Declaration of Independence
and Constitution were written in the city. The most important city in the country for a long
time, it became one of the country’s early capital cities, and today is still one of the largest
cities in the United States. Its replacement, Washington DC, sits within the Mid-Atlantic
as well. The planned city encompasses its own federal district, but suburbs in neighboring
Maryland and Virginia make it the center of one of the largest urban areas in the country.
It’s in many ways a contradiction, home to many people struggling with poverty while at the same
time its suburbs are home to the first, second, and fifth wealthiest counties in the entire
country, with high paying government jobs, as well as lobbyists and contractors, creating
a high earning economy that revolves around the huge task of operating the federal government,
and all the branches of its bureaucracy. The few square miles home to the White House,
Capitol, Supreme Court, federal departments and the Pentagon is perhaps the most powerful
stretch of land on Earth. At the same time, many of its residents are working class citizens
who lack voting representatives in Congress due to the status of Washington as a federal district.
DC’s suburbs stretch into Maryland and Virginia, overlapping with those of Baltimore, an important
port city on the Chesapeake Bay that has in recent years faced issues with poverty and crime. Not
far from Baltimore sits Wilmington, Delaware, a smaller city on the Delaware River within
Philadelphia’s orbit. The suburbs of Philly on the other side bleed into Trenton, New Jersey’s
capital, which along with cities like Princeton, Edison, and New Brunswick, form a string of
urbanization connecting it to New York. The suburbs of New York across the Hudson in northern
New Jersey are the most urbanized suburbs in the country, and are home to densely populated
residential areas, urban centers with tall skylines like Jersey City and Newark, and
would be an enormous city in its own right, even if Manhattan wasn’t there. They, along
with the suburbs of Philadelphia and the heavily urbanized Jersey Shore, home to places like
Atlantic City, contribute to making the tiny state one of the most populous in the country, as well
as giving it the highest population density. The Mid-Atlantic wouldn’t be nearly what it is without
New York City. The largest city in the country, it dominates the eastern seaboard and remains
one of the global capitals of finance, insurance, and trade, home to two enormous stock exchanges,
the headquarters of massive banks and financial institutions, and a center of global media, all
of which have allowed it to build one of the most impressive skylines on Earth. Its cultural
relevance is hard to overstate, and a city built by immigration, its countless neighborhoods
remain distinct and unique today. The city grew as trade systems such as the Hudson River and Erie
Canal linked it to the resource-rich hinterlands of the growing country, allowing it to ship out
crops, textiles, and manufactured goods from one of the best natural harbors on the east coast, and
today, over 18 million people live in the megacity or in its heavily urbanized suburbs. It’s home
to wealth and poverty. Washington DC, Maryland, and New Jersey are all among the five wealthiest
places in the United States, but these statistics, bolstered by the fact that some of the wealthiest
and most powerful people call the Mid-Atlantic home, conceal the great poverty that many of its
residents live in. Cities like Baltimore, Camden, Bridgeport, and Trenton face serious problems
with poverty, crime, and economic decline. Altogether, this region is defined by its
urbanization. It’s the most densely populated part of the country, and it’s possible to drive
from Alexandria, Virginia up through Bridgeport, Connecticut, and through New England all the way
into Boston and New Hampshire without ever having really left an urbanized area, something that
it’s hard to find anywhere else in the country. (Sponsorship Integration)
The next region I’ve defined is Appalachia. Some people pronounce it Appalatcha, you’ll hear
that pronunciation more in the South, while my pronunciation is more common in the northern
part of the region. Just another example of how region’s and regional identity have a lot of
overlap and there aren’t clear cut boundaries and totally unified identities within them. I have the
region including much of the Appalachian Mountains and their foothills and nearby plateaus. I have
it stretching from northern Georgia and Alabama, including the city of Huntsville, up through the
mountainous parts of Tennessee and North Carolina, including cities like Knoxville, Chattanooga, and
Asheville, through Eastern Kentucky, including Lexington, the mountains of Virginia, with cities
like Lynchburg and Roanoke, the entirety of West Virginia, the mountainous panhandle of Maryland,
the hilly area of southeastern Ohio along the Ohio River, most of western and central Pennsylvania,
and Upstate New York apart from the Hudson Valley. Upstate New York is probably a controversial
addition, as most of it isn’t ever really considered part of Appalachia apart from the
Southern Tier, near the Pennsylvania border. However, it didn’t make sense to include
it in New England, nor did throwing it in the Mid-Atlantic make any sense. Though it isn’t
viewed as Appalachian, it made the most sense to me to group it in with it, as it’s part of the
Rust Belt, which shares a lot of overlap with Appalachia in terms of land, culture, and economy,
and it has a working class identity and industrial history that gives it a lot of commonality with
the region. It’s home to 23.31 million people, or 7.02% of the country. It has one city in the
first tier, the former manufacturing giant of Pittsburgh, and three in the second tier
- Buffalo, Rochester, and Knoxville. Its mountainous topography made it much more rural
and difficult to settle than neighboring regions, though cities and towns grew tucked into tight
valleys and canyons and sprawling over hills and mountains. This has given Appalachia a degree of
isolation from the east coast, and has allowed it to develop a very different identity and culture,
rooted more in the values of the working class and the region’s many small, industrial towns.
It’s a place where people stay for generations, where they know their neighbors and
communities are close and tight-knit. At the same time, it’s fallen victim to a rise in
automation and the exporting of industrial jobs to cheaper and less regulated areas overseas, where
labor conditions are often brutal and inhumane. Job loss has devastated entire towns and cities.
The closure of a factory which might’ve been the lifeblood of a large chunk of residents leaves
them unemployed and unable to afford to spend money in local businesses, creating a ripple
effect which can be the death knell for entire towns. This affects quality of life across the
board, poverty rates are some of the highest in the country, especially in more rural areas
like West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, and pharmaceutical giants have exploited the region,
pumping in opioids and fueling a crisis which has devastated the people of Appalachia and other
parts of the Rust Belt, many of whom are already dealing with lingering health problems from the
dangers of mining and manufacturing jobs whose decline has caused devastation across the region.
Many people who can are leaving, the populations of many Appalachian states have either been
stagnant or shrinking over the last few decades, the rise of the Sun Belt fueled by in-country
migration from the Rust Belt. Throughout the country you’ll find plenty of people who have
connections to states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. Despite its challenges, the people have
been incredibly resilient, and there’s still a great pride in being from Appalachia and a strong
sense of community that holds it together. Once the physical fringe of the early United States,
its success powered the growth and development of the country, filled with coal, oil, and natural
gas, it became an industrial powerhouse. The steel that brought the country into the twentieth
century was produced in Pittsburgh, the grain to feed a growing population milled in Upstate New
York, and the coal to keep the power on mined in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia. If the
Mid-Atlantic was the successful face the United States showed to the world, it was Appalachia
that kept the country on its feet, creating the goods that powered the country’s economic growth,
the fuel to keep its lights on, and the materials for the skyscrapers displayed as a symbol of its
success. Immigrants came to the region to work these industrial jobs. In the north were Germans,
later came Poles and other Eastern Europeans. In the South, many were descendants of immigrants
and settlers from the British Isles - English, Scottish, Irish, and Scots-Irish. The southern
part was less industrialized, the mountainous land was generally cheaper and harder to farm,
leading poorer people to move there. Despite often being on the receiving end of a condescending
misconception that the region’s problems are the result of the natural push towards progress,
and that residents are just refusing to accept that times are changing, the region’s residents
have continued to push for recognition of their challenges, and in some areas, things are getting
better. Pittsburgh has been able to rebound somewhat, diversifying its economy and seeing
its population begin to recover. In the once economically weaker southern part of Appalachia,
government investments have led to diversified economies as well, such as the hydroelectric
industry in Knoxville and the space industry in Huntsville, and tourism and recreation have
grown prominent in places like North Carolina and Tennessee. At the same time, areas like Eastern
Kentucky and West Virginia are still among the poorest parts of the United States. Appalachia’s
a place with a strong regional identity and an essential role in the country both historically
and today, and I’m proud to be from there myself. What Appalachia is to industry, the Midwest
is to agriculture. The huge region is often geographically similar across the board, dominated
by flat, fertile farmland. The glaciers that carved out the Great Lakes smoothed and flattened
the part of the country sitting to the south and west of them, depositing rich soil that made it
ripe for agricultural production. This also gives the Midwest a huge population. A house, town, or
city can be built on practically any part of it, and even its rural areas have a larger baseline
population than much of the country. Often dubbed “flyover country” by those unfamiliar with it
and its distinctions, farmland does dominate the region, and much of it is a monoculture
- corn and soybeans make up 75% of all the region’s cropland - often used to create feed for
livestock. However, its cities, many of which sit on the Great Lakes or important waterways like
the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, have distinct identities, industries and things to do. It’s also
far from solely farmland. The northern halves of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are part of an
enormous boreal forest that stretches south from Canada, whose cold weather and poor soil creates
an area of sparsely populated wilderness that’s hard to find elsewhere in the region. The
Driftless Area, split between Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. Is a hilly and
forested area that was missed by glaciation, and southern Indiana is dominated by beautiful
hilly scenery. Islands fill the Great Lakes, such as the Apostle Islands, Mackinac Island, and the
scenic and remote national park of Isle Royale, vast stretches of sand dunes like the Indiana
Dunes and Sleeping Bear Dunes line Lake Michigan, and northern Minnesota as well as the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan are filled with small mountains and lakeside cliffs that give them some
of the most beautiful scenery in the country. Easy to settle and agriculturally dominant, it’s
home to an enormous population - 65.36 million people in total, or 19.69% of all Americans.
In my map, I include the entirety of Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
and Iowa, as well as most of Ohio, all but the southern tip of Illinois, the northern
half of Missouri, the northern tip of Kentucky, home to Louisville and the Cincinnati suburbs,
and the eastern thirds of the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska, where most of the states’ residents
reside. The defining feature of the region is agriculture. It’s what drives many people's
livelihoods and what dominates its geographic scenery. As it moves into the Great Plains,
the land becomes more arid and less fertile, and less able to sustain the same kinds of crops,
whereas the Great Lakes form a natural barrier to the north, and to the east and south, Appalachia
and the South are hillier and more forested. Similar to Appalachia, it has a small town,
working class culture, and residents are known for being friendly and cheerful. Besides Chicago,
its large cities feel less cosmopolitan than they do on the coasts and even in parts of the South
and Mountain West. There’s far less tourism, and many people are moving away, so locals who
have stayed there often have deep connections to their communities. It’s home to a number of
major cities - in the first tier is Chicago, by far the region’s largest, the third largest
in the country, and the only American city with a skyline and urban feel to rival New York. Also
in the first tier is automotive giant Detroit, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati,
Kansas City, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Columbus, as well as many smaller cities in the second tier
such as Louisville, Omaha, Dayton, Grand Rapids, Akron, and Toledo. This heavy urbanization
puts Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan all in the ten most populous states in the country. While
rural areas were big in agriculture, the Great Lakes cities of the Midwest were industrial giants
just like Appalachia, making much of it a part of the Rust Belt. They each had specialties - oil
in Cleveland, automobiles in Detroit, grain in Minneapolis, brewing in Milwaukee, consumer goods
in Cincinnati, and so on. It was an extension of America’s industrial heartland, and its
breadbasket on top of that. Just like Appalachia, the United States could not have become the highly
developed powerhouse it is today without the Midwest. Immigrants flocked there seeking cheap
land to farm and make a living. Germans moved west from Pennsylvania, and remain the largest ancestry
group in every Midwestern State, and the US as a whole. Poles and other Eastern Europeans came
to the Great Lakes states like Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, while colder,
more remote agricultural areas like Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas became a destination
for Norwegians, Swedes, and other Scandinavian immigrants, while Dutch immigrants carved out
communities in Michigan. The impact of these different groups is still seen in regional foods,
traditions, and accents, a wide range of which exist from Minnesota and the Dakotas all the
way to Ohio and Kentucky. Trade on the Great Lakes connected the Mississippi River to the East
Coast, which, on top of its many natural resources and agricultural potential, set the stage for
its economic success and population growth. Chicago became the enormous city it is today
because it sat right on the closest point that the watershed of the Mississippi River came to
the Great Lakes, making it an essential conduit for trade and transport of goods produced in the
Midwest. The Great Migration saw Black Americans from the South move north during the beginning
of the twentieth century, to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, and
Indianapolis, looking for jobs in the industrial cities of the Midwest, and giving the region
a large black population which has contributed greatly to their history, culture, and growth.
Like many of these regions, it’s an economic mixed bag. The cost of living is generally lower, homes
and goods are often much more affordable than on the coasts, and suburbs of cities like Minneapolis
and Chicago are quite well-off. Chicago, its cosmopolitan urban core, is a lively and exciting
city home to some of the tallest buildings in the world, and beautiful parks and monuments
stretching across the lakeshore. At the same time, parts of the city are plagued by poverty and
violence, as well as some of the worst de facto segregation seen in the country - a problem seen
across Midwestern cities like Minneapolis and Detroit as well. Detroit for its part was long an
automotive titan, but the decline of industry hit it harder than perhaps anywhere else, and the city
famously filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and smaller cities like
Akron and Toledo have all faced similar problems, and poverty, crime, and economic decline are major
issues. Smaller cities like Fargo, Sioux Falls, Lincoln, Omaha, and Wichita form a cutoff line
near the edge of the Midwest as the soil becomes drier and the fertile landscape transitions to the
more sparsely populated Great Plains. The largest of these, Omaha, was a major railroad hub as the
country pushed westward. An enormous center of population, agriculture, and industry, the United
States would not be what it is today without the Midwest, and though it's often glossed over,
its friendly people, strong sense of community, and beautiful landscapes make it a great place to
call home. I should know, it’s where I live today. Directly to the South of the Midwest is the
South, a region that occupies a huge role in the American popular imagination. It’s one of the
largest regions I’ve drawn and the most populous, home to a stunning 75.52 million people, or
22.75% of all Americans. I’ve included in it the entirety of the states of Arkansas, Mississippi,
Louisiana, and South Carolina, most of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, the western
halves of Kentucky and Tennessee, the northern half of Florida, the eastern extremes of Texas and
Oklahoma, the southern half of Missouri and the southern tip of Illinois. Largely flat, fertile
land with plenty of water has given the region a huge population, especially in cities where the
foothills of the Appalachians meet flatter coastal plains, and waterfalls create mills and industry.
The largest river in the country, the Mississippi, slices through it, and its warm weather and
growing economy have made it a desirable place to live in recent decades, giving it a rapidly
increasing population. It has a number of cities in the first tier, such as Houston, Atlanta,
Tampa, Orlando, Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Jacksonville, and Memphis, and many in the
second tier as well, such as Nashville, Richmond, New Orleans, Raleigh, Birmingham, Baton Rouge,
Columbia, and Charleston. Its geography has shaped its history, culture, and the problems it’s faced.
Before the Midwest, the South was the agricultural heart of the United States. Its warm climate and
flatter, more fertile landscape allowed it to become an agricultural producer while the northern
coastal colonies and later states could not. However, a swampy coastline dominated by marshes,
barrier islands, and dangerous sandbanks made the development of good ports more difficult, though
some, like New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah did develop. For the most part though, the goods
they produced were shipped out through cities like New York. The early colonists were dominated by
elite landowners from England who came not to flee religious persecution but to take advantage of the
wealth the continent had to offer. These wealthy landowners maintained power of both their massive
plantations as well as the political system of these states by creating a permanent underclass.
People from Africa were forcibly taken captive and shipped to the South in a deadly trade.
Those that survived were sold into slavery, where they faced abuse, murder, and brutal forced
and unpaid labor to which they could not leave, harvesting the tobacco and cotton that made
plantation owners so rich. The sheer number of enslaved Africans brought to the south meant
that in many Southern states, their descendants were the majority of the population. But they
were held captive both by physical violence and laws which prevented them from participating
politically, speaking freely, or learning to read. The plantation elite maintained control as well by
convincing the many poor and working class white Southerners, mostly descendants of poorer Irish,
Scottish, English, and Scots-Irish immigrants, that simply due to the color of their skin they
were superior, scapegoating black people as the enemy and justifying it through the creation of
a disgusting white supremacist ideology, which would long outlive slavery and fuel racism and
racial segregation both in the South and across the country for centuries to come. It was the
South’s refusal to give up slavery, an institution that it had become almost singularly dependent
on economically, which led to tensions with a North that could no longer abide with such a moral
outrage. This tension boiled over into the Civil War, the most devastating war in American history,
and a conflict largely fought in the South. It saw towns and cities turned to rubble, and hundreds of
thousands killed. Some Southerners still maintain an unfortunate nostalgia for the Confederacy,
overlooking if not embracing the terrible reasons why the war was fought. After the war’s end, the
ideology which allowed slavery to exist remained institutionalized in Jim Crow Laws that were one
of the darkest chapters in the country’s history. I don’t want to seem like I’m pinning all
the blame on the South, the rest of the US was hardly innocent as well, something that
often gets lost when remembering this part of history. Black Southerners resisted Jim Crow. The
Civil Rights Movement which pushed for an end to segregation and Jim Crow was largely based out of
the South, and saw activists fight for decades at great personal risk for basic freedoms and
human dignity to be respected. Some of the country’s greatest and most well-respected
leaders came out of this fight for freedom. An economic dependence on agriculture also meant
that the South was far less developed than the now industrialized north, and had a lot of catching up
to do. But in the last half century, the story of a region marked by tragedy and poverty has largely
been one of success. The region has diversified its economy - oil extraction and refining boomed
in Texas and Louisiana, banking in Charlotte, manufacturing in Birmingham, and tourism in
Florida and all along the coasts. The crown jewel of this growth has been Atlanta, which has grown
into one of the largest cities in the country, with the world’s busiest airport, a thriving
technology industry, and growth as a cultural center for the region that has seen a booming
music, film, and entertainment industry. The South, along with the West, has seen the
sharpest population growth in the country in recent decades, turning it into the country’s
most populous region. Emblematic of this growth is the fact that the region has seen a reverse
Great Migration. Black Americans from the North, many descendants of people who migrated there
from the South a hundred years ago, are moving to fast growing Southern cities, to a region that is
still home to the largest Black community in the country, across both urban and rural areas.
Though there’s a shared Southern identity, a culture of politeness and formality, a range
of accents that are distinct but share common threads, delicious and distinct cuisine, and a
general bend of political and social conservatism related to the highest rates of religiosity and
church attendance in the country, it’s also far from homogenous. Cultural enclaves like the Cajun
Country of Louisiana, New Orleans, the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, home to Geechee
and Gullah people, and isolated islands like the Outer Banks and Tangier Island are some of the
most culturally unique places in the country. The South’s recent success is not to say that
there aren’t troubles socially or economically. While places like Georgia and North Carolina are
growing and prospering, places like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas remain among
the five poorest states in the country. Regions like the agricultural Mississippi Delta struggle
especially. Shaped by a devastating history, and though it’s not without its problems, the South
is today fast growing, exciting, and successful, and held together by a rich culture, strong
sense of regional identity and community, and promising economy, it is widely considered
one of the best places to live in the country. That’s it for part one - we’ve gone over most of
the eastern half of the United States, and in part two, we’ll explore the fascinating geographic
and cultural differences of the western US, as well as the far flung states and territories
beyond the lower 48. If you enjoyed this video, I think you’ll really enjoy part 2, so make
sure you go give it a watch. On top of that, if you wished I’d gone more in depth on specific
places in this video - I have good news for you! I’m nearly halfway through a 56 part series
providing an in depth analysis into every state, territory, and federal district in the country.
It’s called the US Explained, and if you liked this video it’ll be right up your alley. I’m
also considering turning this video into a series. I've already made a regional breakdown of
California, and there are a few other states with major regional differences as well as other large
countries like Canada, Australia, China, Russia, Brazil, and so on that could be really interesting
to explore. So if you’d like to see these regional breakdown videos become an ongoing series, please
leave a comment and let me know! And remember to click the link in the description to get priority
access to Masterworks! I want to give a big thank you to everyone who has already joined my Patreon.
Through it you can access different things such as behind the scenes videos, early access to maps
I create, an exclusive Discord Q&A with me, ad-free content and shoutouts in my videos. Please
be sure to check out the TII Store, where you’ll be able to purchase all sorts of official That Is
Interesting products and merchandise, including shirts, hoodies, embroidered beanies, masks,
mugs, embroidered backpacks, laptop stickers and sleeves, and so on. I really appreciate the
well over 700 of you who have already joined my Discord server. If you haven’t joined the
Discord server yet, it's a great place to continue conversations about the topics discussed
in these videos, interact with fellow viewers, and help provide information and suggestions
for future videos. It’s a great community, and we do fun stuff like geography game nights,
live podcasts, and so on. I’ll put links to both the Patreon and the Discord in the comments.
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