The "Belt" Regions Of The United States

when looking at a map of the US you can divide it in various ways regions States counties Urban or rural among others but one specific one is belts you may have heard of some before like the Rust Belt in the past commonly known as the manufacturing belt or the steel belt Northeastern and Central northern states where heavy industrialization and some economic stagnation is now common or the Bible Belt a collection of states where specifically in the American South Evangelical and fundamentalist protestantism are prevalent now calling it a division of the country is kind of wrong this is more of a way of labeling specific areas of the country some overlap and some areas don't belong to any specific belt but what is a belt the belt regions of the United States are portions of the country that share certain characteristics the belt terminology was first applied to Growing regions for various crops which often follow lines of latitude because those are more likely to have similar climates the illusion was to a long clothing belt since they roughly took those shapes on a map the usage has expanded since then to other climate economic and cultural shared characteristics plus these regions are not formally defined at least that's the Wikipedia definition so which are these belts there's at least 20 of them so get ready for me quickly reading off this list so we get to know them all by name alphabetically there are the following belts the banana B black B corn cotton fruit Frost Indiana gas Jello-O lead Pine pretzel rice rust salt snow stroke sun unchurched and Wheats among a few others now we're not going to cover all of them in this video I think they will be a little boring and repetitive instead I chose around nine or 10 that I think teach us something interesting about these areas that make up the belts so let's jump into it starting with the Bible Belt the Bible Belt is a part of the Southern United States and includes one Midwestern State Missouri here conservative Protestant Christianity is very influential and people attend church more than in other parts of the country in it fewer people identify as non-religious compared to the west and Northeast regions for example only 12% of people in Alabama say they're not religious while Tennessee has the highest percentage of Evangelical protestantism at 52% the influence of this religion is strongest in certain parts of Georgia Tennessee Alabama Mississippi North Carolina Virginia West Virginia South Carolina and even stretching as far as Texas the term Bible Belt was first used by American journalist HL Menin in 1924 and he meant that religious beliefs were strongly held in this area this is connected to the early rural nature of the region as well as specific Evangelical movements which began in the 1800s now it's used in other countries too to describe regions with strong religious beliefs such as the Netherlands these usually have political implications with States or regions belonging to them usually voting more conservatively on the opposite end we have the unchurched belt which was labeled in opposition to the Bible Belt defining states where religion isn't as important in 1985 researchers found that California Oregon and Washington had pretty low church membership rates by 2000 several States including Oregon Washington Alaska Nevada and West Virginia also began reporting even lower religious adherance by 2006 Nevada and New England had the lowest Church attendance rates followed by Oregon Washington and California a 2008 Gallup poll even showed that belief in God was also lower in the Western United States when compared to other regions of the country however there's still debate whether the western United States is still the most irreligious region as New England now has more people una affiliated with any faith and in addition although one wouldn't tell just by the name we have the jello belt this one is also known as the Mormon Corridor or the Mormon belt portraying western states with a large Mormon population apparently it's called Jello due to a stereotype that these people like it a lot maybe that's what they're referring to in the Fallout TV show when they have the jell cake all the time in the vault but anyway it might not be so much of just a stereotype apparently according to the Los Angeles Times Salt Lake City holds the title of America's Jello eating Capital Mary Jane Kinkade of craft Foods the maker of jello even stated that every resident of Salt Lake City on average purchases two boxes of jello annually which is twice the national average additionally Utah residents consume also twice as much lime Jell-O as anyone else in the world the Church of the Saints however has not shown great affection towards the term but this is what the belt is the region of the US where Mormon religion is most concentrated and what if you wanted to browse the internet as if you were living in one of these Regional belts well with npn you can do it without 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sharing files quicker or for gaming so get nordvpn on a 2-year plan and enjoy 4 months for free at nordvpn.com snowledge it's risk-free with nord's 30-day money back guarantee and now let's get back to the video moving on from religion we have the other iconic one I mentioned at the start the Rust Belt it was once known as the steel belt it's a region in the Northeast and Midwestern United States sometimes painted along with parts of the northern southern states it includes areas like Western New York Pennsylvania Ohio West Virginia Indiana Illinois Michigan's lower Peninsula southeastern Wisconsin and small parts of Kentucky New Jersey and the St louw metropolitan area in Missouri the term rust Bel refers to the decline of Industry especially steel making since steel rusts automobile manufacturing and coal mining due to factors like de-industrialization economic decline population loss and Urban Decay sort of in a vicious cycle where each cause all of the rest while Boston and New York adapted and shifted their economy towards the third sector many of these other states failed to the term became popular in the 1980s contrasting with the booming Sun Belt in the South which is the next on our list it includes the southeast and southwest regions of the US with climates ranging from deserts to tropical zones after World War II many people moved to the sunb Belt seeking warm weather retirements and job opportunities and still lots of people have been moving to the Sun Belt lately with 12 out of the 15 fastest growing US cities located there as of 2023 and what about the black belt it stretches along specific counties of Louisiana Alabama Mississippi Georgia and the Carolinas as well as Virginia by 1894 political commentators use the term black belt so often that it was already very well known in the US and by 1900 the term was commonly used to denote the geopolitical region the 2020 census map shows us how this is still a reality today its origin is related to the social history of slavery and black labor within the southern region which is coincidentally also known for its rich black soil giving the second meaning to the term this area historically centered around cotton plantations also included tobacco near the Virginia North Carolina border controlled mainly by wealthy white people the land was cultivated by predominantly black slaves who often made up the majority of population in many counties following 1945 mechanization replaced much of the labor force leading to the great migration of workers to cities in the Midwest and West instead despite changes in labor Dynamics the term black belt persists and the Cotton Belt which is also known in the region is necessarily connected to it for the same reasons to wrap things up and like like I mentioned at the start the concept first emerged with Agriculture and farming so what are some of those belts that still remain today one example is the Corn Belt which spans from Ohio to parts of Kansas Nebraska and dtas it includes portions of Minnesota in the north and Missouri and Kentucky in the South Iowa and Illinois are the central hubs of the region collectively producing a third of the Nations corn a disproportionate amount considering its size the reason being adequate soil and Federal subsidies or the wheat belt which almost divides the US in half and consists of the areas where wheat is the primary crop the rice belt is another example a stretch of counties that produces almost all of the rice in the US since it has the terrain and weather conditions that encourage it and then we have other ones like the frost belt a region known for its icy Winters and heavy snowfall it includes the entirety of New England and much of the midatlantic and midwest regions which is different for instance from the snowb which is made up of three areas near the great lakes that get a lot of snowfall the reason for all the snow is something called the lake effect snow which happens when cold dry air moves over the warmer water of a lake picks up moisture and then drops it as snow when it moves Inland each of the five Great Lakes actually has its own snow belt lake ontarios is in Upstate New York Lake Aries stretches from Cleveland Ohio to New York Lake Michigan covers the western part of Michigan and Lake superiors includes Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula so those are the so-called belt regions of the United States some defined and named based on economic factors others on cultural or religious ones and some due to the origin of the belt concept belonging to an area where a specific crop is grown here we mostly understood why the regions have these names if you want to learn about why and how each belt came to be this way like we did for instance with the black belt or the Bible Belt I can also make dedicated videos on each do you agree with these belt regions or would you remove slash add any states or part of states to them in addition are there any other interesting belts that you know of that I didn't mention here either in the US or any other place I know for instance India has a Hindi belt let me know in the comments thanks for watching this video subscribe to catch future ones and I will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 85,118

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: yUT48k0vHOk

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2024