If you got to draw the map of the USA
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  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  If you got to draw the map of the USA
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Author Topic: If you got to draw the map of the USA  (Read 8015 times)
muon2
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« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2004, 01:16:03 PM »

As to the first, it was deliberate to leave out Clark and Fremont, though I'd say they'd fall into a neutral territory.  Kind of like the Border States in the Civil War.

To Twin Falls, yes it most certainly should be considered in Utah.  It's also similar to Clark and Fremont but just edges over to the other side.  I was in Twin a few days back, after coming home from Utah.  You get this feeling that you're still kind of there.  Smiley

Other "border counties" would be Minidoka, Jerome, and Gooding.  Perhaps, Butte, but I think they fall considerably more on the Idaho side.
In that case I'll put Clark and Fremont into MT for now. I'd like them to be connected to a state and there doesn't seem to be any road to connect them to western ID.  The move adds one Congressional seat to UT at the expense of ID. The updated map is:
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cwelsch
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« Reply #26 on: October 17, 2004, 04:55:55 AM »

Anyone who tried to divide Texas could never walk the streets in that state again.
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muon2
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« Reply #27 on: October 17, 2004, 01:35:56 PM »

Anyone who tried to divide Texas could never walk the streets in that state again.
LOL, so true.

My brother lived and worked in TX for many years, and I spent many weeks on trips to work on the Super Collider in the early 1990's.  They surely would never split, but I met many in TX who describe three separate cultures centered around Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Austin is a convenient meeting place in the middle of those three.
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ilikeverin
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« Reply #28 on: October 17, 2004, 02:37:22 PM »



(Whoops, I forgot to label WI and IL, oh well)
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CollectiveInterest
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« Reply #29 on: October 17, 2004, 03:06:58 PM »

Have you seen this map?

http://www.massinc.org/commonwealth/new_map_exclusive/ten_regions_index.html
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Akno21
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« Reply #30 on: October 17, 2004, 03:19:40 PM »


Nice, I love my reigon as presented there.
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muon2
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« Reply #31 on: October 17, 2004, 04:35:05 PM »

It's been shown in the past, but its's been a while. So, it's useful to show it again.

However, I don't care for a number of characterizations in the map. I think the authors concentrated too much of voting patterns and topography, and not enough on culture and values. They also forced the populations to be too equal, and married regions that really wouldn't go together. For example:

1) Minneapolis/St. Paul is nothing like Memphis
2) Boston is not like Seattle
3) Columbus has a very different feel than Omaha
4) Concord NH and Cheyenne WY are very different small state capitals
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Josh/Devilman88
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« Reply #32 on: October 17, 2004, 09:30:35 PM »

I live in Southern Lowlands
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WMS
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« Reply #33 on: October 18, 2004, 10:15:20 PM »

For completeness on this thread, I'll link to my effort from another thread earlier this year.

In New Mexico, you should probably put Lincoln and Otero Counties with West Texas-Oklahoma,
and put Catron County with Northern Arizona...
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muon2
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« Reply #34 on: October 20, 2004, 12:04:14 AM »

For completeness on this thread, I'll link to my effort from another thread earlier this year.

In New Mexico, you should probably put Lincoln and Otero Counties with West Texas-Oklahoma,
and put Catron County with Northern Arizona...

I actually started with your quote below:
But I do know the first thing I'd do is attach El Paso to New Mexico. I'll post some of the other things later.

Going off of that idea...move the following counties to Texas: Otero/Lincoln/Chaves/Eddy/Lea/DeBaca/Roosevelt/Curry/ Quay/Harding/Union...they're basically Far West Texas anyway. Or, take those counties and add them to the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles to create one new state. Put the rest of NM, including El Paso, in Arizona. NM actually wanted to be one state with Arizona, but Arizona voted it down...

The problem I had was that If Otero and Lincoln went to West Texas, the state of Upper Rio Grande became very pinched at El Paso. I relied on other sources to move Alamogordo to Upper Rio Grande, and then I let Lincoln County go along with it. The physicist in me also liked the idea of keeping White Sands with Los Alamos. If Alamogordo really should stay with Roswell instead of Las Cruces, I'll take another look.

On the West side I thought about moving San Juan and McKinley into the sate of Nevada with northern AZ. The principal reason would be to keep the Navajo Nation together in one state. Moving them with Cibola and Catron could make some sense. Originally I just followed the state line, but I'm open to suggestions. If Nevada includes parts of NM, do I need to revisit southern UT as well?
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WMS
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« Reply #35 on: October 21, 2004, 09:59:13 PM »

For completeness on this thread, I'll link to my effort from another thread earlier this year.

In New Mexico, you should probably put Lincoln and Otero Counties with West Texas-Oklahoma,
and put Catron County with Northern Arizona...

I actually started with your quote below:
But I do know the first thing I'd do is attach El Paso to New Mexico. I'll post some of the other things later.

Going off of that idea...move the following counties to Texas: Otero/Lincoln/Chaves/Eddy/Lea/DeBaca/Roosevelt/Curry/ Quay/Harding/Union...they're basically Far West Texas anyway. Or, take those counties and add them to the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles to create one new state. Put the rest of NM, including El Paso, in Arizona. NM actually wanted to be one state with Arizona, but Arizona voted it down...

The problem I had was that If Otero and Lincoln went to West Texas, the state of Upper Rio Grande became very pinched at El Paso. I relied on other sources to move Alamogordo to Upper Rio Grande, and then I let Lincoln County go along with it. The physicist in me also liked the idea of keeping White Sands with Los Alamos. If Alamogordo really should stay with Roswell instead of Las Cruces, I'll take another look.

On the West side I thought about moving San Juan and McKinley into the sate of Nevada with northern AZ. The principal reason would be to keep the Navajo Nation together in one state. Moving them with Cibola and Catron could make some sense. Originally I just followed the state line, but I'm open to suggestions. If Nevada includes parts of NM, do I need to revisit southern UT as well?
Re: Otero County. Well, Upper Rio Grande does become pinched, because in places it doesn't extend too far from the river. But I'm curious what the 'other sources' are that you mentioned that thought Alamogordo should be with El Paso...? And Los Alamos is an island in the middle of the Upper Rio Grande...it is not at all like its surroundings, and is a high-tech Republican (and Anglo, I think) outpost. But county boundaries are often drawn badly in any event.

Re: The NorthWest. Moving San Juan, McKinley, Cibola, and Catron into Greater Nevada would be an excellent idea! Smiley And southern UT probably should be moved there as well - the Dine are one of the major, intact, Native groups in the U.S. Perhaps the southwest bootheel of NM could be added to southern Arizona?
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muon2
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« Reply #36 on: October 22, 2004, 11:08:54 AM »

For completeness on this thread, I'll link to my effort from another thread earlier this year.

In New Mexico, you should probably put Lincoln and Otero Counties with West Texas-Oklahoma,
and put Catron County with Northern Arizona...

I actually started with your quote below:
But I do know the first thing I'd do is attach El Paso to New Mexico. I'll post some of the other things later.

Going off of that idea...move the following counties to Texas: Otero/Lincoln/Chaves/Eddy/Lea/DeBaca/Roosevelt/Curry/ Quay/Harding/Union...they're basically Far West Texas anyway. Or, take those counties and add them to the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles to create one new state. Put the rest of NM, including El Paso, in Arizona. NM actually wanted to be one state with Arizona, but Arizona voted it down...

The problem I had was that If Otero and Lincoln went to West Texas, the state of Upper Rio Grande became very pinched at El Paso. I relied on other sources to move Alamogordo to Upper Rio Grande, and then I let Lincoln County go along with it. The physicist in me also liked the idea of keeping White Sands with Los Alamos. If Alamogordo really should stay with Roswell instead of Las Cruces, I'll take another look.

On the West side I thought about moving San Juan and McKinley into the sate of Nevada with northern AZ. The principal reason would be to keep the Navajo Nation together in one state. Moving them with Cibola and Catron could make some sense. Originally I just followed the state line, but I'm open to suggestions. If Nevada includes parts of NM, do I need to revisit southern UT as well?
Re: Otero County. Well, Upper Rio Grande does become pinched, because in places it doesn't extend too far from the river. But I'm curious what the 'other sources' are that you mentioned that thought Alamogordo should be with El Paso...? And Los Alamos is an island in the middle of the Upper Rio Grande...it is not at all like its surroundings, and is a high-tech Republican (and Anglo, I think) outpost. But county boundaries are often drawn badly in any event.

Re: The NorthWest. Moving San Juan, McKinley, Cibola, and Catron into Greater Nevada would be an excellent idea! Smiley And southern UT probably should be moved there as well - the Dine are one of the major, intact, Native groups in the U.S. Perhaps the southwest bootheel of NM could be added to southern Arizona?
As I mentioned on my link, much of the basis for may map was the 1981 work by Joel Garreau in his book Nine Nations of North America. His divisions are cultural not political, so I didn't look at voting much when dividing the counties. I started by dividing along his "national" lines, and tried to follow them most closely. The "state" boundaries within a "nation", used existing political and geographical boundaries as much as possible.

In the book, the Rio Grande valley is within MexAmerica which runs from LA to the gulf coast. Philosophically, he found this region to be typified by a boom-town spirit, and a willingness to accomdate growth, even against natural obstacles. In eastern NM, he took the boundary to be the Pecos River, east of which was the Breadbasket. The Breadbasket was typified by its ties to the farming culture of the Great Plains and a self-determination to be able to live off of the land.

Since I was following county lines, I included those counties in the Pecos valley in the Breadbasket state of West Texas, and those to the west in the MexAmerica state of the Upper Rio Grande. Since I've not been to any part of NM other than Alberquerque, I started with the book definition, then looked to see if there were any discernible differences based on web info.  Poking around the Alamogordo web sites and census numbers I didn't see anything to shift Otero to go with the counties east across the mountains. When I looked at the pictures and highlights, Otero looked more like AZ than OK. Feel free to advise me on other cultural factors I overlooked.

In the northwest I will shift some counties. West of the Continental Divide, Garreau set old Route 66 as the dividing line between MexAmerica and the nation of the Empty Quarter. I can see extending that farther to the southeast to Catron.
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cwelsch
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« Reply #37 on: October 23, 2004, 03:58:59 AM »

I like that 10 regions map.  I probably have good reason to like it since my two favorite states (NH and WY) are both sagebrush, my preferred region.
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muon2
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« Reply #38 on: October 25, 2004, 04:21:53 PM »

For completeness on this thread, I'll link to my effort from another thread earlier this year.
I've updated the link and map to reflect the move of northwestern NM counties to Nevada. To keep the population above 2.5 million, I made some adjustments in south TX.
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Schiff for Senate
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« Reply #39 on: July 21, 2021, 04:25:36 PM »

#1.) Merge the Dakotas for starters, of course.
#2.) Divide California into Northern and Southern California (with the border between the two at the northern borders of San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino Counties).
#3.) Separate NYC and Long Island (as one state) from the rest of NY.
#4.) In Illinois, make Cook, DuPage and Will Counties one state (Chicago), and the rest of IL another. #5.) Merge WY and MT.
#6.) Split TX into several states as follows: the Expanded Panhandle (consisting of every county that is north of Throckmorton County's southern border and to the west of Archer County's eastern border), Rio Grande (including the counties of El Paso; Hudspeth; Culberson; Jeff Davis; Reeves; Presidio; Brewster; Pecos; Terrell; Crockett; Val Verde; Kinney; Uvalde; Medina; Maverick; Zavala; Frio; Dimmitt; La Salle; Webb; Atascosa; McMullen; Duval; Zapata; Jim Hogg; Jim Wells; Brooks; Starr; Hidalgo; Cameron; Willacy; Kenedy; Kleberg and Nueces) and Texas (the remaining 166 counties).
    6a.) Add Oklahoma's westernmost three counties (Cimarron, Texas, Beaver) to the
           Expanded Panhandle.
#7.) Combine KY and TN.
#8.) Combine AL and MS.
#9.) Add Baldwin County, AL, to Florida.
#10.) Move Buchanan; Tazewell; Giles; Dickenson and Bland Counties to WV.
#11.) Move Boyd, Lawrence, Carter, Elliott, Morgan, Johnson, Martin, Greenup, Rowan, Pike, Floyd, Magoffin, Letcher, Knott, Perry, Leslie and Breathitt Counties to WV.
#12.) Merge VT, ME and NH.
#13.) Merge HI and AK. Why not? It'd be fun to see where they place their capital, how they vote, etcetra.
#14.) Move the 4 WV counties north of Wetzel into Ohio.
#15.) Merge NJ and DE.
#16.) Divide Iowa into two states, East Iowa and West Iowa. Every county whose western border is not farther west than Warren's will be in East Iowa, and the residue in West Iowa. (Leaving 52 counties in East Iowa and 47 in West Iowa.)
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