The American nations across North America
37 comments
·September 22, 2025827a
uncletaco
I can see the similarities between Amarillo and Knoxville. Honestly every city on I-40 feels similar to me until Albuquerque, having spent time in a number of Tennessee cities and having to visit wife's hometown in Texas.
Low key writing this has made me realize how much of my life has just been migrating up and down I-40 for various reasons.
GLdRH
> "El Norte"
> All the way in the south
roughly
Some additional context: Colin Woodard wrote American Nations (https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-nations-a-history-of-t...) a bit over a decade ago, which goes into much more detail on these groupings. By and large, he’s drawing lines by immigration patterns - which areas were originally settled by which peoples, and how did that affect the cultures of those regions. It’s an interesting book and an interesting lens - you can nitpick on the sub-district level, but I think the overall thesis has some explanatory power.
strict9
Am I reading this correctly in that Chicago is the only section with dashes indicating a blend of regions?
Seems accurate but interesting this is the only area with crossover.
mixdup
Yeah, this weirdly splits the Atlanta metro area in half between two regions based on the counties, and while north Atlanta and south Atlanta metro have decidedly differing cultures (along mostly but not entirely racial lines) the split is completely arbitrary on county lines with Fulton County, GA jutting upwards as if the 10 miles across that county don't represent anything on either side of it
HankStallone
I'd imagine all the borders are fuzzy, but maybe that's the only spot where a broad enough area was that way to note it.
I live pretty much on the border between two regions on the map, and you can definitely see a difference just driving one county north or south. But of course you also see exceptions on both sides, in both individual homes or small towns that seem more suited for the other side of the border.
aarestad
notable nitpick: calling DC a “federal entity” is mixing up the concepts of nation and state. (It’s also major erasure of the culture of people - mostly Black - who actually live there!)
stryan
The whole section around DC is..questionable. PG, Fairfax, and Loudoun counties are all in the Tidewater group that extends down to the NC triangle. Meanwhile Montgomery County, which is right over the Potomoc from Fairfax/Loudoun, is in a separate group that's shared with Philadelphia and Ohio? MoCo, Fairfax, and Loudoun are all incredibly similar both culturally and economically (i.e. wealthy DC suburbanites) and should either all be in the Tidewater category or in some separate "Capital Area" nation.
lot3oo
The red part of Canada should be "Loyalists" - british decendents + various elite / slave owners that moved north after American independance.
Very much not the same as US "midlands" in my opinion.
mooreds
This reminds me of an old SF book, Ecotopia, where the west coast of the USA secedes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia
Wow, hadn't thought about that book in years (the action takes place in 1999!).
rayiner
A better way to understand the cultural differences in the U.S. https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultura...
righthand
Non-Amazon link for Albion’s Seed: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/01bed638-8991-4afe-a530-...
chasing
Anyone who thinks Austin is more culturally aligned with Indianapolis than San Antonio is a maniac.
righthand
Agreed. What the western parts of this map avoids is that the cultures are a mix of mostly descendent European cultures (Norwegian, Irish, German, etc.) and Hispanic cultures especially in the south differs strongly once you go north of Colorado.
dehrmann
Same for Minneapolis, Boston, and Des Moines.
PaulHoule
I noticed that recent research showed that South Dakota has a high level of dark triad characteristics:
https://www.newsweek.com/psychology-psychopaths-dark-triad-m...
and my first though is "What's different about South Dakota and North Dakota" and got told by a friend who's a geography nerd that much of South Dakota is really weird and isolated and different from other states.
wagwang
Whys PEI under new france lol, this map feels like engagement bait.
ojbyrne
Look again, it's under Yankeedom. Anticosti and the Magdelenes are nearby and under New France.
wagwang
Oh yea ur right.
tokai
It seems so. Greenland as First Nation is straight up chauvinism.
Apocryphon
Greenland is mostly populated by Inuits
tokai
Precisely
«First Nations (French: Premières Nations) is a term used to identify Indigenous peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis.»
If you can make space for New Netherland, it doesn't make any sense to collapse all northern native cultures together, when they are just as or even more diverse than the US east cost.
throaway1988
[dead]
righthand
The “Far West” (terrible name) seems to be just a lazy grouping of most of the area west of the Mississippi. Definitely has a very costal biased view of the world.
Lammy
Really weird to not list Deseret as its own thing honestly (all of Utah, Colorado west of the Divide, Idaho up to Rexburg, most of Nevada that isn't Tahoe/Reno/Vegas)
Apocryphon
Same as it ever was. The "Empty Quarter"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_Amer...
bitwize
I'm reminded of the children's book Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport, the first half of which is some kid's stereotypes of what life is like "Out West" (including the title). Then his family completes the move "Out West", and finds that things are quite a bit different from how he expects.
Marrying a woman from Louisiana has been similarly instructive to me as regards "the South".
Tbh, I can't speak to a lot of the regions on here, but the grouping of "Greater Appalachia" is so wild. The idea that mid-Indiana, west-Texas, and eastern Tennessee have anything in common, from a cultural, immigration, quality of life, anything perspective, has to have been an idea proposed by someone who has only read books about those regions.