What does the Eastern United States include?
 

What does the Eastern United States? Is it a macroegion that includes the part of the country that's not "the West"? Or is it the Eastern Seaboard or Northeast only? Something else?

It's everything east of the Mississippi River.

The Eastern Seaboard and the Northeast, as their names inherently tell you, are subdivisions of the east. If they were synonymous with the east you would not need to add qualifiers like "seaboard" or "north."

"east of the mississippi" has always been my understanding of the term, as in the dichotomy of the "the east" vs. "the west".

it was awfully nice of mother nature to grace our nation with an absolutely MASSIVE, mostly vertical river that neatly cleaves the country in two.

it's a grossly oversimplified term and not terribly useful these days, but it is what it is.

something else. just to make things more interesting.

Should have added east of the 98th or 100th meridian options.

https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/image...n_2005_lrg.jpg

It is pretty amazing that a river all the way in Alberta can flow to New Orleans.

Not West Virginia. It's West.

yeah, but nobody refers to missouri and st. louis as western, anymore. they were “born” as “western” things, though (not purely southern or northern which is when the discussion becomes confused).

i’ve always considered the “west” in that simple dichotomy to open up somewhere around the flint hills on I-70 just west of wichita.

yeah, that's why i said "it's a grossly oversimplified term and not terribly useful these days, but it is what it is."


but really, we should just turn this thread into an ode to to the mighty mississippi and her massive drainage basin, just like the great lakes thread.

Was it ever? I thought St. Louis was more or less an outpost to the west...hence the Gateway Arch? Lewis and Clark started their expedition from near there? St. Louis and Missouri have separate origins; the former predates latter. I see MO as western/ frontier since it was carved out of the Louisiana Purchase but the French established STL in the 18th century. /history nerd

yes, in early historical literature is was, same time period (and before) the “northwest” meant wisconsin, etc. before the civil war. that sort of really had slid west towards kansas city before/after the civil war... think of jesse james in missouri, etc. i even have seen missouri referred to as a “southwestern” state by chicago/northeastern based publishers, etc, before the population center migrated into illinois/missouri. people really didnt have a good handle on the geography west of the mississippi.

St Louis, in the historical context, was where the West started on the western bank of the Mississippi River. It was the starting point for expeditions and settlers heading west in the 1800's.

But it's really the mighty Allegheny. The watershed of the nation.

The "Ohio River" (actually the Allegheny River in true hydrological terms... and as the natives correctly considered it) is 2/3 greater than the Mississippi which flows into the Ohio at Cairo, IL.

La Belle Riviere... according to the French... one river that starts in north central PA and empties in the Gulf at New Orleans.

the mississippi river doesnt end at cairo, though, same way the mississippi doesn’t end at the great confluence with the missouri which stretches to the rocky mountains. the mississippi doesnt flow into the ohio the way we define it. that isn’t to say that the ohio isn’t a mighty river...st. louis sort of functioned as the economic bookend of the ohio river (and the mississippi for that matter due to the rapids just north of st. louis). one could make an economic/cultural argument that the ohio river in fact ended at st. louis.

Technically, they started together from Louisville and Lewis started the river journey from Pittsburgh.

Lewis built the boat on the Monongahela south of Pittsburgh and launched from the Monongahela Wharf at Pittsburgh in 1803.

He picked up Clark in Louisville and then they made it down to St. Louis, where they formed their group and served as the jumping off point into the unknown West to explore the Louisiana Territory.

but the ohio/allegheny branch doesn't neatly and cleanly cleave the nation into east and west, which is why having the river named "mississippi" from the gulf of mexico all the way up to minnesota makes much more sense, even if it's not hydrologically accurate.

From a hydrological standpoint... not from an arbitrary naming standpoint... the Mississippi (hydrologically the Missouri) is a tributary of the Ohio (which is hydrologically the Allegheny). So, from a hydrological standpoint, the Mississippi does flow into the Ohio (which has a significantly larger flow volume)... or we should correctly (from a hydrological perspective) say the Missouri flows into the Allegheny.

That's the rub... rivers only end when they go into a larger body of water, be it an ocean, lake, or larger river. Only names for rivers end.

Right, agreed. It's just a naming thing. The perfect N-S alignment of the Mississippi forms a definite, impressive barrier/dividing line.

I voted for - 'The Northeast and South Atlantic states'

Memphis is not in the East and neither is St. Paul.

I would say that the Eastern US is all the states east of the Mississippi. The East Coast is the Northeast and Southeastern states with an Atlantic coastline. Much of the Midwest/Great Lakes and Southern states besides Texas, Oklahoma, part of Louisiana, etc, are part of the East.