People who live near a state border: how noticeable is the difference between states?

37 comments

1. I live in PA close to both OH and NY borders. Biggest difference is gas prices. Next is road tolls (NY sucks for this). Otherwise, not a whole lot.

2. My hometown is on the Texas/Oklahoma border. Texas has noticeably better roads. There’s typically always a (now closed) adult video store on the Texas side and a Casino and/or dispensary on the Oklahoma. The people on the Texas side fly more Texas flags than American flags.

3. Grew up on the NH/VT border. Landscape is exactly the same. Taxes and laws are not. There used to be a pretty noticeable difference in the roads during snowstorms as well, NH did a better job keeping up with plowing and salting than Vermont did.

4. Georgia doesn’t sell booze on Sunday, Floriduh does.

5. Not really much at all as the bleed over for each area is significant. Now, get a little deeper into each state and the changes become more significant.

6. Hardly. I drove to Memphis to the office from time to time, and there’s literally no difference besides population density.

7. Geographically there’s not a difference. But there’s definitely a shift in the kinds of businesses you see. Wyoming has lots of stuff you don’t see in Utah. Drive through liquor stores, cigarette shops, fireworks stores, etc.

8. NJ interstates are better maintained than PA, but the drivers are also more crazy. Other than that not a ton of difference

9. The SC/NC border isn’t that different with the exception of more palm trees and numerous firework stores throughout South Carolina.

10. I don’t want to name the state and town, since I don’t want to call them out on the internet. So I’ll change the names a bit in this post. The general details are 100% true though.

    My friends were all smokers back in college, and one day we decided to just get into the car and drive wherever. Right across the state border we came across “Billy’s Discount Cigarette Emporium”.

    Cigarettes were pretty expensive in our state, so of course my smoker friends wanted to stop there. “Billy” was true to his word: entire cartons of cigarettes for less than it would have cost to buy a single pack in our home state.

    My friends practically stuffed my trunk full of all the cartons they bought.

11. Wisconsin is notably shittier

12. I live in Kentucky, right across the river from Indiana. It is EXTREMELY different. We don’t go over there if we can help it. However, it is much cheaper to live over there.

13. Not that different. The Wisconsin side is much more rural and thus probably more politically conservative. In fact all of the states bordering us are more politically conservative, some more than others. But in general both areas value the outdoors, have good state parks, similar businesses and so on.

    Western Wisconsin itself is quite different from eastern Wisconsin though.

    Now ask me about the city we border.

14. While I don’t, I have family that lives almost right on the Florida Alabama border. It’s definitely noticeable. The height of the buildings is noticeable right away. Driving on the highway and the road literally changes at the border. Although I believe they were working on it the last time I went that way. Cleaning up after a big storm and you could tell where the cutoff was for the cleaning crews. Although certain areas were cleaned up right away, it was more noticeable right around the border.

    The height of the buildings though is really the giveaway. Within a few minutes of crossing back into Florida I almost always mention the sun comes back out. But it’s because of the really tall buildings

    Edit: almost forgot this one. All of the little stores selling Lottery tickets as soon as you cross into Florida.

15. A little, especially if there’s a physical separation, like mountains, desert, or a river. Outside of laws being different, a physical barrier does a lot psychologically. This is more true in larger states, not NE states where you can travel through 5 in a day.

    I travel to Portland regularly. Vancouver, WA is a suburb 15-20 mins from downtown Portland. Some spots are closer to downtown than far SE Portland, but it’s a different city and state. They are separated by the Columbia River. Vancouver is significantly more conservative than Portland. It’s less “cultured”. I mean, it’s the literal birthplace of the Patriot Prayer hate group.

    Some of this is shaped by the lack of state income tax in WA, cheaper land, cheaper property taxes, and looser laws, so different laws attract different demographics.

    Drive from the panhandle of Florida to southern Georgia and there’s not a huge difference.

16. Things cost more to buy in WA and I can pump my own gas there. Otherwise it’s pretty much the same

17. As soon as you cross the border the quality of the roads decline precipitously and they expect you to pay sales taxes for the privilege apparently.

18. Very little.

    I grew up by the MA/RI border. One of my friends lived in the last house in Massachusetts, so if we wandered into his neighbors yard, we were in another state. We’d go grocery shopping there, going to the city had an equal chance of being Boston or Providence, it just really didn’t matter what state I was in and as a kid, I bet that a lot of the time I didn’t even know.

    I now live in Las Vegas. Very close to both California and Arizona. I can buy lottery tickets in those states but can’t easily find a casino. But overall? The cultures are very, very similar. Same stores, same gas stations, same attitudes. The differences are starker than in the northeast, but that’s probably because there’s at least 50 miles of empty land between habitations.

19. Sometimes you’ll see a sign noting that you’ve changed states. Other than that I’d never even notice except for the sudden drastic change in gas prices between states

20. Maine and NH? Essentially no difference except higher property taxes in NH and no sales tax but you don’t really notice that driving. I drive some places and if I miss the sign I don’t even know I’m in the other state.

21. Driven through the CA/AZ border plenty of times, Yuma is just kinda one sprawling city. I think it’s technically on the AZ side but semantics

22. It depends on context. Just driving across the bridge to PA doesn’t feel that different. But suddenly you have to pump your own gas, or tip for full service. If you live and work in PA you get no state medical leave benefits, so I wouldn’t have been able to take 8 paid weeks off when my daughter was born. Property taxes are way way lower, but housing price inflation goes up the closer you are to Philly.

    I think these things only affect where you choose to rent or buy a house if you live near the border. Other than that they don’t come into play that often.

23. I live in Michigan near the Ohio border, you can literally feel the difference in the roads when you pass the Ohio border sign

    (For people who don’t know, Michigan has terrible roads)

24. There are hardly any differences across borders other than maybe some street/road signage. But that change change town to town even within state.

25. I live pretty close to the Michigan border. If I take US 23, I notice there seem to be fewer trees as soon as I cross into Michigan. I used to be able to say that I noticed a much greater highway patrol presence when traveling through Ohio as opposed to Michigan, but I don’t see OHP on highways as much anymore (I actually see more of them in the city, though to be fair some of the major streets in my hometown are also highways).

26. The AZ/UT border is much more Mormon than the rest of Arizona for sure, but the gradation is gradual. The biggest difference is actually usually the border of the Navajo Nation; you go from 50-80% Navajo in border towns to basically 100% Navajo on the reservation proper, with very different laws, infrastructure, culture, level of water access etc etc.

27. I remember crossing the Mason-Dixon line between PA and MD on I-70 once and you could feel the state line in the difference in road quality.

28. Not very, the counties even have the same name.

29. There is more a difference in geographical boundaries than actual states. For example, North Georgia is much more different than South Georgia in comparison to the difference between North Georgia and Tennessee.

    Totally different feel depending on what part of the country you are on though; the difference between Miami, Chicago, Phoenix, and Philadelphia is very noticeable. But if you’re just talking about driving in between states, it’s usually hard to tell you’ve crossed state boundaries if it wasn’t for a sign that says “welcome”

30. When I lived near the IN-IL border, I could tell a distinct difference in road conditions and litter from IL (poorer condition, lots of litter) to IN (better roads, less litter).

31. I think there’s a pretty noticable difference between North Carolina and South Carolina, even without the thousands of billboards advertising fireworks. The trees get more sparse so the sky seems bigger, along the east coast things get noticably more beachy, and despite the speed limit on 95 going up EVERYONE DRIVES SO MUCH SLOWER.

32. MD/WV/PA – you can tell by the roads. Quality of pavement and maintenance. Also road signs; different states use different designs and naming/numbering conventions for state roads.

    State road signage is the most accurate indicator though; a lot of the differences in paving, local signage, and favored intersection or on/off ramp configurations can be noticed for different counties within a state too.

33. When my son was young and I’d drive him and his friends around I asked them, while still in Indiana before crossing into Ohio, what would happen if I was pulled over with a joint. In Indiana it’s off to jail and charged like a DUI and loose my license for 6 months. As I crossed into Ohio I said now the cop takes my joint, writes me a ticket, and sends me on my way. Lesson, party in Ohio not Indiana

34. When I was younger my grandparents liked in Sharon Pennsylvania on State Line road, they actually lived in Ohio the people across the street lived in Pennsylvania. In that area there was basically zero difference between states. My cousin who lived in Pennsylvania did convince his mother that the drinking age was 18 in Ohio though, so there was that.

35. If you cross from Alabama into Mississippi by car, you’ll fucking know it, it’ll tell you that. If you have coffee in your cup holder, you’ll soon be wearing it accross your lap.

36. Towns in Virginia typically have older, brick architecture. More antebellum homes/buildings, and lots of Civil War-related history.

    Other than that, not many differences. Overall, it’s all rural tobacco countryside, whether you’re on the North Carolina or Virginia side of the state line. You have to drive an hour in either direction before you reach larger urban centers (Richmond, Raleigh, etc.). The state line vicinity is very rural.

37. VA/DC/MD all has about the same landscape, there’s just a river in the middle of it all. And the beltway sucks the whole way around. The differences have to do with the laws mostly. Alcohol sales in VA are more controlled than MD. Weed possession is legal in DC (or at least it was first). And DC doesn’t have any wires or poles hanging over roads, not even traffic lights. And the height of buildings in DC have a strict limit.