Dutchy here, thinking Tri-State was exclusively used for NY, NJ and CT but it’s a term for ~25 populated areas elsewhere in the country, shared by three states. Now my Q is: “Did people move there because they wanted to trade with the other states”? Or do people live there cause of geography?

28 comments

  3. Trading with “other states” isn’t really a thing we would even notice here. Besides some smaller things like sales tax or something, there’s not really separate state economies.

  4. some of them are because of geography, some of them are because a city was in one state and grew into a metropolitan area that spilled into nearby states.

  5. >thinking that “tri-state” is always only those three states

    No. Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware here around Philadelphia.

  6. The Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana confluence is called the tri-state area and grew rapidly in the early 1800’s. The river was a highway for goods and services and the land was fertile for crops. At one point [Cincinnati](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati) was the 6th most populous city in America until railroads allowed Chicago and St. Louis to surpass it

  7. It’s mostly becasue the state borders were drawn before the area was fully settled and the cities had yet to emerge. In a lot of cases, a river was used as a convenient boundary. It turns out, rivers are also great locations for cities and some of the same rivers that were used as borders later became the homes of major cities.

  8. There’s free trade within the entirety of the US, it’s in our constitution and a big reason why we’re so much richer than places who don’t have it, like Canada.

    Other states can call themselves the tri state but the actual tri state NJ, NY & CT.

    Suck it PA

  9. Nobody cares about trading with other states because trading between states is regulated by the feds pursuant to the Commerce Clause in Article 1 of the Constitution. Nobody – and I mean nobody – moves to a state to make it easier to trade with other states.

  10. A lot of state borders are rivers. Rivers are major transport lines. All major cities are on major transit lines, and before the railroad, that always meant water.

    So any river that forms the border between two states is going to have towns across the river from each other, and some of those towns became cities. When you add bridges, you get easy movement between both sides and if both sides happened to be in different states, you have two cities in two states.

    Tristate areas are usually where a third state just happened to be nearby.

    Cincinnati is on the Ohio River where it forms the border between Ohio and Kentucky and Kentucky and Indiana.

    Philadelphia is along the Delaware, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

    NYC is actually an exception in the regard, since the borders with both CT and NJ are purely straight lines on a map, with neither one following a waterway. Not a complete exception, though, since the reason the borders are straight is to give New York full access to the mouth of the Hudson and Long Island. All borders are in that area because of the Hudson River.

    Free trade between states was one of the founding principals of the country. It’s so taken for granted that trade between states is barely something we think about. It’s so omnipresent that we don’t need cities devoted to it .

  11. To sum up some other comments, state lines are of almost zero importance to Americans living their daily lives.

    The tri-state region of NY, NJ, and CT is a thing in part because people commute to work from one state to another (usually to New York from NJ and CT). They wake up in NJ, drive to NY, work, buy lunch, go shopping, return home, and shop locally.

    What differs between states is sales tax, mostly, and regulations on how or where liquor is sold.

    People who live in one state and work in another may have more complicated taxes to file.

    New York is the primary driver of why the region developed so far as I know. I grew up in New Jersey and in the town I lived, most had families in, or were originally from, New York, but wanted to live with more greenery, or else could get a lot more for their money, house-wise.

    Hence, when people talk about a New Jersey vs. New York vs. specific NY borough accents, even though I grew up there, I never know what people are talking about. Because there is so much movement between these states, I grew up hearing multiple versions of these accents and they subtly blend into one. I can tell when someone is “tri state” but I can’t always tell specifically where they’re from. Sometimes they’re a combination of accents.

  14. There is free movement of trade between states (just differences in sales tax laws). The reason the phrase “tri-state area” is used is because people travel across states so much in their daily lives that the areas blend together. You might live in NJ, work in NY, and go visit your family in CT.

  15. It’s geography. New York City has an excellent harbor area. The Hudson River behind it stretches deep into the interior before getting to the Fall Line at Troy, NY. Beyond Troy and Albany to the north is a convenient valley to Montreal, Canada, but more importantly to the west up the Mohawk River is a usable flattish route to the Great Lakes, first via the Erie Canal, and then as railroads were built, by the New York Central Water Level Route which connected New York City to the Midwest and most importantly to Chicago. It’s those connections that ensured that NYC and it’s tristate area would be the largest area in the Eastern US.

  16. Growing up in Maine I remember the Tri-state Mega Bucks lottery. If I’m remembering correctly the 3 states involved were, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

  17. They moved there most likely due to how close they want to be to NYC. A lot of people work in NYC – 18 million or so. However, the city itself is very expensive to live in. So people will live in NJ or CT and commute into NYC.

    As mentioned already, states don’t really trade with each other. Some states choose to partner with other states from time to time, but that is about it.

    Also, the whole “Tri-State” is usually a term used by the local media. In places where there are major markets that are shared by 3 states, the media will use the “Tri-State”.

  18. Trade with other states isn’t really an issue for over a century. Living in one of the tri-state areas, people came here because of the jobs. The jobs came here because of the advantages that resources and the Ohio River gave during industrialization.

  19. Geography, generally. Especially in the eastern half. State borders were often drawn along rivers or use lakes as markers which naturally generate cities. Once you get out west and a lot of borders are arbitrary latitudinal/longitudinal lines it happens less.

  20. big cities are commonly found along rivers or other ports. rivers are also very commonly used as state borders, at least in the east. so you kind of end up with these metro areas that span multiple states

  21. This may be the first question I’ve ever seen on this board that made me, an american, think, wow that’s a really good question.

  22. In my experience, towns on the State Line are some of the shadiest, misbegotten and forsaken places on planet earth, but most of my real experience with them is the tri state area between Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It gets weird out there. I met a 12 year old with a tattoo who im convinced would have stabbed me if he’d gotten the chance.

    I’m from southern California so we never used the term in a practical sense, but I’ve definitely heard/used it as an exaggeration pretty commonly. E.G., “This is the best burrito in the tristate area”.

  23. I think its random/dependent on the specific situation. I always heard tri state area mean ny/nj/ct. But im from nj. And in that case tri state area meant basically people who reasonably could commute to nyc. Since its such a large city commuters sometimes come from very far (like my childhood best friend’s mom worked in the city and her commute was like 2 hrs), it is a useful shorthand here.

    Cause I don’t live in nyc. Or a suburb just outside nyc, but when the largest city in america is only 2 hours away, it has a lot of influence on local culture

  24. The tri-state area is MN, WI, and IA. Our local NBC affiliate, KTTC, stands for Total Tri-state Coverage

  25. The one I’m familiar with (Missouri-Kansas-Oklahoma) is an area that was host to a [world class lead and zinc deposit](https://www.mindat.org/loc-16899.html). Missouri was a state when production really increased in the 1850s but Kansas and Oklahoma weren’t yet, so it wasn’t because of the state lines, just the resource.

  26. A lot of state borders are rivers. Before railroads, rivers were important trade routes. That’s why they have cities along them.

  28. People move there for money lol just like everywhere else….hence why it’s a megapolis

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