Is there a name for the line that runs from Texas to North Dakota where the population density sharply decreases?

27 comments

1. > Is this a well-known way to divide the United States?

   I have seen a couple of YouTube videos about it, but to answer your question, no. Most Americans are unaware of this imaginary line and there is no name for it either.

2. That’s where the prairie land is.

3. Flyover country is the closest I can think of

4. 100th Meridian

5. There’s no real name for it that’s well known or taught. It’s where there’s less rain, the prairies begin, and rivers are less navigable.

6. It’s the Great Plains. It is harder to farm so it was less settled historically. There are also fewer major navigable waterways which majorly affected US development.

7. [RealLifeLore video](https://youtu.be/wwJABxjcvUc) about that line. The 98th meridian. I’ve never seen a specific name for it but according to [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line) the phenomenon is called a dry line or dew point line.

   It’s fairly well known in that most people know “the west” is more sparsely populated and wide open than “the east,” but there’s probably not widespread knowledge about the actual line where you can see the change happen.

8. It’s the 100th meridian.

9. [As first noted by John Wesley Powell in the 1870s, there is a big difference in rainfall by the different sides of the meridian.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100th_meridian_west)

10. It sort of lines up with I-35/I-29 incidentally enough. Most people don’t know a name for it or have a clear definition of where the line is beyond that it generally runs through the Great Plains states.

    Typically when we divide the country we usually do so with the Mississippi River or occasionally the east edge of the Rocky Mountains.

11. Climate and atmospheric scientists know it as the Dry Line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_line

    I guess technically it’s *a* dry line, since they can occur elsewhere, and it’s more like the average location of the North American dry line, since it moves around. But generally when they say “the dry line”, they mean the thing that you’re talking about, where Eastern wet and Western dry climatic zones meet.

12. Rural

13. No, but this area is called “The Wind Belt” by many since it is has an incredibly high wind potential and being located between both major coastal areas is positioned to transmit power to either one.

14. Walter Prescott Webb called 98th meridian division where drier, arid west had significant impact on flora and fauna diversity due less rainfall than landmass east of it.

    https://shalemag.com/the-98th-meridian-foundation/

15. I-35

16. I live in that area. I’d call it the high plains. Foothills and plains east of the Rockies in the rain shadow. Less rain than further east. The mountains cause the moisture in the atmosphere to precipitate, leaving very little moisture for rain on the other side.

    Lots of low density agriculture like ranching with patches of better cropland.

17. I-35

18. Wyoming

19. I don’t see any line.

20. Fertile soil vs desert and rock. It’s the difference between Western US and the Midwestern US.

21. A large portion of that area is what’s called the Rocky Mountains. That impacts a lot of the population movements in the western half of the United States.

22. I grew up here and still live in this part. I’ve heard it referred to as the High Plains. But more often we refer to which region of Texas we’re in (ie West Texas, the Big Country, the Panhandle). Which I know that doesn’t really help because most of this land is not in Texas. But, I did hear that most of this region’s population is in Texas. There are 6 or 7 cities with 100k or more in this region and 5 of them are in Texas.

23. It’s the continental divide, and the key factor is the Mississippi.

    Remember that early settlement westward depended on Riverine trade.

    So basically the choice made by Westward settlers was either that the Mississippi watershed was good enough to settle down in (and it was pretty fantastic at the time) or else you went further West, and those that went West spread out and settled down or kept going and collected again on the California coast.

    You’ll see this in the pattern that States were admitted to the union in the antebellum era.

24. The Neutral Zone

25. Rocky foothills

26. Personally I’d call it the Edge of Expansion. Since it’s kinda like that historically anyway.

    The population’s been slowly moving/expanding west over time outside of the initial spikes westward.

    Sure we’ve got the Rockies close-ish to there but that’s not gonna stop us from continuing on, just slow us down a little.

    People often go for the usable land area long before the difficult land so this makes sense.

27. Route 83?