That'll have to do

That's because in the east the state lines were defined by silly things like pre-independence international borders, social-economic centers, and complex interstate politics. While the west basically boiled down to "We have a shit ton of new land now and we need to divide it somehow. Fuck it! Squares are easy to manage! Squares for everyone!"

@Hfar Some of the squiggly lines are rivers. Those made a lot of sense back when boats were the best way of moving freight.

@Hfar I heard they are straight and boxy boarders because they were based on railroads, with the other states being based on rivers and whatnot

@Vinny Considering that railroads in the United States back in the 19th century were anything BUT straight that would be a "no." Whoever told you that was either pulling your leg or misinformed.

@Hfar They had to use rivers because GPS coordinates were still only theoretical, the problem of how to determine longitude was solved after some of the eastern states borders were determined. Hence why western states use latitude and longitude borders and eastern states don't.

The borders of the eastern states (and some states in the west like Oregon) follow natural boundaries like rivers and mountain chains. As we moved west, the states were cut up into squarish shapes because it made it easier for the US government to cut it up into square parcels for homesteaders.

As an American, I can confirm that this is false. Truth, they're ALL half-assed.

@Ytterbius5000 True. Like, I know city planning was not really at the top of the list for the colonies, but seriously. Paving the routes taken by wandering cattle herds??? Whose bright idea was THAT?

A joke that works both in comparing Europe to the US, and (in this case Eastern US to Western US)...

In the East, 100 miles is a long distance. In the West 100 years is a long time.

Also bear in mind that when the eastern states were established, transportation was limited to feet, horses, and sail. For much of the western states, railroads and steamships, plus telegraph. Speed of transportation and communication has a lot to do with are of control.

United Squares of America

I live in Washington and one of my friends who lives in New England came to visit a while back. We went on a road trip to east of the Cascade mountains and he asked at the end how many states we had passed through and was shocked when I said that we hadn't even left the one we were in, since most of the states in New England are so small compared to western states.

@apocolypse1011 I was living in Kansas City some years ago, when my cousin's company flew him and a British coworker out to some tiny little place in western Kansas to work on a project. My cousin wanted to come visit us when they had the weekend off, so he rented a car and invited his poor British coworker along.

BLEW... HIS... MIND!!! The whole ride he was like, "How can we still be in Kansas? And why doesn't the landscape change?! How can there be this much flat land in the world?!!" Heh... your story reminded me of that.

@apocolypse1011 Oh right ! The state of Washington... Why the heck did you guys think it would be ok to have a state and a city with the same name (and put them in two different locations) ? If you thought it wouldn't be confusing for foreigners, let me tell you you were WRONG !

@Isdaril It gets even better with towns and cities. The well-known Portland is in Oregon, but it's named after the one in Maine, which is in turn named after the one in England. The famous Las Vegas is in Nevada, but there's a little one in New Mexico. Kansas City, Kansas is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. I grew up in the largest of several Gainesvilles. And there are about ten Springfields.

Chinese originality with province names: North Lake, South Lake (Hu Bei and Hu Nan); North River, South River (He Bei and He Nan); Mountain West, Mountain East (Shan Dong and Shan Xi) and Guang Dong and Guang Xi.
We also have the cities of North Capital (Beijing), South Capital (Nanjing), East Capital (Tokyo, in Japan) and West Capital (one of the other names of Chang’an (Xi’an)).

@JTTWloverchinese They did something similar when dividing Jutland, although it was apparently too much land, and decided to add a ''middle''-part. And for some reason Fyn (the small island in between Jutland, and Sealand) is part of the Region of Southern Denmark.

@JTTWloverchinese Americans are awful at geography. Too many states= too much to remember.

As a native of the western states I can tell you this: There may be a lot of land there, but there's not a lot of people. This is a map of states sized by population density (https://matadornetwork.com/read/mapped-us-states-scaled-proportionally-population-density/) It's modern, but it still gives you the idea.

@BeckyLS

Very interesting. Knew about some of the bigger states demographically but didn't realise that New Jersey, Maryland and lower New England had so many people.

Steve

@stevep59 Part of Density, Maryland, New Jersey and New England are all pretty small states but they have a few cities which makes them much denser than say, Montana or Wyoming

@stevep59

The "Northeast megalopolis" runs from Boston to Washington, D.C., through Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York of course, New Jersey, part of Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

On the other hand, very few people actually live in, say, Wyoming. There is a lot of relatively arid land in the western USA, and water makes a lot of difference.

Yo listen up, here's the story
About a little guy that lives in a square world
And all day and all night and everything he sees is just square
Like him, inside and outside
Square his house with a square little window
And a square Honda
And everything is square for him


because he lives in Nebraska. he being me. He's square, da ba dee da ba daa

States in the east, many of them established before detailed surveys had been done, were often set up using rivers as easily defined natural borders. States in the west were laid out much later when it was easier to draw a line on an existing map of the area.