Northern border of Dixie

Joel Garreau’s book “The Nine Nations of North America” was published in 1981 and divides the continent into distinct cultural entities, of which Dixie is one. Much has changed since 1981 in terms of demographic shifts, but the book’s focus on the cultural and therefore truly national nature of the various regions of North America is certainly worth examining. Mr. Garreau writes of the northern boundary of the South:

Dixie starts on the midcontinental Atlantic at about Ocean City, Maryland…. As resorts go, Ocean City is more like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, than it is Surf City, New Jersey…. From there, as described in the Foundry chapter, Dixie cuts across the chicken farms of southern Delaware to include the Eastern Shore of Maryland, eastern referring to its location relative to the Chesapeake Bay. The gracious capital, Annapolis, is a border town between Dixie and the Foundry. It carefully skirts Washington’s wealthier suburbs and drives up through rural Virginia, north of the Shenandoah Valley, to swoop down the western edge of the worst of the southern Appalachians, splitting off chemical-factory-laden West Virginia river counties like Mason, Jackson, and Wood. There are those who would argue that Ohio counties like Scioto and Adams, across the Ohio River from Kentucky, are still southern. Similarly, Covington, Kentucky, across the river from the industrial presence of Cincinnati, is not southern. By by and large, the Ohio river is a meaningful border until you hit Indiana, the rolling hills of which, north of Louisville, are economically and emotionally part of Dixie…

Indianapolis is the boundary where the Foundry and Dixie part company. From Indianapolis on, the distinction to be made is between the South and the “real” Midwest – the Breadbasket – another very old idea in America, which despite industrialization, communications, and travel, retains great power.

Near the Illinois boundary, Terre Haute has been a dividing line in Indiana dialects, politics, and values for over a hundred years and still is, and as a result is another good border town.

As many as thirty-one counties, below a line roughly from Terre Haute to East St. Louis, have from time to time been identified as part of Southernillinois (pronounced by natives as one word). Route 50, from Vincennes, somewhat farther south, has also been suggested as the border, although Illinois political correspondents reply that it’s “common knowledge” that Southernillinois “is ten miles beyond wherever you’re standing.”

The piece goes on, tracing the cultural boundary of Dixie further westward and is a good read. Texans might not like how the author divided that State up and surely there is much to disagree about in the chapter, but it’s still a good read for anyone interested in the truly national nature of Dixie
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