What region/regions in Texas in?

[Skill and Chance]

You know regions can be diverse, right?  Like, Miami is still in the South regardless of its culture; the comment about Austin is weird, IMO.

At the state level, it’s unquestionably part of the South.  If you start to split up states, parts of it would probably go to the West.

I'm not usually in favor of exclaves, but I do think Austin as an exclave of California/Pacific Coast culture is reasonable at this point.  Similarly, Denver and the various Rocky Mountain ski resorts are also exclaves of the Pacific Coast.

I also suspect Calgary as an exclave of Texas would be pretty reasonable, but the religiosity aspect gives me pause.  I don't think anywhere near half of today's Alberta oilmen are Evangelical, but the province did elect a Baptist preacher who explicitly wanted to govern from the Bible as their premiere at one time.   

[muon2]

Thank you. It comports with what I have seen of TX. The hill county does look like the west.

I'm curious as to how the Forum Texans see this division. I'm pretty well traveled there the last few years, but I may have missed things the locals see.

Texas Hill Country being part of the West makes sense if the West is defined at starting at the 100th parallel or something. I agree it can look like the West and, imo, there's no easy way of defining where it starts and ends either, since the West slowly blends its way in as you get closer to the Rockies.

Just like the border between North and South, the border between South and West is extremely blended, no matter where you think it is. Parts of Texas are very similar, even basically identical, to its neighbor New Mexico.

I used to set the Plains/West border closer to the Rockies, but mineral extraction and government ownership of land are big drivers of life in the Interior West. It's what sets it apart from cities surrounded by productive farmland in the Plains.

My trip across ND point to the hills west of Minot as the divide, beyond which is oil and gas drilling. In SD the Black Hills have a distinctly Western feel. On a trip across NE I was stunned at the cultural difference as one gets into the Sand Hills, let along the Platte the Plains stretch all the way to CO. Same thing in KS and OK - when the land gets rugged the culture shifts. So it is in TX, too as I noted in the shift driving between San Angelo and Abilene.

The border between the Southwest and Interior West is for me when the Hispanic culture becomes less evident compared to the "wild west" resource-oriented culture, even if the Hispanic population stays high.

I remember reading at some point long ago there was cotton farming in and around Abilene (the area was represented by Charlie Stenholm from 1979 to 2005). There still seems to be a lot of cotton farming in that area, but it's faced some rough years, from the looks of it.

We definitely saw cotton fields on our drive.

[muon2]

You know regions can be diverse, right?  Like, Miami is still in the South regardless of its culture; the comment about Austin is weird, IMO.

At the state level, it’s unquestionably part of the South.  If you start to split up states, parts of it would probably go to the West.

I'm not usually in favor of exclaves, but I do think Austin as an exclave of California/Pacific Coast culture is reasonable at this point.  Similarly, Denver and the various Rocky Mountain ski resorts are also exclaves of the Pacific Coast.

I also suspect Calgary as an exclave of Texas would be pretty reasonable, but the religiosity aspect gives me pause.  I don't think anywhere near half of today's Alberta oilmen are Evangelical, but the province did elect a Baptist preacher who explicitly wanted to govern from the Bible as their premiere at one time.  

I get to Denver and Vail regularly, and I have to disagree about it being an exclave. It has a very different vibe than the West Coast. The vibe is wild west even if the politics are liberal. Hickenlooper was a good example - what other Dem would go to a Senate hearing and talk about drinking a glass of fracking water to defend drilling.

[Skill and Chance]

You know regions can be diverse, right?  Like, Miami is still in the South regardless of its culture; the comment about Austin is weird, IMO.

At the state level, it’s unquestionably part of the South.  If you start to split up states, parts of it would probably go to the West.

I'm not usually in favor of exclaves, but I do think Austin as an exclave of California/Pacific Coast culture is reasonable at this point.  Similarly, Denver and the various Rocky Mountain ski resorts are also exclaves of the Pacific Coast.

I also suspect Calgary as an exclave of Texas would be pretty reasonable, but the religiosity aspect gives me pause.  I don't think anywhere near half of today's Alberta oilmen are Evangelical, but the province did elect a Baptist preacher who explicitly wanted to govern from the Bible as their premiere at one time.  

I get to Denver and Vail regularly, and I have to disagree about it being an exclave. It has a very different vibe than the West Coast. The vibe is wild west even if the politics are liberal. Hickenlooper was a good example - what other Dem would go to a Senate hearing and talk about drinking a glass of fracking water to defend drilling.

Well, he represents the entire state, so he has to make some appeals to the meaningful % of oil and gas areas.  I highly doubt you would see Diana DeGette or Joe Neguse partake of that at a House hearing. 

[muon2]

You know regions can be diverse, right?  Like, Miami is still in the South regardless of its culture; the comment about Austin is weird, IMO.

At the state level, it’s unquestionably part of the South.  If you start to split up states, parts of it would probably go to the West.

I'm not usually in favor of exclaves, but I do think Austin as an exclave of California/Pacific Coast culture is reasonable at this point.  Similarly, Denver and the various Rocky Mountain ski resorts are also exclaves of the Pacific Coast.

I also suspect Calgary as an exclave of Texas would be pretty reasonable, but the religiosity aspect gives me pause.  I don't think anywhere near half of today's Alberta oilmen are Evangelical, but the province did elect a Baptist preacher who explicitly wanted to govern from the Bible as their premiere at one time.  

I get to Denver and Vail regularly, and I have to disagree about it being an exclave. It has a very different vibe than the West Coast. The vibe is wild west even if the politics are liberal. Hickenlooper was a good example - what other Dem would go to a Senate hearing and talk about drinking a glass of fracking water to defend drilling.

Well, he represents the entire state, so he has to make some appeals to the meaningful % of oil and gas areas.  I highly doubt you would see Diana DeGette or Joe Neguse partake of that at a House hearing. 

Part of my use of Hickenlooper is that he was very much a Denver guy, have run a restaurant (one of the first brewpubs) for over a decade before becoming mayor for 8 years. I found his attitudes very much like the culture I'm trying to describe independent of political side.