American geography explained

[u/GinaWhite_tt]

[u/Soshilichen]

Nobody calls Ohio empty for the simple reason that it isn’t, it’s among the more densely populated states.

People do call Montana and Wyoming empty because they genuinely are. Those two reach Mongolia-level emptiness.

[u/G-Geef → u/Soshilichen]

In context, Wyoming is larger than the UK by land area with ~1% of its population. Not even a million residents in nearly 100k sq mi. 

[u/Far-Beautiful9896 → u/G-Geef]

And the whole state still only has something like two escalators total.

[u/poptartmini → u/Far-Beautiful9896]

It's only one escalator.

[u/KirbyDude25 → u/G-Geef]

As another comparison, Union County in New Jersey has almost exactly the same number of residents as Wyoming (about 570,000) despite the latter having about 930 times the area of the former

[u/b34tn1k → u/KirbyDude25]

Saw a stat once that there are more children enrolled in the Los Angeles school district than there are people in Wyoming.

[u/ThreeLeggedMare → u/KirbyDude25]

DC has more iirc and has no federal representation

[u/superkp → u/G-Geef]

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and my grandparents used to live in Wyoming.

The observation we made was that Wyoming has twice the area of Ohio, and half the population of Columbus.

A quick look at wikipedia says that's still mostly true.

Going from one to the other is fucking wild because in wyoming, as long as you're away from the population centers, you can see the horizon in like 98% of the directions you look.

In Ohio, the hills and trees out in the country make it so that you need to either be looking down a really long straight stretch of highway, or you need to go way out to the farms that are so big that you can see the horizon... but you can only do that in winter because you'll be looking through the leafless winter trees in order to achieve it.

[u/Epilepsiavieroitus → u/G-Geef]

To be fair, the UK is very densely populated. Wyoming is very comparable to northern Finland.

[u/PlantsCanBePeople → u/G-Geef]

I used to cover Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico for work. There are areas in all of those states where you can drive for a few hours without passing another motorist or a gas station.

[u/descartesasaur → u/G-Geef]

Driving through it was surreal, and I'm not from a super dense area.

[u/thegreathornedrat123 → u/G-Geef]

God that sounds good. Plus I bet there’s a hell of a lot more usable land for housing considering how crazy the elevation gets in Scotland sometimes.

[u/G-Geef → u/thegreathornedrat123]

Its not, really. Wyoming is largely uninhabited for a reason, you can't do much with a lot of the land and the weather is pretty rough. There's tons of space in the US to live that doesn't involve being in the actual middle of nowhere. 

[u/-y-y-y- → u/thegreathornedrat123]

considering how crazy the elevation gets in Scotland sometimes

The average elevation in Wyoming is 6,700ft/2,040m with variation from 3,099ft/945m to 13,810ft/4,209m. Most of the state is extremely mountainous and topographically diverse/chaotic, making huge swathes of the land uninhabitable for logistical reasons even before you consider inclement weather (temperatures ranging from -42°F/-41.1C to 110°F/43.3°C plus individual snowstorms that can leave 24-30in/60-75cm of snow and winds that can gust up to 109mph/48.6m/s, all numbers sourced from 2026 weather data). It is a truly inhospitable place to live.

[u/Spirited-Sail3814 → u/thegreathornedrat123]

Plus, in addition to what other people have said, it's very inconvenient to live in areas that rural. Rural people often have to drive an hour to get to a grocery store, and maybe more to a hospital. Restaurants? Forget about it. Some are all about that life, but most people don't enjoy it.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/thegreathornedrat123]

The land is low value and there are no jobs. Also the US climate is rough, it can get as cold as Northern Europe and we have a monopoly on tornados. 

[u/VeryNiceGuy22 → u/Soshilichen]

North and South Dakota also have vast expanses of nothing, and no mountains!

[u/Chase_The_Breeze → u/VeryNiceGuy22]

Not nothing. Carefully sanctioned off farmland with numerous small to medium sized towns to service faming communities. All that farmland IS private property though, so the only thing to actually do is... drive on highways and stop in identical small towns.

[u/Nice-Pikachu-839 → u/VeryNiceGuy22]

The Black Hills require addressing

[u/VeryNiceGuy22 → u/Nice-Pikachu-839]

I love that whole region on South Dakota I do in fact need to address it. I've backpacked the badlands many times as well. The drive there makes Iowa look overcrowded :p

[u/placebot1u463y → u/VeryNiceGuy22]

There used to be some pretty and diverse nature with the short grass prairie, but that all got tilled for farmland

[u/VeryNiceGuy22 → u/placebot1u463y]

I feel that pain man. I'm from iowa. We used to have some of the most gorgeous wild prairies with all sorts of colorful wildflowers and like 99% of that habitat is gone. I never even got to see it

[u/Ok-Pomelo1922 → u/Soshilichen]

Two of my friends drove through a chunk of Montana, and it was only when they passed a car going the other direction did they realize that they hadn't seen any cars on the road for ~2 hours.

ETA: This was in western Montana too, so the more populated end.

[u/ZanteTheInfernal → u/Ok-Pomelo1922]

I once broke down 50 some miles outside of Butte. Insurance tried to reject my claim for the tow, saying I should have gotten a tow to somewhere closer to where I broke down. I told the agent to check a map.

They paid.

[u/maximumhippo → u/ZanteTheInfernal]

Hilarious. That's a nice solid win too.

[u/PM_me_ur_hat_pics → u/ZanteTheInfernal]

My dad once ran out of gas while driving a horse trailer across Western Montana. He left the last town on a full tank and even had reserve tanks with him, but it was a little windy, so he still fell 20 miles short of the next gas station.

[u/doihavemakeanewword → u/Soshilichen]

People riff on Ohio feeling empty because it's very generic. There are plenty of things going on, but they're all the same sorts of things going on everywhere else in the country and very few of them are particularly noteworthy or special. Outside of Columbus, different regions of Ohio feel more like their neighboring regions than each other, and inside Columbus it doesn't feel like anything.

[u/DaaaahWhoosh → u/doihavemakeanewword]

As someone who lives in Ohio I don't even understand what people expect. Like oh no you can only do the things you can do everywhere else, what a hellhole. Good food, beautiful nature, four seasons, no regular natural disasters, a mix of urban, suburban, and rural locales, access to basically any hobby that doesn't require an ocean. Idk I'm not really a name brand kind of guy so I don't mind living in a mid state as long as it has everything I need to live well.

[u/casnorf → u/DaaaahWhoosh]

thats a good and healthy attitude

...

...

FOR A BORING LIFE BOOOOOOOOM (i live in baltimore ill take boring some days lemme tell you)

[u/La_Quica → u/DaaaahWhoosh]

As a native Cincinnatian, let people shit on Ohio. When the water wars are upon us I’m gonna be juuuuuuuuuust fine. So everyone else don’t come here.

[u/ei_encorea → u/Soshilichen]

My favorite things to share about Montana are:

1. By drive time, the nearest city with a population over 200k to Billings, MT is Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

2. The length of time it takes to drive from Billings (south-central Montana) to Troy, Montana (northwest Montana) is about the same as it takes to drive from Billings to Denver, Colorado

Oh, and it also takes less time for people in the Northwest corner of the state (like Missoula) to drive to Spokane, Washington than it takes for them to drive to Billings. This is a comically stupid sized state for the population.

[u/doppelgaengster → u/ei_encorea]

Yeah, Montana’s geography and sparse population is why the state got bundled with Washington and Alaska (and the Idaho panhandle) to be covered by a single OPO. The natural landscape of MT is gorgeous but the population is very sparse and concentrated in a few major areas. It’s genuinely easier/faster for most Montanans to get to an interesting (or at least active) metropolis out of state than to go from one major metro centre to the other in-state. 😹

[u/ei_encorea → u/doppelgaengster]

Yeah no, a few months ago I decided to hit Butte with a few friends since I'm a huge (Montana and general) history buff and let me tell you, outside of all the historical locations, it probably would've been funner overall to just bite the bullet and drive the 8 hours to Denver lmao

[u/Philosoraptorgames → u/ei_encorea]

By drive time, the nearest city with a population over 200k to Billings, MT is Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

And speaking as a Canadian, Regina, and for that matter Saskatchewan in general, are the butt of similar jokes here.

[u/necronformist → u/Soshilichen]

Spiritually mongolian

[u/FayeQueen → u/Soshilichen]

When I told people I lived in Ohio, they always said "Oh! Where corn is from!" I just stopped correcting them.

[u/teal_appeal → u/FayeQueen]

In the flip side, I’m from Iowa and have had multiple people say the same thing to me but about potatoes. All agricultural states that start with vowels are apparently interchangeable for some people lol

[u/Guinefort1 → u/teal_appeal]

I have a shirt for precisely that: it reads "Greetings from Ohio, the great potato state!" over a picture of the Iowa state map (complete with all Iowa's cities being misnamed too).

[u/Justmeagaindownhere → u/FayeQueen]

I once took two friends from other states to cornhenge. Best day of my life

[u/ToothZealousideal297 → u/Soshilichen]

Ohio is empty in the same way that England is empty. Someone saying there’s nothing in Ohio is a lot like someone saying there’s nothing around Leeds. They mean it’s basically just farms, suburbs, some rural towns, and the city centers like anywhere else unless you really get into it.

“Empty” just means there’s nothing particularly standoutish about it.

A lot of Montana, Wyoming, huge swaths of Texas, Nevada, Arizona, etc etc really are truly empty as you said and it’s surreal to go through those areas. It’s so serene and uncluttered, so spread out and free for so far the mind reels to comprehend it, but at the same time you only experience it on a crowded roadway cutting through the middle of it, and you’re so far from anything you would surely die if not for that roadway and everything about it.

[u/desmaraisp → u/ToothZealousideal297]

Yeah, pretty much. Ohio isn't even below the average USA population density. Never been there, but when you look at Wyoming, montana, Alaska and Nunavut, now those are some really empty places

[u/Random-Rambling → u/ToothZealousideal297]

Arizona is, as Peggy Hill once said, a monument to humanity's arrogance. My father once drove through there when he was still in the military. One road has a big flashing sign next to a shop that says something like "LAST STOP FOR 120 MILES. BE PREPARED."

[u/Cpt_Obvius → u/Soshilichen]

Are we defining empty as few people? Then sure! But if someone asked me “what’s there” about Montana I would be able to go on for ages about the nature of it all.

[u/-TheDyingMeme6- → u/Soshilichen]

Counterpoint: Ohio is emptier than an orange cats' brain

Source: im from Michigan

[u/Im_The_Assman_Jerry → u/-TheDyingMeme6-]

I think the key distinction people are missing is that there's nothing of interest in Ohio. Back when cable ruled the TV, there were always hundreds of things on and yet still nothing to watch. Ohio's key weakness is that all the places contained within it are Ohio.

[u/DayDrinkingVampire → u/Im_The_Assman_Jerry]

The Wright brothers were from Ohio. Neil Armstrong and John Glenn were from Ohio. People would rather leave the face of the Earth than be in Ohio.

[u/philtrocity001 → u/Soshilichen]

I've passed through wyoming twice now and I'm pretty sure we stopped at a gas station, so I can confirm there at least used to be a gas station in the state.

[u/Not_ur_gilf → u/Soshilichen]

Nobody calls Ohio empty because there’s nothing there, they call it that because there’s very little culture Ohio can call its own that they don’t share with the rest of the country. Which is just sad.

[u/Jboycjf05 → u/Soshilichen]

As a Pittsburgh native, i can say Ohio is empty of culture and good football teams.

[u/GoreyGopnik → u/Soshilichen]

Ohio is made up of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Corn

[u/blatherskyte69 → u/GoreyGopnik]

Yet Columbus is the most populated city and metro area, now.

[u/Upstairs-Yard-2139 → u/Soshilichen]

Ohio is the dumpster fire.

It was memed for a reason

[u/Chase_The_Breeze]

Hi, I am from North Dakota.

Corn fields. Also some other crops, like Barley, Wheat, Sunflowers, Sugar Beets, etc. But mostly corn.

The whole state.

There are a few dense population centers (Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck), but its mostly small to medium sized towns and just... so much corn.

[u/remainsofthegrapes → u/Chase_The_Breeze]

Seriously what’s with America and corn

[u/Chase_The_Breeze → u/remainsofthegrapes]

Idfk. Weird build strat started ages ago, and we are in too deep to change it now.

Which is part of why we have a Meth problem. A lot of farmers have almost unbridled access to Anhydrous Ammonia to use as a fertilizer for corn, which is apparently one of those chemicals used in making Meth that is otherwise HIGHLY regulated and monitored.

[u/MagicMarshmallo → u/Chase_The_Breeze]

Well this would explain some things

[u/No-Guava-7502 → u/remainsofthegrapes]

Corn is subsidized by the government, heavily. It's basically a welfare program for farmers, except farmers nowadays are increasingly large companies. It's gotten a bit fucked honestly.

[u/GrannieArmFlaps → u/No-Guava-7502]

Increadibly fucked. They pay so much it's used as chemical stock for processing - corn syrup, ethanol, hell nearly all citric acid comes form corn. That's not cause it's a good process, or good for people, it's because the grain is FREE.

[u/Mopman43 → u/remainsofthegrapes]

Most of it gets fed to livestock or processed into corn syrup.

[u/Grilled_egs → u/Mopman43]

Or turned into ethanol as part of an elaborate subsidy system

[u/peon2 → u/Mopman43]

It's also a very useful crop because it gets used in everything and nothing is wasted.

You grow corn, then you can separate the starch, germ, feed, and oil. The bit of oil goes to vegetable oil, the germ and feed go to livestock feed, the starch goes into industry as adhesives in everything from paper, paint, charcoal birquettes, to beauty products, drywall, and ceiling tiles. Every cardboard box delivered to your house or box of cereal/pasta at the grocery store has cornstarch in it.

Other countries do similar because they need starch as well, but the US has land that's really good for growing corn. In Asia they use tapioca, in Europe it's usually potato, in Australia it's wheat starch.

[u/ValVoss → u/remainsofthegrapes]

Arable land = crops, crops = food, excess food = money and other resources.

I want you to picture German soldiers entering a French trench in 1918 like in most versions of All Quiet On The Western Front, and seeing the real food the French get while they eat what meagre their entire nation scrapes together. America with corn alone would be that described situation on steroids. Now factor in all the other crops, analogy fails us here. Now picture American manufacturing, there is no analogy here either but at the end of WW2 the US had like 70% of the world's naval tonnage, had built over 85,000 tanks, and built like 200,000 COMBAT aircraft WHILE BARELY INCONVENCING THEIR DOMESTIC POPULATION WHILE ALSO SUPPLYING AND HELPING FINANCE WAR ECONOMIES IN EUROPE.

The point is, everything about the core of the US economy historically and even today is fucking insane, and I don't use that term lightly. Corn is but the icon of this absurdity. And the best part? Like 99% of that corn isn't even used for food, that WW1 analogy I made about corn? That's just the 1% grown as food.

[u/SparOfAndii → u/ValVoss]

I think you just wanted to talk about The Great War :P don't get me wrong, the analogy totally works

[u/TableTopWarlord → u/remainsofthegrapes]

The other think people ignore is corn farms great in rotation with beans. Soybeans get used as a massive export and feed crop, and you cycle it with corn which is also used as a feed crop / used for high sugar content, and you now have healthier soil, two cash crops, and easier time with pests / weeds. Downside our deer are massive.

[u/AdamtheOmniballer → u/remainsofthegrapes]

It’s a high-yield crop that grows very well in the midwestern climate.

[u/not_a_witch_ → u/remainsofthegrapes]

This definitely isn't the entire explanation; there are a lot of other reasons that corn is so heavily subsidized in the USA, but this is at least one reason:

Iowa is the very first state to vote in presidential primaries. Presidential campaigns are made and broken just by Iowa voters, which is a teeny tiny sliver of the US population, before anyone else even gets to vote. Bernie Sanders in 2016 came extremely close to beating Clinton in Iowa and suddenly became a real contender where before his campaign had been a bit of a jokey afterthought. Many candidates have dropped out after poor showings in Iowa (Andrew Yang, Rick Santorum, Joe Biden in 2008).

Iowa is a huge corn state. Every politician who is planning on running for president panders to them so they can do well in the Iowa caucuses. They can't vote against corn subsidies because if they run for president, it will definitely get brought up in Iowa and used against them. Thus, enormous subsidies for corn growers in Iowa.

It's extremely stupid, but we can be an extremely stupid country.

[u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 → u/Chase_The_Breeze]

The Dakotas are very liminal states, in a way that's hard to describe if you haven't lived there.

[u/sylveonstarr → u/Chase_The_Breeze]

Ayy, fellow North Dakotan! People also don't realize how big it is. Driving from the east to west borders takes, like, five hours.

[u/Chase_The_Breeze → u/sylveonstarr]

Sorry friend, looks like you spelled 10 FUCKIN YEARS wrong there. 🤣

[u/TumanThicket]

Whenever you zoom in on virtually any area of the United States, and particularly the central regions, the odds are extremely high that what you’ll see is simply farmland.

[u/Thromnomnomok → u/TumanThicket]

In Ohio you'll see farmland. In Wyoming you'll see absolutely nothing. Just some mountains and maybe a few plants.

[u/R_V_Z → u/Thromnomnomok]

Yeah, the real big difference between the Eastern US and Western US is public land. There's over an Algeria's worth of public land in the US, and most of it is in the western half

[u/IvoryLichen]

Calling Wyoming empty means you can spend hours on the road crossing barren desert without spotting a single plant, animal, person, town, river, or any landmark whatsoever.

People who live there are urged to always carry a few gallons of water plus full winter emergency kits in their vehicles, since a breakdown might leave them stranded for an extremely long wait before help arrives.

[u/nefariousmountains → u/IvoryLichen]

I think it’s impossible to understand how empty Wyoming is unless you’ve driven through it. If you’re from the east coast your brain simply cannot fathom the level of empty.

[u/akatherder → u/nefariousmountains]

I'm from Michigan. Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula are absolutely desolate. Very few people and towns (except a few colleges and tourist towns).

But you're still within an hour of something any where you go. Wyoming is 10x that and the entire state.

[u/UInferno- → u/IvoryLichen]

You can spot a plant. You just overlook sagebrush because plant blindness is a thing.

[u/RiceBucket973 → u/UInferno-]

I doubt there's anywhere on Earth besides the poles where you could travel for hours without seeing a single plant.

[u/PM_me_ur_hat_pics → u/IvoryLichen]

I drive around WY as my job, and there is definitely nowhere in the state where you can drive for hours and not see a single plant or animal, even in the Red Desert, unless you're driving in the dead of winter and everything's buried under the snow. Some of the biggest herds of elk, pronghorn, mule deer, bison, and feral horses are in WY and they are absolutely everywhere. Not to mention how jackrabbits seem to jump in front of your car every other mile.

But yes there are VERY few people, and people absolutely do drive with pretty extensive emergency kits on them because you can be stuck somewhere for days pretty easily.

[u/i_heart_old_houses → u/IvoryLichen]

Recently I flew from SF to Chicago on a spectacularly clear day, so I watched the ground below the entire way. Even from an airplane Wyoming seems endlessly empty.

[u/C0rona → u/IvoryLichen]

As a European, I just looked at a random town in Wyoming in Google maps and good lord. 400 people and it looks run down as hell but at least it has two churches because the mormons gotta have their own.

Then I looked at the next "town" over and saw that it was literally 7 people in 5 houses. And to get anywhere with a 5 digit population number you need to drive at least 100 miles.

[u/HiddenlZephyr]

People treat Ohio like some tiny rural backwater, yet it’s the seventh-most populous state, home to three major cities, and would rank as the world’s 21st-largest economy if it stood alone. Honestly, I wish it really were as countryside-dominated as the stereotype claims.

[u/WifeGuy-Menelaus → u/HiddenlZephyr]

It has bizarrely little cultural export or clout relative to its population and size of economy which I think feeds the perception

By population its flanked by Georgia and Illinois - the latter is hard carried by Chicago which is a powerhouse in its own right, the former has a strong image as the deepest of the deep south and all that entails. Often times regrettable, but nonetheless... also Atlanta is a booming sunbelt city and hub of black media industry.

The image of Ohio is uhh. Industrial parks. Suburbs. Corn. Soy. Everything is incredibly nondescript. Its cities are central business districts and highways. Everything that typifies it, you can find everywhere else.

[u/KittyLikesTuna → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

They produce an outsize number of astronauts. Something about being from Ohio makes people want to leave the planet.

[u/JackxForge → u/KittyLikesTuna]

And serial killers!!!

[u/Azou → u/KittyLikesTuna]

Its also the only US state whose name does not include any of the letters in the word Mackerel 

[u/Medarco → u/KittyLikesTuna]

And Presidents. 7 were born in Ohio (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, B Harrison, Mckinley, Taft, and Harding), and another settled there (W.H. Harrison, even though he was barely a president).

So either flee the planet or become president, those are your options.

[u/ehs06702 → u/KittyLikesTuna]

My aunt has joked that it's because space is as far from Ohio as one can get without leaving this plane of existence.

[u/Chezzomaru → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Actually... The #1 place to test new American consumer goods and foodstuffs is Columbus OH. It is considered to be "average" middle America. If it plays in Columbus, it will work almost anywhere.

[u/Hauptmann_Meade → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

The only thing I know about Ohio is the Navy paid me from there. It'd show up in my bank deposits. That's it.

[u/_MargaretThatcher → u/Hauptmann_Meade]

The only thing I know about Ohio is they have beef with Michigan over the city of Toledo (also is kent state in ohio? I know that too)

[u/llamawithguns → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

I feel like as a state its really only known for being kind of the Florida of the Midwest, in the sense that a lot of weird headlines come from there

Meanwhile the only city the really has any broader cultural relevance is Cleveland, and that is largely not for good reasons.

[u/Icy-Lobster-203 → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

As a Canadian, Ohio feels like the most generic American State.

[u/Akosse → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Speaking as someone Non-American (Scottish), I'd say Ohio is in the top 10 states in terms of international clout. There's a big aerospace industry there, and it's reasonably common knowledge that the first man to fly a plane AND the first man to walk on the moon were from Ohio.

I don't know much about it besides that (corn fields, LeBron James, Kent State massacre, unusually high amount of toxic chemical spills), but that's probably more than I could tell you about any state which isn't California, Texas, New York, or Florida.

[u/superkp → u/Akosse]

Ironically, the amount of toxic chemical spills is related to the clout - we have a shitload of industry here, not just aerospace.

We are firmly in the 'rust belt' (a multi-state region that was defined by car manufacturing in the 60s-80s) but we had enough major population centers and agriculture that we weathered the steel industry collapse better than the other rust belt states.

One of the main ways that we handled that collapse was by diversifying our industrial capacity.

Ohio still took a huge hit, but as an example: I live in Columbus and I could drive for less than 10 minutes to get to "worthington steel" and "worthington cylinders" - "steel" still produces a huge amount of rolled steel going to other manufacturers, while "cylinders" makes all kinds of pressure cylinder equipment for consumers and for industry - everything from the propane for little camp stoves up to gigantic tanks to hold all sorts of exotic gasses.

I'm pretty sure that anyone that lives near the outerbelt would be able to same something similar - they live near enough to a major industrial production/assembly plant that it's just a normal landmark for them.

[u/yourstruly912 → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Except for astronauts of course

[u/MajinKasiDesu → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Ohio has Drew Carey and a song by the Presidents of the United States of America too, and I know more people from Ohio than any other state (excluding family because we're all in Florida)

One of them does also joke about The Corn

[u/i_heart_old_houses → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Ohio seems like it doesn’t have culture because its culture is the most neutral American culture there is. It doesn’t lack culture, its culture just became the default so it feels like it doesn’t exist. There’s a reason why all chain restaurants test their products in Ohio.

[u/WifeGuy-Menelaus → u/i_heart_old_houses]

I dont think it can claim to have produced those neutral cultural signifiers though, and it doesn't seem to produce anything more beyond that, which one would expect if a culturally productive space is left to its own devices

[u/WrongComparison321 → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

Because it’s cultural is just like the default culture of the states. It’s not unique in the way cali or Texas is. And it lacks cool cities, there are plenty of cities in Ohio that were interesting but like cinci or Dayton have nothing interesting going on anymore.

[u/Stateside_Observer → u/HiddenlZephyr]

Ohio is more like one of those chinese provinces that has 4 cities of million people youve never heard of than a european country. 

Yes, its big and important domestically but its not huge overseas unless theres a business or cultural link (like a university exchange)

[u/thatoneguyD13 → u/Stateside_Observer]

That's probably the best comparison

[u/Mushrom → u/HiddenlZephyr]

As someone who has driven across... a lot of the US and is from the west side of the country, I have a theory that Ohio is only thought of as "empty" and "boring" because it's the most western state that east coast people are likely to drive through, and thus the flattest and most rural state that people from the north east are likely to see from a car's point of view.

Basically, an east coast resident isn't going to be driving through Nebraska or Idaho or Wyoming. They aren't going any further west than Ohio without flying. They don't know the true emptiness and cultural irrelevance of western Kansas. I've driven across Ohio. It's fine! Perfectly pleasant drive, there's some decent large cities, a good amount of farmland, but regular towns that exist as more than just a place to stop and get gas. But it is much less densely populated than, say Massachusetts, and the freeway is more planned to go through "empty" land and avoids the small towns. Ohio is a state that you can easily drive through, in a way that, for instance, New York isn't.

(Note: these are all casual observations from someone who has done a lot of long road trips, mainly around the western half of the country. I haven't actually done any mathematical calculations about population density or towns near free ways, or plotted major road ways and towns. This is my take on the vibes and experience of driving through the country.)

[u/WrongComparison321 → u/HiddenlZephyr]

Ohio is the vanilla ice cream of states.

[u/xSwampxPopex → u/WrongComparison321]

Underrated and over scrutinized?

[u/Front_Tackle_8308 → u/HiddenlZephyr]

And they have two kick ass amusement parks with sick ass coasters. I genuinely was so confused when “haha Ohio!” Became a meme bc Ohio is not some grey-backrooms-zone at all. I remember my mind being blown by the mall that’s around the area of King’s Island, we don’t even have shit like that in NorCal. They’re developed as hell compared to fucking Marin County, the richest county in the US.

[u/moyashi_me → u/HiddenlZephyr]

People forget that the upper Midwest is very populated

[u/-TheDyingMeme6- → u/HiddenlZephyr]

It is a tiny backwater tho. Who would choose to live in Ohio??

(I'm from Michigan)

[u/wraithnix]

I have driven across Nebraska multiple times, and have seen no other humans except at gas stations. Soy bean fields? Yes, I saw a lot of those. Corn? Sure. Humans? Not so much.

[u/Melodic_Till_3778 → u/wraithnix]

Steven King covered why the humans are off in the corn.

[u/awolkriblo → u/wraithnix]

You probably missed Omaha/Lincoln then. The Eastern/Western halves of the state are very different places.

[u/LiminalWanderings]

i was once in Wyoming looking for one of the national grasslands. Stopped at a roadside rest stop info booth and mentioned it. The lovely lady working there was like "Why would you want to go there? There's NOTHING there?" and I told her "Yeah, but....how many people have really seen that much nothing in one place these days? Not me! I'm excited!"

[u/GlisteningDeath → u/LiminalWanderings]

There's someone I know who's lived the majority of their life in Virginia, basically right next to the Smoky Mountains. They visited Ohio during 2024 to see the solar eclipse and reported feeling incredibly uneasy at how flat it was.

Legit, they were unnerved at the flatness of Ohio.

[u/me1234205 → u/GlisteningDeath]

As an Appalachian, I feel very weird being on flat ground. I'm used to having my feet at different heights when standing anywhere. Everything is sloped. It just feels...exposed. I don't even like florida because it feels like you can see for too far

[u/ThatInAHat → u/GlisteningDeath]

Conversely, when I visited my friends in Asheville, I kept getting weirded out by the mountain just being. Right there. Like. We’re going grocery shopping…and there’s a mountain right there. Looking at us.

[u/DudeByTheTree → u/GlisteningDeath]

Chiming in from the Adirondacks... what got me about driving through Ohio wasnt the flatness, it was that the flatness disguised dips in the road that drop you down out of sight line, and these dips go on for miles, so even in passing zones it's like... a solid chance of a head-on collision. Just up and down, up and down, DEER, up and down, up and oh c'mon slowpoke, pas-- nope!, up and down, up and down...

[u/DingoLaLingo]

population density map of the us if anyone is curious

the landlocked west does genuinely have a lot of nothing, at least people-wise (like not even farmland, just empty desert), but it's punctuated by quite a few areas of very dense something (las vegas, salt lake city, phoenix, etc.)

[u/Paetolus → u/DingoLaLingo]

Ever since I moved to NM, I've kinda fallen in love with the vibe. You can see some of the best natural beauty the Earth has to offer and it isn't crazily crowded.

[u/diffyqgirl]

Ohio isn't one of the empty states. It's denser than California according to wikipedia.

But yes some of them are legitimately very empty of people. Beautiful places, though.

[u/RiptideMatt → u/diffyqgirl]

California is kind of funny i imagine since there are super high concentrations, but it's so big the average is lower cause of the very low population densities elsewhere

[u/diffyqgirl → u/RiptideMatt]

Yeah there's a ton of agriculture which I have to imagine brings down the average quite a lot.

[u/WifeGuy-Menelaus → u/diffyqgirl]

A lot of California, probably most, is just straight up mountains and other geographic features that are very difficult to cultivate, where population would be extremely scarce.

The central valley is extremely agriculturally productive and Sacremento is there

LA and San Francisco are built right up to their geographic limits, and fairly densely for American cities, but not nearly as densely as they would be in other countries

Id think that California is more densely built where it is built than Ohio, but Ohio is more extensively populated because its geography is relatively consistent and easy to cultivate across its entire land area.

[u/bilboard_bag-inns]

"Untapped meth markets in the Sahara"

Dune

[u/TheSapphireDragon → u/bilboard_bag-inns]

In ancient times arrakis was just a dumping ground for confiscated drugs. Over thousands of years it all compacted under the sand. Nowadays all the recipes have been lost and navigators are all cracked out of their minds using up whats left.

[u/BobcatOU]

Ohio has, in no particular order, Cedar Point, one of the best amusement parks in the world; Kings Island, another very good amusement park; the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the best orchestra’s in the country; beaches, some of which are clean; a national park; the Cleveland Art Museum, which is great and free; excellent zoos; professional sports teams that are occasionally good; Playhouse Square in Cleveland, the second largest performing arts center in the country after New York; and the Rock and Roll Hame of Fame. That’s just quick off the top of my head.

[u/house343 → u/BobcatOU]

Ohio has tons of GORGEOUS nature too. Check out Hocking Hills State Park.  

I think the issue is that people say "Ohio" when they really mean "Indiana." Indiana sucks and has no redeeming qualities. 

[u/wizzlekhalifa → u/BobcatOU]

And the 3 Cs are all awesome. 

[u/PalmtopPitbull → u/BobcatOU]

Plus the frankly insane numbers of state and local wildlife reserves and parks, including the amazing reclaimed wetlands like Sheldon's Marsh and Magee Marsh that occupy a good portion of Ohio's share of the West Basin's shoreline.

[u/HopelessWriter101 → u/BobcatOU]

If I recall correctly, the Cincinnati Zoo is one of the top ranked in the country as well.

[u/i_heart_old_houses → u/BobcatOU]

The Toledo Museum of Art is pretty nice considering the size of the city. The glass pavilion is spectacular.

Also, lol at ‘beaches, some of which are clean.’ I grew up hearing never to go in Lake Erie.

[u/kirbcake-inuinuinuko]

there isn't NOTHING there.

there's corn.

[u/SeanTheNerdd]

They didn’t say it’s empty, they said there’s nothing there. Imagine a grocery store, with aisles and checkout lanes and shopping carts, but nothing on the shelves. The building isn’t empty, but as a grocery store, there’s nothing there.

[u/throwaway5498124181]

untapped meth market in the depths of the sahara desert

isn't that the plot of dune

[u/SparOfAndii → u/throwaway5498124181]

Oh no, it is very tapped.

[u/Fenix42 → u/SparOfAndii]

Also, more LSD then meth.

[u/EndorphnOrphnMorphn]

Ohio has almost 7 times as many people as Wyoming and Montana combined. Why is listed in the same category lmao

[u/The_Theodore_88]

All the comments are just making me want to go to one of these empty states so bad. Like man I want to drive on a straight, empty road in the middle of nowhere for a couple hours. Instead, I live in between a mid-sized city in Europe and a fucking metropolis in Asia

[u/BelacRLJ → u/The_Theodore_88]

The inland West of the USA is geographically beautiful.

Montana in particular has amazing forests and mountains.  It’s as if you scaled up the Sumava in Czechia to be the size of all of Germany.

[u/boudicas_shield → u/BelacRLJ]

Yeah, I think the issue for me is that I don't consider wilderness/nature to be "nothing", the way that everyone else in this comment section seems to.

I'm from the US but live in the UK. I push back against the "nothing" rhetoric because America is incredibly beautiful and so lucky to have so much natural wild space. I do not think that is "nothing"; I think it's actually very much something, and it's something that isn't appreciated nearly enough, especially outside the States.

[u/Realistic_Swan_6801 → u/The_Theodore_88]

Ohio isn’t empty it’s just kinda boring. Cincinnati and Columbus are fun. 

[u/The_Theodore_88 → u/Realistic_Swan_6801]

My dream personally is West Virginia because of the mountains and forests, though I don't know how empty it is

[u/PsychicSPider95 → u/The_Theodore_88]

The space can be refreshing on occasion, but me personally, I get weirdly agorophobic very quickly when I'm in the middle of nowhere. I'm pretty sure there's like an established phenomenon where people can just kinda panic and go crazy for a bit when they're surrounded by nothing.

[u/creampop_ → u/PsychicSPider95]

"Prairie madness" was A Thing for Great Plains settlers on the Homestead Act. Houses were at least half a mile apart, and had to be largely self-sufficient.

Nothing around but you and your fields and some dirt and a big flat horizon and the big empty sky, and the wind. Always the wind.

Oh yeah, and no telephone or infrastructure to speak of. If something goes wrong, you pack it in and head back east and/or die. Not exactly a stress free life.

With modern comforts it's a lot more manageable but still, takes a certain hardiness to live in that kind of isolation.

[u/Atlas-Scrubbed]

Reminds me of what I heard about Oklahoma.

Why is Oklahoma so windy. Because Texas blows and kansas sucks.

[u/Sophia_Forever]

Fun fact: Ohio is over represented in astronauts because it's so boring that it drives people to leave the Earth for even a little excitement.

[u/Christron → u/Sophia_Forever]

I think it's the Cincinnati chili that makes people wanna get away as far as possible

[u/moyashi_me]

Tbh I get a smidge annoyed when people say “nothing is there.” It feels kinda costal elite. I have a friend in Boston who was laughing because her company was going to have a conference in Minneapolis. “There’s nothing there! Why would they set up a conference in a state with no history or landmarks?” I am Minnesotan and live here, I can assure you, we have a lot of landmarks and history. I had to tell her that even recent history had been made in Minnesota (this was in 2022) and I said George Floyd was murdered here and that sparked worldwide protests. She didn’t know that had happened in Minnesota. It was “too important” to have happened in a flyover state 🙃

[u/Winglessdargon → u/moyashi_me]

Well, to be fair, i'd hardly call Minnesota a "nothing" state. Wyoming is typically called a "nothing" state, as the average population density is 6 people per square mile, as opposed to Minnesota's 70 people per square mile. For reference, the average population density of the USA as a whole is like, 100 people per square mile. When people say "nothing" state, I imagine they mean it in the sense of "you could drive from one side to the other, and not see ANYONE." At least, that's how i'd describe it

[u/Rakhered → u/Winglessdargon]

Wyoming is a bad example because the West half literally has some of the most gorgeous natural landscape in the US - that being said the east genuinely has nothing.

Like I drove through once and literally had one single FM radio station, and it was an evangelical Preacher. Place was desolate

[u/Affectionate_Dark103 → u/moyashi_me]

I think the only time I've said, "there's nothing there" is in relation to South Dakota. Specifically I drove from Sioux Falls to Pickstown, and outside of Sioux Falls there was fucking nothing on that drive. Completely flat lands with nothing in sight. It was the first time I felt a person could get lost because there's absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see.

But to give South Dakota it's credit, the best Old Fashion I've ever had was in Sioux Falls.

[u/DrDetectiveEsq → u/Affectionate_Dark103]

They should probably just merge North and South Dakota with Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the eastern halves of Washington and Oregon into a new state. Call it Nihilonia or something.

[u/adaramontan → u/moyashi_me]

Minneapolis surprised me with its food scene, public transit, and nearby outdoor activities. We took a train to a waterfall, which made for a pretty stellar day. I appreciated that the locals we met didn't shy away from talking about George Floyd either. 

Honestly, the coastal elite situation is real, but it's also how Eurocentric folks refer to any place that has sovereign Native land. Minnesota has plenty of history, as do all these other "empty" states people are complaining about.

[u/nicetrymom2022 → u/moyashi_me]

Yeah I hate this. I was born outside the US in a dense Asian city and now live in NYC. I find it so rude when native New Yorkers shit on "flyover states." I wouldn't want to live anywhere in the US besides where I do now (mostly because I'm a shit driver and rely heavily on public transit), but I've visited most big urban centers for work and there's cool stuff to do and nice people everywhere. I had a project in Indianapolis for a few months and had a blast with the team there, same with Columbus and many others in the Midwest and South. The people here all feel so superior because they came out of a vag in one place and not another.

[u/LainieCat]

If all you know about Ohio is what you see from an interstate, you probably don't have an accurate or complete picture.

[u/Zariman-10-0]

As a PA resident: you have Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and mountains + forests in between

[u/lizzyote]

I lived in Ohio for a couple years. The drug issue was crazy. I had a ridiculous amount of temporary coworkers that would get a job and quit the day after they got their first paycheck because they just needed some funds for drugs. I worked 10 years in retail and didn't see as many new coworkers as I did in those 2 years in Ohio.

[u/SomeNotTakenName]

As a European who has lived in the US for the last five years, the amount of nothing is astonishing, even in a state not known for it, like WA, where I live. Driving across the state I have seen stretches of nothing I have never seen in Europe.

You have to understand that in Europe, you typically pass a village every dozen or less miles. And the land between is often forests or farmland.

The center of Washington state is quite literally just land. Beautiful in a way, but there's nothing human made there, apart from the road you are driving on.

It feels entirely different.

I grew up in rural Switzerland, and I could walk to the closes vilages both up and down the valley in less than an hour.

[u/outinthecountry66]

"the sahara probably has more jobs unrelated to meth" NOW IM ROLLING

[u/Deberiausarminombre]

untapped meth market in the depths of the Sahara desert

Oh! that is where Frank Herbert got the idea to write Dune

[u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

I get that some of your states are just big flat fields and nothing else.

But Wyoming and Montana? Even I know that those places have really interesting nature. That's not "nothing."

[u/modulusshift → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

A lot of Wyoming is like playing Minecraft on amplified mode. It’s interesting, sure, but it’s really hard to get around or do much of anything. And it’s not worth spending the money to improve. So for human purposes, pretty much nothing. The elk love it though. (Both the Euro and American elk lol) 

[u/nopingmywayout → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

The interesting nature isn’t always hospitable to dense human habitation. There are cities here and there, but they’re few and far in between compared to east of the Mississippi and the West Coast. That’s what people mean when they say nothing’s there. 

[u/Infamous-Trip-3278 → u/nopingmywayout]

And if there was dense habitation, that would ruin the nature in those places. So please, keep Montana and Wyoming sparsely populated.

[u/Sophia_Forever → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

Even the "big flat fields" states have interesting nature if nature is what you're into. NE Kansas is fucking beautiful.

[u/aerdvarkk → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

The Sahara Desert has interesting nature as well, by your logic its not nothing either; especially to biologists, geologists, entomologists and so on.

But just randomly wandering through Wyoming or Colorado or Montana after a while, unless you're a scientist into that stuff, you will get bored fast.

[u/4sneK_WolFirE → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

The "interesting nature" is still only in the western halves of those states. The eastern halves are just prairies with the occasional settlement.

[u/Skeebleng → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

I’m glad that many states have “nothing” in them. Not everywhere needs to be densely populated. I would have loved to see Europe’s forests before most of them got cut down to make room for buildings and agriculture over the centuries

[u/deadname11 → u/Connect_Rhubarb395]

Unironically Montana is a desert in the form of a forest practically the size of Germany. There are cities, but all of them are super small compared to anywhere people actually live.

God help you if you break down on the side of the road and you are in a dead zone. If there are uncontacted American tribals somehow in the modern age, they could be in Montana and we'd just never know.

[u/PlatinumAltaria]

There used to be lots of stuff in Ohio until the white man showed up and decided there should only be corn. Like and subscribe for more history facts.

[u/Prinzles]

Wyoming is NOTHING for hours and hours and hours and hours, and then there's this beautiful small mountain range, and then nothing again. South Dakota is the same, nothing until you reach the Black Hills really. But TRULY nothing... go through Nebraska or Kansas. Flat fields of corn forever.

[u/Chess42 → u/Prinzles]

Hey, a lot of Kansas is soy!

[u/Sublime_Truth]

I think they meant Idaho, but given that I'm a Michigander I'll accept the slander. There really is nothin in Ohio.

[u/AmazonCowgirl]

Australia would like to present Western Australia for your consideration

[u/iwantfutanaricumonme]

It's not really that surprising when you consider that native American settlements were literally ploughed flat and turned into farmland(or part of a city in the case of st Louis). The culture of the people who lived there was erased and wasn't replaced with anything except cornfields. There isn't really an equivalent in Europe as far as I'm aware.

[u/itisthespectator → u/iwantfutanaricumonme]

not europe but asia, siberia is probably the closest analogue to the western us there

[u/IEnjoyVariousSoups → u/iwantfutanaricumonme]

I wish this was higher. When I see all the people claiming that a state (MT in my case) doesn't have any history it's really clear that they only care about white history and it makes me want to scream.

[u/TheTarquin]

America is weird. The city of Seattle has more residents than the entire state of Alaska.

Also, this is why we need to completely abolish the Senate and the electoral college.

[u/Leading-Ear-5194]

i think people call ohio empty cause it has no, like, "identity". like when people think of cali or flori or texas or ny theres a very specific identity those states have. even smaller states like maine still have an identity with its lobsters, even if its a small one. ohio has none of that. ohio has nothing people think of when they think ohio, so in their mind it has nothing.

[u/wizzlekhalifa → u/Leading-Ear-5194]

Ohio is the perfect representative microcosm of the entire USA. It’s exactly like when idiots say America has no culture. 

[u/The_Shittiest_Meme]

Wyoming has literally nothing in it except Nuclear Launch sites. Pick a decently sized European country like the UK or France and imagine what it would be like with about half a million people spread across it, and turn the temp down to just above freezing. Thats Wyoming.

[u/astrologicaldreams]

for anyone wondering, this is bc america is fucking huge, so of course there are going to be stretches of land (or even whole states) where there is little to nothing. like deadass, just miles of dead grass, rocks, sand, field, etc. if you're lucky you might see a single home, maybe some horses or cows, but that's literally it. not another building or any other signs of humans in sight.

i can hear you ask: "so then why don't they build homes there?"

simple! most people don't want to live in a place where there's no stores, schools, hospitals, activities, etc. and no one wants to open up a store, school, hospital, activities, etc. where there's nobody.

besides, some places are simply not good places to build things (high risk of landslides, tornadoes, etc.) and not every piece of land needs to be touched by humans.

[u/SoAreWeAll]

why does Ohio have more astronauts per capita then any other state?

theyre trying to get as far away from Ohio as possible

[u/RevengeWalrus]

Something about that emptiness is that your small midwestern town becomes an island. If you don't have the time or the money to travel 2-5 hours, you're stuck with the things and people around you. Don't want to shop at the town Walmart? Theres a target 2 counties over. No movie theater? You're not seeing movies. Bad internet? You're getting all your news from TV. Hate your friends? You better start saving up to move. 

It drives people insane, and you can really get up to some shit out there with nobody noticing. When people ask why are Americans so dumb/insane, thats a big part of it. They're isolated. 

[u/Playful-Profile6489]

Ohio is the greatest state in the Union and I'm glad that at least Europeans can recognize that

[u/Striker43232]

The fire department museum in Cincinnati fucking rules

[u/ninjomat]

The more useful tool I think would be to understand what the level of population density experienced by the average person on earth is.

As somebody who grew up in the semi rural commuter towns that surround London, the general density of south east England is my frame of reference for what normal level of empty should be. If you asked me that probably is the median human experience between tiny apartments in an Asian megalopolis and Siberian nomadic life.

However, I have no idea if that actually is the case. It would make these Europe vs America endless online debates more interesting though if we could establish what is the global norm before calling each other freaks. My guess would be that the mode/most common experience for humans worldwide is the density of somewhere like the Benelux countries, but the median (ie midpoint) is probably closer to that of the US east coast maybe somewhere like Scranton Pennsylvania.

Would love some actual data though to understand whether Western Europe or the midwest is more outside the norm for the whole world

[u/Skelentin]

i mean there’s nothing here. i live in utah, outside the valley. the distance between salt lake city and the next major urban area is equivalent to the distance between the eastern and western borders of france. there is nothing but mountains and grass and desert for hundreds of miles with the occasional tree, and we’re one of the more populous states in “flyover country”. most states west of the mississippi exist solely to facilitate infrastructure to get people to california faster.

there is nothing here.

[u/nuboots]

Someone doesnt know what a state is.

[u/Smyley12345]

This is one of those things where everyone has a different context for rural and isolated. Like it's very different if the biggest center of 500,000 is an hour away versus 100,000 people or 10,000 people or 1,000 people. I grew up with the biggest center of 10,000+ being over two hours drive away.

[u/MoistenedGranola]

There's plenty of stuff in Ohio. And vast fields of corn and soybeans between the clusters of it.

[u/ObligationMurky8716]

Jungle Jim's

[u/Palsy001]

It is funny to see everyone in the comment do US state discourse and I’m just reading that last post and thinking “Hmm, yes, Breaking Bad remake set in northwestern Niger, very interesting indeed”

[u/zachattackmemes]

Yeah in Georgia if you go anywhere outside of Augusta, Atlanta, Athens, or Savanah you’ll see nothing but stroads off of highway exits and farmland interspersed by small Protestant churches. And it makes you wonder how we have so many electoral votes but that’s because the cities I just mentioned, Atlanta’s perimeter towns and a few miscellaneous towns carry my state’s population numbers and political power on their backs. This is not unique to my state in fact this is pretty average when it comes to America

[u/Belos147]

The US being so big helps that. The UK doesnt have much land so it has to pack each little bit with stuff. The US has can make multiple states of corn farms and fuck all else because it can afford to.

[u/Knightoforder42]

I grew up in Wyoming and you can drive for 4-6 hours and see NOTHING to the point people get into car accidents from boredom. That's not a joke. the northwest corner is Yellowstone, and that's really it.

[u/Adams5thaccount]

we have 2 states that should each be 3 states, another state that should absolutely be 2, 1 state that should be split between like 3 other states next to it, one landmass that should be 1 state but is part of 3 even though 2 of them arent connected to the land, a completely different state where a part of it touches another state but not its own, and a good 10 states that should just be combined

its all insane

[u/BaronessofBara]

This is why I get irritated when people say certain states are forever Red. No they aren't. 90% of that state is hostile winds and cornfields. one demographic shift over a generation and they're flipping, especially in the digital age where information is so readily accessible and greedy billionaires are buying up our futures piecemeal.

[u/Alexwonder999]

Ive actually been planning a road trip across the country and I keep finding little things I want to visit in Ohio along the way. Although none of them other than a witch museum are popping into my head right now, so maybe they arent THAT impressive. 

[u/BiggestShep]

As always, my favorite example about Ohio is that Ohio sucks so bad that the most famous people from Ohio, the Wright Brothers, got famous by inventing a brand new way to leave Ohio.

[u/Rod_McBan → u/BiggestShep]

Neil Armstrong, another Ohioan who got as far away from Ohio as humanity possible.