A Publication Of The Newton County: Fill & Download for Free

My Jersey street cred here is that I was born and raised in Monmouth County - 3rd generation. I’m a Rutgers grad. I commuted from Red Bank by train and Atlantic Highlands by boat to work in Lower Manhattan in my early 20s. I lived in Camden County for about 2 years and in Philadelphia for 10 years.GeographyThe answer is in the question. There are no two cities in North America that are as large and as close together - 98 miles by car - as Philadelphia is to New York City.The combined megapolitan region of New York and Philadelphia is around 30 million people.Los Angeles and San Diego - around 120 miles apart - come in at around 22 million people.Chicago and Milwaukee - 93 miles - have about 11.3 million peopleBaltimore and Washington, DC are less than 40 miles apart but combined those regions number around 9.8 million.The San Francisco Bay Area also has Oakland and San Jose in it and none of those cities are more than 50 miles apart but together they “only” add up to 9.7 million people.So the simple answer is that New York and Philly are just too big to have another large city between them. Cities exist as they do because of the services they support and there’s a well developed theory around this called the “Central Place Theory”. If you really want to nerd out on that you can also check out Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures and A mysterious law that predicts the size of the world's biggest cities.But if you don’t feel like reading all of that theory, it basically says that there’s no need for a highly specialized medical industry or financial services in Princeton, for example, because the people who live there already have access to those services in both NYC and Philly. Moving those services to Princeton would simply be cannibalizing the talent and the customer base from the existing locations - in other words decentralizing it. Most people understand that intuitively. They just don’t spend much time thinking about it.As we can see, the only part of NJ that is not within 60 miles of either New York or Philly is the southeastern edge of Cape May County. It’s also an interesting map because that’s pretty close to being the Venn diagram that explains Central Jersey. I digress.So for mid-tier shopping, medical services, or a smaller airport people in Cape May might head to Atlantic City. For anything more they would travel to Philadelphia. There just aren’t enough people down there to warrant anything more and most of the people who live there like Cape May just the way it is.As others have mentioned, it’s not that NJ doesn’t have cities. Newark is, in its own right, a large city and were it not in the shadow of NYC it would be much more prominent. It’s home to a large, international airport, has major universities in and just outside of the city, is a major transit hub on the Northeast Corridor, and until recently had both an NHL and an NBA franchise. Some have argued that the only way to both break the dominance of the Yankees in MLB and bring baseball back to Montreal is to add a 3rd team to New York - which was the case when the Giants were in Manhattan and the Dodgers in Brooklyn. Newark or nearby Jersey City would be great locations. Caple: Expand the league, not the wild cardsTopographyThe geography, the reason our Central Places are precisely where they are, is because of the topography. The French made their Louisiana claim to the entire Mississippi drainage basin. Similarly, the Dutch settled both sides of the Hudson but after the English takeover the colony was quickly divided. It was easy to make colonial boundaries along major rivers as there was no questioning the precise location of the boundary and the English seemed to be a fan of doing just that. But the reason that New York City is on one side of the Hudson and not the other is only partly rooted in that political history.Most of the reason that the city wound up east of the Hudson comes down to the lay of the land. The NJ side of the river wasn’t a practical place to grow a city. Much of the NJ side of the river has tall cliffs that run parallel to the Hudson. These are known as “the Palisades” and only turn slightly inland as they continue south through Jersey City. The problem colonial settlers faced is clearly visible here in this photo looking towards Manhattan from Union City, NJ. Look down over that railing at the street below and then imagine having to offload goods from a ship then get them up that cliff face.Manhattan was an easier place to defend from attack and also had better farmland. It sloped gently towards the river and had rolling hills in its northern reaches. It was also more easily accessible by ship from Long Island and other cities in New England.During the railroad era New Jersey began to “catch up” to Manhattan in terms of development. Once there were reliable mechanical means to get heavy things up big hills, development became a lot easier. But at the same time this part of NJ was also becoming a shipping hub. The railroads from everywhere in the US west of the Hudson River either terminated in Hoboken or had to go north to Albany to cross the river. If you didn’t want to waste +6 hours of travel time going up to Albany then back down you took the train to Hoboken and transferred to a ferry. You can still do that today if you feel so inclined. That Hoboken transfer remained the only practical way to get to Manhattan via rail from anywhere west of the Hudson until 1906 when the North River Tunnels were built.A very similar thing happened with Oakland in California. The transcontinental railroad terminated in Oakland and one had to transfer to a boat to get to San Francisco. Even though most goods and services had to stop in Oakland first, it still plays second fiddle to SF. As ships grew larger, especially after containerization, NJ developed an advantage here as well. NJ was better connected to the continental freight rail and highway networks and could host a deeper port than what the East River had been home to. By the 1970s almost all shipping was in and out of Port Elizabeth and the immediately adjacent Port Newark. But none of this mattered much. By the mid-1800s New York’s primacy was all but guaranteed and the technological advancements of the late 1800s (internal combustion engine, electricity, elevators, etc) cemented it.Down at the other end of NJ, Philadelphia was chosen as the site for Penn’s city because, like New York, it was between two rivers.One river could be relied upon for drinking and irrigation and the other river for shipping. Penn’s site was also located at a bend in the Delaware River. This meant that the river was nice and deep on the Pennsylvania side (erosion) and shallow and marshy (deposition) on the New Jersey side. It turns out “Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey” is an adage much older than Lifetime.In terms of land close to the rivers at either end of the state there wasn’t much goldilocks land. It was either wetlands or rocky uplands. On the Camden side of the Delaware River it was mostly wetlands. Still to this day, the Cooper River and Newton Creek are mostly surrounded by parks. The State and County have gone to great lengths to increase the amount of park space around these water bodies by knocking down old warehouses and tearing out parking lots because flooding is still a problem. This photo below looks like it was taken from the Cuthbert Blvd Bridge over the Cooper - connecting Collingswood and Westmont to Cherry Hill - but it should be clear how flat the area is and how much of the floodplain of the Delaware River is actually on the NJ side of the river.Away from the rivers, NJ was great for timber and then for farming. There’s a reason we still call it the Garden State. But away from the river isn’t a great place for shipping and 200 years ago there were no big cities that weren’t near a navigable body of water. Even today, 185 years out from the beginning of the railroad era, only 6 of the 25 largest metro areas and 13 of the 50 largest aren’t near the ocean and/or a big river.The first railroad across the Delaware River was in 1834 from Morrisville, PA into Trenton. The Delaware River gets gradually wider as one goes south from Trenton. There wasn’t enough outside of farming on the South Jersey side of the Delaware to justify the cost of a rail or road crossings until the end of the 19th century. The Delair Bridge from Philly to Camden (technically Pennsauken) wasn’t operational until 1896. South Jersey just wasn’t economically important enough to build multiple bridges to. It was between nothing and on the way to nowhere. There was no major industry outside of the Camden waterfront and that was already connected to Philly by a robust ferry and barge network. It was also already connected to North Jersey/the Raritan Bay via the Camden and Amboy Railroad, and down to Atlantic City and Cape May by rail.PoliticsFinally, almost no one moves to New Jersey because they want to be in a big city. The state owes most of its population to people leaving New York or Philadelphia for a quiet slice of the countryside. Anyone in NJ who wants to experience the big city doesn’t have to travel very far. This was as true 150 years ago as it is today. By the 1890s the NJ suburbs were booming but were largely without municipal services. This put them at odds with local farmers. Why should farmers pay for road paving, street lighting, and city sewer and water when they had no need for it?While suburban, NJ voters were demanding municipal services they were also concerned about urban creep and the machine politics that they had chosen to move away from. No one in the suburbs wanted to be annexed by Newark or Patterson. This sparked a “fever” that’s been called boroughitis.* Hundreds of boroughs were incorporated across the state that prevented larger cities like Newark, Camden, Trenton, New Brunswick, Patterson, etc from growing beyond their then boundaries. So, going back to our Central Place Theory for a moment, perhaps in a different timeline where boroughitis never happened, a city like Trenton could’ve grown larger. But it only would’ve been annexing the people and services who are already there in our timeline. Maybe downtown Trenton is bigger than it is now but that only gets achieved by pulling the office space off the Route 1 corridor. We don’t actually wind up with more goods and services in Mercer County.Boroughitis didn’t just prevent cities from growing geographically. It also prevented them from growing economically. It forced them all to compete for the same population/tax base to pay for services while also delivering the same, high level of services to ensure that they didn’t lose population or business to their neighbors. It was a race to the top that just about bankrupted everyone.That process also really doomed the larger, industrial cities in the state when deindustrialization took hold. There was no vacant land left in the cities where new industries could set up shop. The contamination of the industrial age made redevelopment of old industrial sites risky for a long time (until Superfund in the 80s). There was also no way for those cities to annex new industries and new subdivisions in the suburbs to keep their budget in the black.Compare Newark, hemmed in on all sides by other towns, to a city like Charlotte or Phoenix, both of which have annexed large parts of the counties that they’re in and are nowhere near done annexing. Phoenix was 17 square miles in 1953. Today it’s over 500 square miles and not done. The 24 square miles of Newark is the same today as it was in 1929. New York and Philly had similar problems in terms of being geographically constrained but both cities were already large in land area and still had vacant land in the 1950s. New subdivisions were going up in Queens into the early 50s and in Staten Island and Northeast Philly into the early 80s. Both cities still had big problems in the 1980s but they had enough room from some growth to bridge the gap to the Superfund era. Newark was built out by the 1920s and had no chance.And in the end what we still have is counties with 40 school districts, 40 police departments, and 40 public works departments and almost always at least one of those towns was a dumping ground for all the stuff that no one else wanted. That redundancy alone explains most of the insanely high property taxes in the state.** The town I grew up in was 3 square miles with around 5,000 residents. 3 of the neighboring towns were almost identical in size and population and no one visiting us from out of state could ever tell where one town ended and the other began. Imagine being a kid with good friends who lived down the street who you play street hockey or skateboard with. They always go to a different school from you (even though the school you to go is closer for all of you) because they live in a different town. Swap out those kids with where you work, where you shop, where you go to church, etc. and that’s NJ in a nutshell. It’s also why, given my career field, I don’t live there. It’s not because I don’t want to. There’s just (quite ironically) not enough work.If you’ve made it this far - here’s a parting gift:6 Reasons Cities Are Located Where They Are*Only the scale of boroughitis is unique to NJ. Similar things happened in suburban Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston, and even San Francisco.** There’s a bit of a cottage industry that has grown up around insisting that municipal consolidation doesn’t save money. Almost all of it ignores that most municipal mergers that have occurred in the past have done so for the purpose of spending money on infrastructure (e.g., a new sewer system) or services (e.g., professional fire). Things they would have paid a lot more for had they not merged. When you account for these things and especially when you account for inflation and the savings in pension and healthcare costs over the long term the savings are unquestionable.

I’m going to steer clear of the interesting facts that are horrifically obvious or have been done to death in other answers (“Rhode Island is the smallest state,” for example). I’m going for the wack factor here, people. Buckle up.Alabama - full of rocket scientistsHuntsville, Alabama is known as “the rocket capital of the world.” The Marshall Space Flight Center, activated on July 1, 1960, was responsible for the creation of the Jupiter C rocket (which propelled the first U.S. satellite into orbit) and also built the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 spacecraft). Yes, that’s right: Alabama, at one point, was the home of the world’s highest concentration of rocket scientists. And here you thought Alabama was full of nothing but racist hicks, didn’t you?Alaska - a bit warmer than you thoughtThink it doesn’t get that hot in Alaska? A record high of 100 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded at Fort Yukon in 1915. (Just in case you were curious, the record low was -80 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in 1971 at Prospect Creek Camp.)Arizona - where the fishing’s fineDespite being one of the most notoriously arid and desert-coated states in the country, Arizona has two native species of trout—one of which, the Apache trout, is found only in Arizona. Unsurprisingly, it’s the official state fish.Arkansas - diamonds in the roughArkansas is a girl’s best friend. The largest and most valuable diamonds ever found in the U.S. were discovered in the state, including the 8.52-carat Esperanza gem discovered in 2015 (pictured above; estimated value $1 million). Arkansas is jam-packed with gems, minerals, ores, and semi-precious stones. The Crater of Diamonds State Park in Pike County allows visitors to search for precious and semi-precious stones, including diamonds, quartz, amethyst, agate, jasper, and garnet.California - an agricultural giantBetter known for the Hollywood film industry and Silicon Valley, California’s real economic powerhouse is its agriculture. More turkeys are raised in California than in any other state, so raise a glass to the Golden State next Thanksgiving. California also produces 300,000 tons of grapes (and 17 million gallons of wine) a year, plus 20% of the nation’s milk and simply staggering amounts of fruit, vegetables, beef, and chicken. Almost all of America’s almonds, figs, apricots, kiwi fruit, olives, dates, nectarines, prunes, pistachios, and walnuts are grown in California—and almost 100% of America’s commercially grown artichokes as well. True story: in 1948, a pretty 22-year-old woman named Norma Jean Baker was crowned California’s first “Artichoke Queen” in Castroville, a few miles north of Monterey (a hotbed of artichoke cultivation). She went on to become actress and bombshell Marilyn Monroe.Colorado - pretty far up thereThey don’t call it “mile-high” for nothing. Not only is Colorado’s largest city, Denver, a mile above sea level, but Colorado also has the highest mean altitude of any state in the country. The highest paved road in North America (14,258 feet at its highest point), the highest auto tunnel in the world (11,000 feet), and the highest incorporated city in the United States (Leadville) are all located in Colorado. Seventy-five percent of all United States soil higher than 10,000 feet is in Colorado. And the views in Colorado, unsurprisingly, are breathtaking. The poet Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to write “America the Beautiful” in 1893, after she and some of her coworkers climbed to the 14,000-foot summit of Pike’s Peak (pictured above).Connecticut - birthplace of the hamburgerBeing one of America’s oldest states, Connecticut is a land of firsts. After copper was discovered in Simsbury in 1705, America’s first copper coins were minted in Connecticut in 1737. America’s oldest public library—the Scoville Memorial Library—started up in Salisbury in 1771, after the owner of a local blast furnace solicited contributions from the community and bought 200 books in London to start the collection. America’s first phone book was published in New Haven in 1878 (it only had 50 names in it). The idea for the Polaroid camera was born at a boy’s camp in Connecticut in 1922, with the first camera being sold in 1934. The world’s first practical helicopter, the VS-300, took flight in Stratford in 1939. But those probably aren’t the best and most beloved of Connecticut’s “firsts”—America’s first hamburger was served in New Haven in 1900, at a spot called “Louis’s Lunch.” According to local legend, a customer asked owner Louis Lassen if the “ground steak trimmings” they’d just ordered could be served to go. Lassen slid the ground beef patty between a pair of bread slices, and presto! Burger-ception.Delaware - workin’ on the night shiftReggae legend Bob Marley resided in Delaware from 1965 to 1977, working at the Chrysler plant in Newark and for the Dupont Company, saving up money to move back to Jamaica and start a record company. His song “Night Shift” (one of my favorites by Marley, actually) is rumored to be based on his time there. How apropos that Marley, spokesman for the downtrodden and oppressed, should take up residence in Delaware, a hub of the Underground Railroad. Pennsylvania-born Quaker Thomas Garrett, a close friend and benefactor of Harriet Tubman, was a “stationmaster” for the Underground Railroad in Delaware in the years leading up to the American Civil War. He is thought to have helped over 2,000 escaped slaves reach safety; Garrett’s personal (and very modest) estimate was 2,700. Now that’s workin’ on the night shift.Florida - crocs and gators, gators and crocsEven by American standards, Florida is a weird place. For starters, it’s the only place in the world where both crocodiles and alligators exist side by side (in the Everglades). Another fun Florida fact: Saint Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental U.S., having been founded by the Spanish in 1565. (I couldn’t decide which fact was more interesting, so I included them both.)Georgia - Blackbeard’s hideout, maybeNotorious buccaneer Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, terrorized the Caribbean and the southeast coast of British North America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Legends say he may have had a hideout on Blackbeard Island just off the coast of Georgia, and may even have buried some of his treasure there. Either way, the United States Congress set aside 3,000 acres as the “Blackbeard Island Wilderness Area” in 1975.Hawaii - what isn’t interesting about it?There as many interesting facts about Hawaii as there are grains of sand on its beaches. Let me throw a few at ya:Hawaii is the only U.S. state which grows coffee.There are only 13 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet—five vowels and eight consonants.Waialeale Mountain on the island of Kauai is considered the wettest place on earth, with an average rainfall of 488 inches.The only royal palace in the United States, Iolani Palace, is located on Oahu.The biggest contiguous ranch in the United States is located on the Big Island of Hawai’i—the Parker Ranch, at roughly 480,000 acres.The Big Island is home to the world’s most active volcano—Kilauea.The two tallest mountains in the Pacific (Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa) are also located on the Big Island.Idaho - deep canyons, tall waterfallsThought the deepest canyon in the United States was that big one in Arizona? Nope. Hells Canyon in western Idaho is the deepest river gorge in the country at 7,993 feet—about 1,900 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon. Oh, and Shoshone Falls, also on the Snake River (in Twin Falls), is 212 feet high—45 feet higher than Niagara.Illinois - one of the flattest flats that ever flattened a flatIllinois is the second-flattest of the lower 48 states. (The only flatter state is Florida, with all those low-lying coastal plains.) It lies, on average, 600 feet above sea level, except down near the Mississippi River, where it reaches as low as 279 feet above sea level. The highest point in the whole state, Charles Mound, is a mere 1,235 feet above sea level. That’s less than a thousand feet of elevation change in an area of almost 58,000 square miles. Quite a difference from Colorado, eh?Indiana - the popcorn capital of the worldHawaii grows coffee. Georgia grows the “three P’s”—peaches, peanuts, and pecans. California grows…almost everything. Indiana, however, grows corn. Almost half of the state’s farmland is devoted to growing corn. Not surprising, given that Indiana is the home state of Orville Redenbacher, and produces 20% of the United States’ popcorn. In 2014, Indiana farmers planted 91,000 acres of corn just for popcorn.Iowa - rivers, lakes, and mammoth bonesDespite lying almost smack-dab in the middle of the United States, Iowa is the only state whose eastern and western borders are 100% water. It is bounded to the west by the Missouri River and to the east by the Mississippi. Much like Illinois, Iowa is quite flat—mashed into a pancake by the glaciers that marched across North America during the last Ice Age. The Iowa Great Lakes in Dickinson County were scooped out by these glaciers. Not surprisingly, Iowa is saturated with woolly mammoth bones—the big hairy critters once dominated the region.Kansas - they got a lotta breadIn addition to being the state that’s less flat than Iowa only because it’s got a hill or two, Kansas is America’s breadbasket. Almost literally. In 1990, Kansas wheat farmers produced enough wheat to make 33 billion loaves of bread—enough to give every single human being on Earth six loaves apiece. The Kansan wheat farmers broke their record in 1997, producing enough wheat to make 35.9 billion loaves of bread. Dang, dude. Pass the butter and jam…Kentucky - not just a part of Virginia anymoreBluegrass. The Kentucky Derby. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Mammoth Cave. Fort Knox. The song “Happy Birthday.” Kentucky’s famous for a lot of things, but not many folks know that Kentucky wasn’t even its own state in the beginning. It was originally a county of Virginia. Kentuckians got fed up with having to travel such a long distance to the capital of Richmond, and successfully petitioned to break away and become the 15th state in 1792.Louisiana - where you won’t make the parish lineMaybe this isn’t the most interesting fact about the Bayou State (supposedly it’s where the turducken was invented, popularized by the chef Paul Prudhomme in his New Orleans restaurant K-Paul in the late 1980s). But I’ll throw it out there anyway. Louisiana is the only state in the Union (aside from Alaska) that doesn’t have counties. (Even Hawaii has counties, for Pete’s sake. Alaska has boroughs and census-designated areas.) Louisiana has “parishes” instead.Maine - secluded but beautifulMaine is kind of a lonely place. It’s the only state in the lower 48 that borders just one other state and the only state in the country with a one-syllable name. Mainers speak a completely different language than the rest of the United States. But despite these setbacks, Maine has a lot to offer. Ninety percent of the nation’s toothpick supply is produced in Maine, and they also supply 40% of the nation’s lobster. Jaw-droppingly beautiful Acadia National Park (pictured above, in a photo that won a U.S. Department of the Interior photo contest in 2018) consistently ranks in the top ten most-visited national parks in the country. Oh, and Maine is also home to a rather obscure horror writer named Stephen King.Maryland - home of the U.S. Naval AcademyColorado has the U.S. Air Force Academy, and New York’s got West Point, but Maryland has the U.S. Naval Academy, founded October 10, 1845. (Notable graduates include state governors, ambassadors, cabinet members, Congressmen, Nobel Prize winners, astronauts, and even a U.S. president.) The location of the academy isn’t surprising. Sixteen of Maryland’s 23 counties touch the tidal basin, and Maryland, despite being less than 12,500 miles square, has 4,431 miles of shoreline. Annapolis has been called the sailing capital of the world.Massachusetts - birthplace of basketballAnother New England state with a rich history of “firsts,” Massachusetts can boast of the very first subway system in the United States; the invention of the sport of volleyball (originally called “mintonette”); the namesake of the Fig Newton (Newton, Massachusetts); America’s first planned industrial city (Lowell); America’s first public park (Boston Common, 1634); and the very first game of basketball, played in Springfield in 1891. That may have something to do with why the Basketball Hall of Fame is located in the state.Michigan - land of magicMichigan doesn’t just do cars and rock and roll—the state leads the U.S. in the production of peat, gypsum, and iron ore, and was once home to the world’s largest cement plant, the world’s biggest limestone quarry, and the world’s biggest herd of Holstein cows. But Michigan is known for mass-producing something else, too, something a bit more…whimsical. The city of Colon is the self-proclaimed “Magic Capital of the World.” Every summer the city hosts a four-day magician’s convention, to which amateur and professional magicians flock from across the country. There’s a magic museum, a Magician’s Walk of Fame, and of course, a Magic Capital Cemetery—dozens of famous magicians are buried there. (Or are they?)Minnesota - land o’ lakesJolly Green Giant canned vegetables. Scotch tape. Wheaties. The Bundt pan. Bisquick. Water skiing. The pop-up toaster. Armored cars (and Tonka trucks). The stapler. The Mayo Clinic. Paul Bunyan. The Mall of America—the largest shopping center in America, the size of 78 football fields (9.5 million square feet), with 520 stores, 60 restaurants, and an indoor theme park. Minnesota is famous for a lot of stuff, but it’s most famous for its lakes. Known as “the Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Minnesota actually has 11,842 lakes over ten acres in area. Again—blame those damn glaciers.Mississippi - performing surgical wondersThe first lung transplant and the first heart transplant were both performed in Mississippi, in 1963 and 1964 respectively.Missouri - birthplace of the world's tallest-ever manAside from inventing iced tea and ice cream cones, and falling victim to the deadliest tornado in U.S. history (the Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which claimed 695 lives and destroyed 15,000 homes), Missouri is also the birthplace of the tallest man in modern medical history, Robert Pershing Wadlow (8 feet 11.1 inches tall). EDIT: On another Quoran's suggestion, I've amended my answer to say that Wadlow was born in Missouri. He lived most of his life in Illinois.Montana - where the deer, elk, and antelope outnumber the humansNo two ways about it: this state is just plain wild. I’m gonna pull a Hawaii here and throw some more facts at ya:Largest migratory herd of elk in the country.Largest breeding population of trumpeter swans in the lower 48.Most likely more golden eagles than any other state.Largest nesting population of common loons in the western U.S.A moose population of 8,000—not bad, considering moose were thought to be extinct south of the Canadian border in 1900.Largest grizzly bear population in the lower 48.One average square mile of Montana contains 1.4 elk, 1.4 pronghorn antelope, and 3.3 deer.The Freezeout Lake Wildlife Management Area may contain as many as 300,000 snow geese and 10,000 tundra swans during a typical migration season.Forty-six of Montana’s fifty-six counties are “frontier counties,” with an average population density of less than six people per square mile.Nebraska - drinkin’ the Kool-AidConnecticut’s got hamburgers, New York has French fries, Missouri has ice cream cones, and Florida has Gatorade…but Nebraska is the birthplace of Kool-Aid. Back in the 1920s, Edwin Perkins of Hastings invented a sweet punch he called “Fruit Smack.” But he needed a way to cut production costs. In 1927, he hit upon the idea of selling it as a powder (in his mother’s kitchen, no less) and the rest is history.Nevada - the last bastion of the world’s oldest professionLet’s skip the obvious stuff—casinos, the mob, nuclear testing, Hoover Dam. Let’s get sexy. Nevada is the only state in the Union where some forms of prostitution are still legal. Prostitution is legal in every county in Nevada except Clark County, wherein lies Las Vegas. (Sorry, tourists.) Even so, it is illegal for “freelance” prostitutes to ply their trade—prostitution is illegal except for that practiced in the state’s 21 licensed brothels, such as the famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Mound House.New Hampshire - pretty dang windy, as it turns outThought Chicago was the Windy City? Think again. The winds and weather around Mount Washington, New Hampshire are notoriously wacky and unpredictable. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory recorded a wind speed of 231 miles per hour—three times faster than a Category 1 hurricane. (Two other quick New Hampshire facts—the state declared its independence from Britain six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed—way to go, guys. The state’s motto, unsurprisingly, is “Live Free or Die.”)New Jersey - a seething mass of humanityNew Jersey is pretty much the polar opposite of Montana. Every single one of the state’s 21 counties contains, in whole or in part, a metropolitan area. Ninety percent of the state’s population lives in one of those metropolitan areas. The state has the highest population density of any U.S. state—over a thousand people per square mile, which is 13 times the national average. New Jersey—thanks to its proximity to New York, probably—also has the densest and most tangled network of railroads and highways in the country. And yes, Jersey Shore fans—NJ has no fewer than 50 seaside resort towns and cities, which get horrifically busy during the season.New Mexico - high and dryDenver may be the “Mile-High City” (a mile, for non-Americans reading this answer, is 5,280 feet, and Denver’s elevation ranges between 5,130 and 5,690 feet). But Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, sits at a staggering 7,000 feet. The state is not only high, but also dry—I read somewhere that New Mexico is so arid that 75% of its roads have been left unpaved. They never wash out.New York - always on the verge of a catastrophic subway floodThe trouble with really old cities it’s that it’s pretty dang difficult to modernize them. In New York City’s case, the subway system had to be built below the sewers and storm drains. Over 750 pumps prevent 1.3 million gallons of water from flooding the New York subway system every. Single. Day. I remember reading Alan Weisman’s amazing book The World Without Us, in which he said that the first thing that would happen if humanity suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth is that the New York City subways would flood, and the streets would collapse.North Carolina - flying, jazz, golf, and missing colonistsWhat do aviation, Andrew Jackson, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, and Thelonious Monk all have in common? They were all born in North Carolina. Oh yeah, and it’s also where Babe Ruth hit his first home run, where Arnold Palmer honed his swing (at Wake Forest University), and where the first English colony in North America was established (at Roanoke Island). Yeah, that colony. The one that mysteriously vanished. Oh yeah, and the state’s motto is “Esse quam videri” (“To be, rather than to seem”). How cool is that?North Dakota - protecting “mom and pop shops”Aside from being home to the geographical center of North America (located in Rugby), North Dakota has also become a symbol of the fight against Big Pharma. By North Dakota law, pharmacies must be owned by local pharmacists. You can scour North Dakota from one end to the other and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Rite-Aid or a Walgreens. The law is intended to protect small business owners from being squeezed out by big chains.Ohio - infrastructure galoreYou might say Ohio had the best interest of its citizens at heart. The city of Cincinnati inaugurated America’s first professional fire department on April 1, 1853. Twelve years later, that same city started up the nation’s first ambulance service. A Dayton shopkeeper invented the cash register in 1879 to keep his customers’ sticky fingers off his profits. The city of Akron was the first to use police cars (or rather, police carriages) in 1899. The city of Cleveland installed the nation’s first traffic light in 1914. Ohio also has a long and loving relationship with rock-’n’-roll and aviation—the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland (and the official state song is “Hang On Sloopy”). Ohio is the birthplace of the Wright Brothers and also Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.Oklahoma - birthplace of the electric guitarWhen you think of the phrase “coolest state in America,” Oklahoma probably doesn’t spring to mind. But did you know that that’s where the electric guitar was invented? By a fellow called Bob Dunn in 1934? Didn’t think so. I don’t think even he knew what he was kicking off. Fun fact: the invention of the electric guitar predates the invention of the parking meter (also invented and implemented in Oklahoma) by a year.Oregon - home of the world’s largest (and most terrifying) organismI could say a lot of things about Oregon—the beautiful coastline, the dormant volcanoes, that really deep lake, the wines, the full-service gas stations—but what I really ought to say is that this state is home to the largest organism on earth. It’s a fungus 2.4 miles wide. It’s called a “honey fungus”—an innocuous and dangerously misleading name, in my opinion—and it’s spread itself out over Oregon’s Blue Mountains. I’m sorry, I don’t trust any living thing more than a mile wide. Kill it with fire.Pennsylvania - home of “The Raven” (yes, that raven)Yet another of those old northeastern states rich in history and “firsts,” Pennsylvania is the home of Hershey’s chocolate; the first daily newspaper (1784); the first zoo (1859); the first baseball stadium (1909); the first automobile service station (1913); and the first computer (1946). But Pennsylvania’s claim to fame may be even more profound than that. If you go to the rare book department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, you’ll see a taxidermied raven. It was once the pet of Charles Dickens. But the stuffed bird most famously inspired a certain melancholy Baltimore poet named Edgar Allan Poe to write a poem called “The Raven.” EDIT: This answer previously said that Pennsylvania was part of New England. I've corrected that error on the suggestion of another Quoran.Rhode Island - founded by a true AmericanYes, Rhode Island is the smallest state—let’s get that out of the way. But it’s so much more than that. The colony of Rhode Island was founded by a man who just might have been the most moral American who ever lived. His name was Roger Williams. He was a Puritan minister, author, and theologian who pretty much laid the foundation for the Bill of Rights. Williams was a staunch advocate for religious freedom, firmly supported the separation of church and state, and wanted the colonies to deal fairly with the Native Americans. He was also one of the first abolitionists, way before it was cool. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both acknowledged Williams as a major influence on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After being excommunicated by the Puritan leadership for espousing “new and radical ideas,” Williams founded the Providence Plantations in 1636, offering what he called “liberty of conscience.” If that’s not American, I don’t know what is.South Carolina - shakin’ and quakin’California by no means has a monopoly on earthquakes. On August 31, 1886, an earthquake believed to have registered 7.6 on the Richter scale rocked the city of Charleston, killing over a hundred people, leveling the city, and causing $5.5 million in damages—about $136 million in today’s currency.South Dakota - dyin’ place of a Western legendAmong its many claims to fame—the location of Mount Rushmore, birthplace of Tom Brokaw, homeland of the Sioux nation—South Dakota is also famous for being the place where the legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok met his end. ’Twas in Deadwood, in 1876, when jealous gambler Jack McCall shot Hickok in the back of the head at point-blank range while Hickok was playing poker. In Hickok’s hand were aces and eights—known forever after as “the dead man’s hand.” Though Hickok’s star had faded over the years, his folk hero status was such that Jack McCall’s trial was swift and merciless. In 1877, he was convicted of murder, hanged, and buried in an unmarked grave in Yankton.Tennessee - home of the braveTennessee’s history is a martial one. Tennessee earned its nickname (“the Volunteer State”) due to the valor exhibited by Tennessean volunteers who fought under Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans at the close of the War of 1812. Davy Crockett, the famous American frontiersman, soldier, folk hero, and politician, was born in Tennessee and went on to die a glorious death at the Alamo in 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Tennesee sent more soldiers to fight in the American Civil War than any other state—120,000 to the Confederacy and 31,000 to the Union. Alvin C. York, born in Pall Mall, became one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I. More than 3,600 Tennessee National Guardsmen participated in Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Aside from its indisputable martial prowess, Tennessee is also famous for whiskey (Jack Daniels, anyone?) and music—it’s the birthplace of country music (and Dolly Parton), the location of Elvis Presley’s home of Graceland, and the home of the Grand Ole Opry, the longest-running live radio program in the world. It’s been going nonstop since 1925.Texas - a pretty damn big placeI’m afraid I’m going to have to go with the most obvious interesting fact about Texas, guys. Texas is big. Like, mega-big. The state’s King Ranch is larger than the state of Rhode Island. The city of El Paso is closer to Needles, California (two states away) than it is to Dallas. The state is home to the country’s largest population of whitetail deer and is estimated to be home to 16 million head of cattle. Texas makes up 7.4% of the United States’ total area all by itself. Texas’s largest county (Brewster) is 6,208 square miles—larger than the state of Connecticut (and the nation of Montenegro). Texas itself is 268,597 square miles, which would make it the 40th largest country if it was a country by itself—slightly larger than Burma, and slightly smaller than Morocco.Utah - addicted to gelatinThe state seems to be a little bit obsessed with Jell-O. Salt Lake City has the highest per-capita consumption of the gelatinous stuff in the entire world.Vermont - milk and maple syrupVermont seems to be a bit…removed from the rest of American culture. A mere 22% of Vermonters attend church regularly. The state capital, Montpelier, doesn’t have a McDonalds. Like, anywhere. And until 1996, there were no Walmarts in the state either. (Vermont, much like North Dakota, tends to favor local businesses over nationwide chains.) Vermont has the highest proportion of dairy cows to people—its 1,000 dairy farms and 135,000 cows produce 2.3 billion pounds of milk per annum. Vermont also produces more maple syrup than any other state. (And they’re pretty snobby about it, too.)Virginia - steeped in historyNo discussion of American history is complete without Virginia. It was the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America (Jamestown—sorry you disappeared there, Roanoke). It was the location of the first Thanksgiving. The birthplace of eight U.S. presidents (and six president’s wives). The site of the British surrender during the Revolutionary War (Yorktown). The location of numerous battles of the American Civil War, and the location of the Confederate capital (Richmond). The home base of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic fleet (Norfolk). Rumor has it that 50% of the people in the United States live within a 500-mile radius of Richmond, Virginia…in which case the Old Dominion would be the “center” of the United States, even more so than Rugby, North Dakota.Washington - home of the world’s biggest buildingWhile Washington State is famous for a number of things—being the only state named after a U.S. president, growing fantastic apples, having more glaciers than the other lower 48 states combined, being the birthplace of both Jimi Hendrix and Bing Crosby—Washington is probably best known for being the headquarters of some of America’s wealthiest and most well-known corporations, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing. It’s also home to the largest building in the world—the Boeing assembly plant in Everett, which is a staggering 4,280,000 square feet in area and 472 million cubic feet in volume.West Virginia - birthplace of the ballsiest test pilot in historyYet another piece of the state of Virginia that broke away, West Virginia split away from its mother state in 1861, after Virginia voted to secede from the Union. Only 17 of the 49 delegates from the northwestern corner of the state were in favor of secession, so a convention was held in Wheeling and the notion of becoming an independent state was floated. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation formally admitting West Virginia to the Union, making WV the only state to be admitted to the Union via presidential proclamation. The state is probably most famous for two things: producing 15% of America’s coal and producing Chuck Yeager, the heroic WWII triple ace and test pilot who broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 in 1947.Wisconsin - milk, cheese, cranberries, and…ginseng?Wisconsin sees Vermont’s 1,000 dairy farms and raises ’em 9,920. Wisconsin’s cows produce 25.4% of the country’s cheese and 13.5% of its milk. Wisconsin’s abundance of arable land allows it to grow 60% of the nation’s cranberries and 97% of its ginseng. Wisconsin also grows plenty of green peas, snap peas, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, cherries, apples, and corn. The city of Milwaukee was once home to four of the world’s biggest producers of beer: Schlitz, Blatz, Pabst, and Miller. Only Miller remains, but Wisconsin’s craft brew scene is thriving. Wisconsin is also the birthplace of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, entertainer Chris Farley, actor and producer Orson Welles, author Laura Ingalls Wilder, painter Georgia O’Keeffe, circus impresarios Charles and John Ringling, and pianist Liberace.WyomingUniversal suffrage! Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote, in 1869–51 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified.And there you have it, Quora. Fifty exhaustively researched (heh) facts about the American states. Hope you enjoyed it. My information may be out of date, so please suggest any corrections in the comments section. And thanks for reading.

Absolutely! Chrys Jordan wrote an excellent answer to this question, to which I will only add one entry:George Washington Carver.When I was in elementary school, I wrote a report on Dr. Carver (a Missouri native, who ultimately settled in Alabama) for Black History Month. And I gotta be honest with you, based on what little I learned about the man during my brief (pre-Internet) research, I don't know why more Southerners (both black and white) don't try harder to claim him as part of their "cultural legacy."Born into slavery in Newton County, near modern-day Diamond, Missouri, Dr. Carver never even knew the exact date (or year) of his birth. Despite this fact, and despite slavery, kidnappings, and institutionalized segregation, Carver not only learned to read and write, he became one of the most influential botanists of the early 20th century--and through his research, helped save agriculture in the South from impending (self-inflicted) doom.Along with many others at the Tuskegee Institute where he taught, he helped move the South away from its historical dependence on Cotton. He did so not because of the cotton industry's connections to slavery, but because as a botanist, he knew that decades of intensive cotton cultivation were slowly but steadily destroying and poisoning the soil. From there, the situation deteriorated even further, as scores of Southern cotton plantations began suffering from a massive Boll weevil infestation, ruining entire harvests and threatening the region with agricultural (and economic) ruin.Instead, he and others at the Institute convinced Southern farmers (of all backgrounds) to begin planting nitrogen-fixing legumes and sweet potatoes in rotation with cotton to restore the soil. These not only helped restore the nutrients that were being leached out of the ground, but also mitigated the economic damage caused by weevil infestations, and helped bring relatively nutritious, low-cost food crops into impoverished Southern communities--improving the lives of all Southerners, regardless of all race and ethnicity. His work was publicly admired and lauded by such American figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt--and even the Crown Prince of Sweden. Dr. Carver became a nationally-recognized scientific celebrity after being one of the first African-American professors to testify on an important tariff issue before the Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives. He was even invited by Henry Ford to speak at a conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, where the two developed a friendship that would last until his death in 1943.If you really want to celebrate Southern pride in a thought-provoking "non-racist" manner, you can start by celebrating great Southern men like Dr. Carver--not because he was African-American, nor because he was a civil rights hero, but because his contributions to science and technology greatly improved the lives of all Americans, regardless of race, color, religion, or creed. Southerners of all races should be proud to say that they helped produce one of the most important American botanists of the 20th century, and count among their number many great scientists and inventors like him.But before they can do so, they must to acknowledge that had the Confederacy won the American Civil War, none of his accomplishments would have been possible.In short, there are a lot of things that the Southern United States could be and should be proud of--however, their military engagements between 1861 and 1865, are not among them.