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Northwest Arkansas


NWA, Southern or Midwestern?  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. Is the Area Southern or Midwestern?

    • Southern
      3
    • Midwestern
      2
    • Hybrid Southern & Midwestern
      18
    • None, Be Specific
      1


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Just to add a little more info to this topic. I've noticed all the major NWA cities except Springdale have more people claim German ancestry than any other. Typically German ancestry shows up more in the Midwest and English for the South. Siloam Springs fits into this as well. Just thought it was interesting.

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What does Springdale Hold for it's major ancestory?

Springdale residents list American ancestry more than any other. I don't think there's a large Native American population there so it's all the people who either don't know or don't bother with their ancestry and just list themsevles as 'Americans'. Although German is just behind it and English is actually pulling in at fourth for Springdale.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Q: What things does one usually NOT see in the midwestern or northern United States?

A: Alligators, saw palmettos, palm trees in people's yards and spanish moss.

You can't see it on this map, but at the very southern end of LeFlore County in suburban Fort Smith (well away from that city) the Fayetteville/Rogers/Fort Smith DMA TV market borders the Shreveport (Texarkana) TV market via McCurtain County, OK. With some exceptions in the western U.S., DMAs tend to be much smaller than states (save for ones in New England) so border to border their northern and southern ends are usually much closer than northern and southern ends between adjacent states.

And traveling throughout the Shreveport DMA, I've either witnessed or read about:

- Huge alligator repopulations along Arkansas' Lake Millwood in the northern part of that DMA...I think they caught a 20 footer last decade.

- I've personally seen a wild saw palmetto growing almost right along the Red River on the banks above Hooks, TX (10 miles west of Texarkana on land I once owned)...they grow profusely east of Shreveport toward Monroe.

- Shreveport homes (and government buildings) have some palms planted...they're obviously ones designed for more temperate southern climates, but they grow nonetheless.

- In Natchitoches Parish, LA (and perhaps Red River Parish immediately south of Shreveport) I've seen spanish moss in trees along I-49.

Of course, if you look at the map I linked and see McDonald County, MO, in the Joplin-Pittsburg DMA, that market takes in a 10-14 county chunk of all of southeast Kansas, which along with the area immediately above the Joplin suburbs is as "lower midwestern" as a place can be (more midwestern than much of the Missouri Ozarks, IMO), so it's a tradeoff, but...even though on this thread we're talking about issues of culture and ancestry it's still interesting to know how "on the border" our area is in other ways.

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Just curious, does anyone know where the furthest inland naturally growing palm trees exist in arkansas?

Matt, don't know about palm trees, but the saw palmetto (serenoa repens - I changed its name from "dwarf palmetto" on the above post) I saw above Hooks Texas was at a point where one could see the silo of a farm in Little River County, Arkansas (Ashdown zip code area) a quarter mile away, so the banks on the Arkansas side were closer than that.

Supposedly populations of the saw palmetto exist elsewhere in Arkansas.

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  • 1 month later...

I live outside of Nashville, so I technically don't have a dog in this fight.....but my point is...I work in Franklin, TN which is 20 miles south of Nashville. That area has grown so rapidly and has such a wealthy and come-and-go business population that it is very easy to forget you are in the South. Any native older than 25 or so has a southern accent...younger kids than that have a valley girl/California way of speaking. Their parents have whatever accent they brought with them. In these people's minds Nashville is not southern because their own little corner of it is virtually not very. I think this is probably what you are encountering there. The same can be said of Charlotte, Atlanta etc etc. I know southern people from southern Missouri, so I would consider you southern as well. Another exapmple...New Orleanans are southern but so very different from the rest of us. I say yes to most of Texas and OK as well. I say the only place south of VA WV and KY that I would not call southern is the southernmost section of all...South Florida...and I don't know what the hell you would call them!! By the way I didn't vote..I'll leave it to you locals. I love these kind of discussions..thanks for letting me chime in!

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I live outside of Nashville, so I technically don't have a dog in this fight.....but my point is...I work in Franklin, TN which is 20 miles south of Nashville. That area has grown so rapidly and has such a wealthy and come-and-go business population that it is very easy to forget you are in the South. Any native older than 25 or so has a southern accent...younger kids than that have a valley girl/California way of speaking. Their parents have whatever accent they brought with them. In these people's minds Nashville is not southern because their own little corner of it is virtually not very. I think this is probably what you are encountering there. The same can be said of Charlotte, Atlanta etc etc. I know southern people from southern Missouri, so I would consider you southern as well. Another exapmple...New Orleanans are southern but so very different from the rest of us. I say yes to most of Texas and OK as well. I say the only place south of VA WV and KY that I would not call southern is the southernmost section of all...South Florida...and I don't know what the hell you would call them!! By the way I didn't vote..I'll leave it to you locals. I love these kind of discussions..thanks for letting me chime in!

No problem, nice to hear what others have to say as well. Gives a different perspective. :D

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I live outside of Nashville, so I technically don't have a dog in this fight.....but my point is...I work in Franklin, TN which is 20 miles south of Nashville. That area has grown so rapidly and has such a wealthy and come-and-go business population that it is very easy to forget you are in the South. Any native older than 25 or so has a southern accent...younger kids than that have a valley girl/California way of speaking. Their parents have whatever accent they brought with them. In these people's minds Nashville is not southern because their own little corner of it is virtually not very. I think this is probably what you are encountering there. The same can be said of Charlotte, Atlanta etc etc. I know southern people from southern Missouri, so I would consider you southern as well. Another exapmple...New Orleanans are southern but so very different from the rest of us. I say yes to most of Texas and OK as well. I say the only place south of VA WV and KY that I would not call southern is the southernmost section of all...South Florida...and I don't know what the hell you would call them!! By the way I didn't vote..I'll leave it to you locals. I love these kind of discussions..thanks for letting me chime in!

I would say South Florida is more European/Northern. Anything south of Orlando makes you feel like you've left the south.

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I would say South Florida is more European/Northern. Anything south of Orlando makes you feel like you've left the south.

Most everything south of Orlando is farmland, ranches and swamp. I know there's a lot of horse ranchers down there that are more akin to Texas than the North. The swamp area is mostly Seminole Indians. There are European flavored towns on the coastals as in any other part of the country, but I would call them more Southern than Northern/European. The furthest tip of Miami/Ft Lauderdale would be mostly imported Hispanics, but the general population would be more Northern than Southern.

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Most everything south of Orlando is farmland, ranches and swamp. I know there's a lot of horse ranchers down there that are more akin to Texas than the North. The swamp area is mostly Seminole Indians. There are European flavored towns on the coastals as in any other part of the country, but I would call them more Southern than Northern/European. The furthest tip of Miami/Ft Lauderdale would be mostly imported Hispanics, but the general population would be more Northern than Southern.

It's mostly New Yorkers and New Jerseyeans (I think I said that right) that are moving to South Flordia. It's interesting that with Hilton Head Island, Sc you will see more Ohio plates than South Carolina plates. There's so many people from the Columbus and Toledo areas moving down there, it's quite weird.

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