Talk:Southwestern United States

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Incorrect Data

Texas and Oklahoma are officially part of the West South Central, a sub region of the southern US. The article is providing conflicting data. The true western U.S. starts west of the 100th meridian. These two states should be removed. JamesRogers23 (talk) 20:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the existing discussions on this in the Archives of this talk page. The fact that there are many different definitions and delineations for what is and is not in the Southwestern United States has been discussed at length over many years, including the issues of inclusion of Texas and Oklahoma, and a general consensus of how to approach this has already been reached.

The West South Central region is a region created by the US Census Bureau for its own data collection and analysis regions, but it is not the one authoritative regional classification, even within the United States government. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, for instance, puts Texas and Oklahoma in the Southwest with Arizona and New Mexico.

Also, the 100th meridian you insist is the demarcation for the true west, was originally selected by John Wesley Powell in the 1870s for the US Geographical Survey's purposes, as a neat rounded off line to divide the humid eastern United States from the arid Great Plains and western US, mostly for the purposes of national water management policy. A significant portion of Texas is still west of the 100th meridian, and it's interesting to note that the factors Powell used to choose the 100th meridian as his cutoff, like annual rainfall and plant communities, have changed due to climate change, especially in southern parts of the country, to the point that the line corresponds now more closely to the 98th meridian, about 140 miles to the east. About 2/3rds of the state of Texas would lie west of this updated demarcation line. 99.111.255.214 (talk) 14:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]