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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
My state disallows billboard advertising, which I forget until I cross into another state and have to suffer through Jesus and injury lawyer ads.
Heading west out of Connecticut into New York the most obvious difference is they don't trim tree branches over the road/power lines. It suddenly feels like you're driving through a tunnel of green. Its actually quite nice but those parts of nys must have a lot of outages after storms.
A lot of our residential infrastructure is underground, because of the weather we have. Though, there's a fair amount of aerial hardware as well. Where I live is famous for ice storms, and every few years there's a major outage that lasts anywhere from 12 to 48 hours. They're rare, but they do occur. More often it's because someone hit a pole or ground mount transformer, versus a falling branch or lightning bolt.
I still prefer ice, snow, and occasional outages to unbearable heat and humidity, earthquake, and hurricane tradeoff being further south or west.
To answer OP, there's a visible change in road surface and signage not only at state borders, but even between county and town lines. Each county handles the road a different way, and the finish/quality can differ a LOT even between municipalities and counties.
A lot of our residential infrastructure is underground, because of the weather we have.
I get that. A lot of ours is too. But I live an hour from the area I'm talking about, the weather isn't that different, and I still see wire poles up there waiting to be taken down by a tree branch in the next ice storm. CTs trees tend to be pruned so they don't overhang the roads at all. Its the most jarring difference driving from, for example, Sherman CT to Pawling NY.
you know, most roads will tell you. The change in asphalt for sure will tell you exactly
plus for me at least, Idaho is different than Washington
the roadside advertisements is instantly different
the highways are laid out in much different ways
the people are absolutely different almost to an extreme
Where I come from the asphalt change was how I knew I was in the next County
When you pass into Indiana, you're immediately overcome with this opressive sense of forboding and despair. Also the roads immediately turn to shit.
Also, the ad signs will alternate between adult toy stores and anti-abortion messages every few hundred feet.
I'll never forget driving home from college with some friends for the holidays one year. I was from PA, he was from Ohio and had never been more east. We were headed to NY with another friend and our route took us briefly through Jersey.
"How will we know we're there?" he asked as the car suddenly lurched and felt like we hit a gravel road despite ostensibly being a paved highway ...
That's strange, I grew up in NJ and our roads tend to be well maintained. It was kinda shocking when I moved to PA and the roads had way more potholes and skinny useless shoulders!
I do concede, I am ... old. Things may well have changed and it depends on the part of Jersey. States around Jersey just like ripping on them to feel better about themselves, but PA is no treat either which is why I got the hell out of there =P
Nope.
The main thing you'll notice is a shit ton of stores for anything that's not legal in one state, or taxed higher in one state.
The rest of the stuff mixes together along state lines and there's no clear divide except for the legal/tax stuff.
Crossing into Wyoming from Utah is hilarious for this. Suddenly there's porn, cigarettes, beer, fireworks, and more porn!
Major roads have a "welcome to wherever" sign but minor ones won't. They're always a clear delineation in the pavement, though, because neither state is going to pave one single molecule of distance further than they have to. And they never seem to be able to arrange it so that there isn't a noticeable bump at the junction.
One of my neighboring states also has some kind of pathological aversion to putting complete and legible signs for the names of roads at intersections, too. So the disappearance of all useful street signs is therefore usually also a clue.
It usually depends on how big the road is that you're driving on. Most state borders are in very extremely rural areas, so sometimes there's not even a sign. On interstate highways it's always quite obvious, but little country roads might not have any signage at all.
There's usually no obvious change in architecture, no; often the only architecture is farm buildings, and those are more or less consistent architecturally. And broadly speaking architecture is regional, rather than state-specific; the difference in architecture from northern Indiana to southern Indiana is far more pronounced than the difference in architecture from southern Indiana to northern Kentucky, for instance.
As noted elsewhere, sometimes the infrastructure can be different (usually seen in road quality), but most states tend to number their county roads in different ways, so when you cross the border you'll often find that the number of the roads you're crossing tend to suddenly shift from "300W" to "2300E." The signage may also change very slightly, though if you're truly out in the middle of nowhere, there might not be any signage to change.
Agriculture, like architecture, is usually much more defined by region than by state. All of the states around mine farm corn, wheat, and soybeans, just like mine does. Most also farm cows, though Kentucky notably has a lot more horses than any of its neighbors, so that can be a tell. But you don't get into a ton of ranching until you get further west, and then you see large changes across multiple states at a time.
Store brands often do change, but again, since most crossings are in rural areas, there often aren't any stores around to notice the change right away. You'll roll out of a state with a lot of Meijer stores and into a state where Publix is the regional grocery store, but until you get into a town, there's no way to know.
Culture is probably the thing you'll notice least. People who live in rural areas tend to think of themselves as American before any other identifier, so you'll find a lot of jingoism anywhere on both sides of any border. American flags, Christian crosses, gigantic emotional support pickup trucks, bizarrely aggressive patriotic bumper stickers, Trump signs and flags, etc. Depending on where you are those sorts of things are accompanied by very clear signs of deep poverty (mobile homes, trash-strewn lawns, run-down houses), but they can just as often be on or around very well-kept houses on huge acreage.
And if you mean "culture" in the sense of theater, music, etc., you're unlikely to find any at all near a state border.
I guess the other thing is that Google Maps will tell you "Welcome to (state)" when you're navigating. There are some times that that's the only way you'll know.
Leaving South Carolina to enter North Carolina or Georgia, the roads are so much better and there’s a noticeable decrease in overall loudness in road noise.
Grew up near the US/Canadian border, there is a line of white rocks that tell you it's the border.
I don’t live near there anymore, but when I did you could legitimately tell when you crossed to NJ because there was trash absolutely everywhere along the sides of highway.
A lot of states in the south will also have a precipitous road quality drop at the state line.
Ah yes, the Garden State. What do they garden? Apparently strip malls and trash.
You have to pay to leave the state so very obvious leaving!
New Jersey?
Indeed!
There is a body of water under the bridge, toll collection booths right before or right after the bridge crossing. Also GPS confirms it.
Also wherever the last hills are within 10 miles of the border there is a guaranteed police officer sitting on the other side out of view pointing a lidar at the top of the hill so when you go over they can clock all your speeds. More so on whichever border county is keeping their side up better.. but if your heading to say Georgia you can tell your almost to Georgia because you can see the Florida cops waiting for the people heading South on the other side of the road.
(Although in Florida they often lack the hills to hide behind so they often use bushes, drainage ditches and overpass walls to hide behind.).
More than a 2500 different types of palm trees/bushes. And on 75/95, they are going to be invested with pigs.
Well, I live on the Minnesota side of the Minnesota / Wisconsin border and normally I can tell I crossed the border because I have to cross the 4th largest river in the world, the Mississippi river.
Joking aside a big tell used to be frac sand mines. Minnesota cracked down on them much harder much more quickly than Wisconsin so you would see them all over the place in Wisconsin but not in MN. I haven't seen as many of those lately though. Also If I drive too far south I wind up driving out of the Kwik Trip gas station zone and into the vastly inferior Caseys gas station zone in Iowa.
I was going to say the firework signs are a sure sign you moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin.
My southern neighbor:
I’ve lived near the Mason Dixon line for my whole life and you know when you get to Maryland because the roads aren’t covered with potholes and/or construction.
