Ask Lemmy

Grew up near the US/Canadian border, there is a line of white rocks that tell you it's the border.

I used to live in the US and travel a lot by car. The infrastructure, specifically the roads, their striping, their guardrails, etc. could change drastically at state borders. They could sometimes even be of different quality and material at county borders within a state.

The road surface materials and condition of the road changes.

Some states/towns limit billboards and tall sign poles. And some are very maximalist about it.

The roads get better, the drivers get worse, there's jughandles everywhere, they won't let me pump my own gas, and there's liquor stores that aren't owned by the state.

Also I have to cross a river, and pretty much everything gets flatter.

For the other borders, mostly the same. One direction you start seeing more places serving crab, another has no sales tax, one is just boring and depressing, and the other unless you cross at some very specific places is mostly just woods and farms and shit that kind of blend into our own but with better roads.

There’s a spot near me where 3 intersect right on the road. The pavement is in a different state of disrepair for each. You can see it and hear it driving along.

Yeah. Drive into South Carolina and the atmosphere just feels like you’ve rolled around on a truck stop bathroom floor. Then there’s all the fireworks stands, DUI defense attorney billboards, shit roads, Palmetto signs, etc. I think they just got Jersey Mike’s because I saw a bunch of plaques for them on the exits.

There is a body of water under the bridge, toll collection booths right before or right after the bridge crossing. Also GPS confirms it.

I pay money to cross a large river.

I once lived in a small city right on that state's border. It was sort of a suburb tho to a very large city in the neighboring state. The major roads would have signage, but on the smaller roads there really wasn't any way to tell. The main difference tho was that the large city's public transit options extended pretty far out even into the small towns along the border, but wouldn't at all come into my small city..

Where I live now, you have to cross a very large river to get into the neighboring state. What's worth sharing here tho, is that there is a nearby county line, where even tho there's a sign, you don't need it at all. The landscape/biome changes pretty much at the county line.
It goes from a sort of temperate rainforest-like climate, to arid grassland/high desert climate. You'll be driving thru areas with large, old growth evergreens and lots of ferns underneath, and then it turns to dead, dry, brown grass and sagebrush shrubs everywhere. Like, it could also even be raining the whole first part of the drive there, but once you get to this county line the rain almost always dissipates. It's pretty wild.

this is such an adorable question.

The time on my phone changed.

Like others have said, the roads here tell you.

Specifically, when you cross State Line Road, you've crossed the state line.

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.

One state is across a big river. Marijuana is mostly legal on the other side so the billboards start as you get close to the bridges.

The other state is culturally and geographically identical to the other side of the border. If you look closely you'll see that private liquor stores are allowed, as well as payday lending. That's it.

When driving through the Kansas City metro area, the road that splits the two states is literally named State Line Road. Everything looks the same on both sides of the road.

Otherwise there tend to be signs on roads welcoming you to whichever state depending on the direction you are going. Those signs used to match up with a change in road maintenance quality but Kansas decided to join the race to the bottom so it isn't as noticeable anymore.

In most cases it isn't apparent and doesn't matter. But there are some that are* noticeable and do matter. Having traveled to most states via car, it's been interesting to see the ones that stood out.

When I lived in the Midwest one of the clearest signals (aside from the obvious signage) was the college football team swag on cars and in front of houses.

I don't live near the border, but one difference I notice when crossing over is the roads are always better. Doesn't matter which state I cross over into; roads a better (ours are shit).

Highways go from being free to costing money (Illinois 😒)

Well, there's a big fucking river—so that helps.

Because they go through the door in the border wall to Mexico.

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I don't live near the border but on a road trip I noticed an immediate difference in the quality of the road surface when I entered Alabama coming from Florida. Florida has pretty good roads. Alabama, uhh, not so much. Mississippi and Louisiana roads were also terrible. Texas was better but the quality was spottier.

I live in New Jersey, so I usually notice I've left the state because I've driven over a bridge into a large city - that's usually my first clue.