Highways go from being free to costing money (Illinois ๐)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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Americans who live near state borders,how do you notice you've crossed the border?
(sh.itjust.works)
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 can sometimes tell what county (not country) I am in from differences in the design of street signs (mostly the street name signs at stop lights), changes to the look of highway overpasses, and whether or not Flock cameras outnumber people.
My crossing is a river, so basically pretty obvious. I was out of town on a work trip though and I was warned that when I was going to a Home Depot to not miss the turn because I would be at the Canada border and doing a U-turn there would probably get me chased down and pulled over.
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Most major roads have a sign. If I'm using Google Maps, it will yell at me: "WELCOME TO [STATE NAME]".
I knew a family who's house was in New York and the backyard was in New Jersey. No, you couldn't tell.
Sounds like Upstate New Jersey, hill country. That's pretty neat, though.
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A lot of territories end at a river, but when the boundaries were set for New York they asked for a buffer zone (10 miles I think?) away from the Hudson River. So it really is an arbitrary boundary.
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I can tell when I'm driving from NY into CT when suddenly there's traffic for no reason and everybody is driving like an asshat.
West Coast perspective:
- Siskiyou Pass is both the biggest change in elevation and steepest grade on I-5
- the grass is literally greener on the OR side. CA is known for its golden grass that is much dryer (hence the Golden Gate. As a child I was disappointed that it is painted orange and not gold)
- Agricultural Inspection Station mentioned in another comment (only when traveling into CA)
- not a huge cultural difference between upper NorCal and Southern Oregon though
Further north...
- crossing the Columbia, the biggest river in the region, also has one of only several interstate draw bridges in the US. Prepare to be stuck in traffic if you're remotely close to rush hour
- No sales tax in OR means there are large malls immediately off the first OR exits. Likewise there isn't a single Best Buy in Vancouver because everyone drives across the river to dodge sales tax for big ticket items
I cross a bridge over a river
State line road. If I'm driving north I'm in Missouri. If I'm driving South, I'm in Kansas. (Kansas City, Missouri)
There often aren't major cultural differences, not the abruptly, but there still can be changes. Sometimes the road will be 2 lanes on one side and 4 on the other. Sometimes you'll see a ton of new billboards on one side and not the other because they just bought a bunch in one state. Architecture? Not so much, I don't think, though it could be in some areas. Generally if someone is actively picking something while they're there,like building a house, it won't change, but if it's someone picking or choosing something from afar like what a road should be like or what to advertise it can change abruptly.
A good example is that in the past (not so much now), I-75 going south into Georgia began to have a ton of weird pro life billboards and Christian billboards once you cross the state line. Since then they have passed the line, but for real, it was a very abrupt change from none to tons of pictures of fetuses and talking points about when "your baby's" heart beat begins. As well as weird pictures of an apocalypse and Jesus that just sort of says "do you have a decision to make?" With no context.
I actually signed that last one's website's guest book to tell them the domain name on their signs was wrong, which was hilarious to me. It seems like the site would come before the billboards, so why wouldn't they notice the billboards had the wrong site? It was something like org instead of com, pretty minor. But sure enough they changed the billboards next time I went to Florida. So clearly someone is maintaining that site and those billboards. I just checked and it's still up, but it looks like they have some redirects now. So, maybe they fixed some stuff or my memory is fuzzy, this was probably about 10 years ago, definitely pre COVID though.
You start seeing sap buckets hanging off utility poles.
There's a big ass river, so on this side of it you're in IL and the other side is IA.