We certainly shouldn’t minimalize the importance of rugged terrain in focusing people’s attention on the local area above all else. I think this holds true down through the Appalachians, too, where regional identity has always been definied by outsiders (and usually in a not very complementary fashion).

My father’s mother’s people are Yankee farmers, too, from that same Connecticut settlement period, albeit farther east, in Luzerne and Wyoming Counties. And they have also maintained a robust family reunion tradition. We have photos from their reunions in the 1940s, so I guess it’s been around 60 years for them, too.

I absolutely agree with you about the lack of strong state identity in most Pennsylvanians as opposed to other states, including Ohio. I believe that geography – specifically, our beautiful and rugged terrain – has also played a strong part, especially in the early days of the state’s history. “My” area of the state was not even settled till about 1820 – 1830, which is probably later than any other part of the state. The Scotch-Irish & Germans who settled other parts of western PA didn’t show up till about 15-20 years after the Yankees from New England (via upstate NY) opened up the land. (I descend from those earliest settlers on my maternal grandmother’s side).

I grew up in an area of the state that is actually still considered part of the Buffalo media market. I never saw any Pennsylvania TV station till our area was finally wired for cable in the mid-70s. Bradford is two hours from any Pennsylvania interstate (U.S. Route 219 will become all four-lane in oh, say, the year 2120). These factors are enough all by themselves to discourage a strong sense of state identity.

As to the “rootedness” of Pennsylvanians, my stepfather’s family -good Germans all, with a sprinking of French ancestry – arrived in Pennsylvania in the late 18th century and moved to Clarion County by 1840. And altho the family now numbers in the high hundreds, I only know of one (my half-brother) who lives outside Western Pennsylvania. In fact, most of this close-knit family lives no more than two counties away from the Clarion area. They’re about to hold their 60th annual reunion, by the way. I have my reunion T-shirt ready to go.

Glad you liked the photos! The last one was shot from our mountain looking across at the next ridge five miles away with a telephoto, whence the haze. The middle one shows the end of our mountain from Tyrone.

Taking my home state of Missouri as an example, the northern third of the state has more in common with southern Iowa and western Illinois, while southern Illinois, southwest Missouri, and northwest Arkansas can be thought of as “the Ozarks”. The bootheel SE corner of the state is part of the cotton-growing South.

I rode a motorcycle through Pennsylvania a couple of summers ago. Afterwards I felt like I had been through at least three states!

His section on Appalachia is light on evidence and heavy on nineteenth-century “local color” mistaken for evidence, but the other three regional analyses seem more sound. Unfortunately, his “Scotch-Irish/Appalachian” region is the most cited section, supporting the “Red State/Redneck” stereotypes we rural people so enjoy.

Hostility toward new arrivals wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it translated into effective political action against the forces driving so-called development. But in most places in the rural U.S., people are extremely wary about enacting any kind of restrictive zoning, and their dislike of the way the way familar landscapes are changed and destroyed by real estate speculators turns into a seething resentment toward the people occupying all those new subdivisions.

Some of this may have resulted from a sort of geographical self-sorting mechanism. Huge numbers of European immigrants came through Philadelphia – as many as Ellis Island – and headed west through the state. It’s easy to imagine those who were most easily contented deciding to settle in Pennsylvania, while their restless siblings forged on in search of greener pastures. So, aside from the Scotch-Irish, who were hell-raisers, maybe we ended up with a lot of people who were just motivated enough to get on a boat, but weren’t terribly restless otherwise. And of course we got a lot of persecuted religious minorities due to the famous Quaker tolerance, most notably the Amish and Mennonites.