I enjoyed reading Wikipedia’s List of U.S. State Nicknames recently. My amusement didn’t come from the familiar nicknames I already knew, rather it derived from the nicknames I never knew existed. Alabama was the Lizard State? Really? Did anyone else know that? Then I noticed that several of the states featured nicknames that compared them to other geographic locations.
I went ahead and researched all of them because that’s what happens on a geo-oddity blog and apparently I didn’t have anything better to do. I have issues.
A few of the geographic nicknames seemed relatively plausible. Others seemed strange. Still others were so ancient and obscure that I couldn’t imagine anyone ever uttering them in at least a century. How could Wikipedia include them without any sense of shame or embarrassment? They should strike them already.
Arizona: Italy of America
The Grand Canyon State would resonate as a valid nickname for Arizona for many readers. However, the Italy of America seemed vastly inferior. I didn’t really understand the comparison and neither did the major Intertubes search engines. Even so, I did find links to the Italian Association of Arizona and the Arizona American Italian Club although I don’t think either of those would explain the nickname. So I dug deeper and went into Google’s book search — a recurring theme for this article — and finally found an obscure reference. It came from a Report of the Governor of Arizona (1879):
“These considerations of the sensible and shade temperature will account for the absence of any detrimental effect from the extreme heat of Arizona. It is the long period of hot days that becomes tiresome, but this is balanced by the delightful cool nights and enjoyable season from October to May, inclusive, during which no better climate can be found, and may be termed a veritable Italy of America.”
Verdict: Retire the nickname.
Colorado: Switzerland of America
Colorado was the Switzerland of America during the same basic era. However, the nickname actually found a little more traction. The expression faded over the years even though some sources still cited it, often as an anachronism. Smithsonian Magazine even published When Colorado Was (And in Many Ways Still Is) the Switzerland of America
“Back in the 1870s, when American travelers imagined the West, they didn’t picture the desolate plains and cactus-strewn mesas so beloved by John Ford. They thought of somewhere far more sedate and manicured — a place, in fact, that looked surprisingly like Switzerland. For the restless city slickers of the Gilded Age, the dream destination was Colorado, where the high valleys of the Rocky Mountains, adorned with glacial lakes, meadows and forests as if by an artist’s hand, were reported to be the New World’s answer to the Alps. This unlikely connection with Europe’s most romantic landscape was first conjured in 1869 by a PR-savvy journalist named Samuel Bowles, whose guidebook to Colorado, The Switzerland of America extolled the natural delights of the territory…”
The town of Ouray, Colorado (map) adopted the nickname and continues to use it.
Verdict: Ouray can continue to use it but retire it for the rest of the state.
Delaware: New Sweden
I knew why this one existed. Twelve Mile Circle featured Delaware’s Swedish connection in an article called “New Sweden.” I even created a map, reproduced above. The New Sweden colony functioned for decades during the Seventeenth Century in northern parts of future Delaware and beyond.
Verdict: Accurate although I’m not sure anyone would commonly use the nickname today. I’ll defer to the opinion of 12MC’s Delaware readers.
Georgia: Empire State of the South
There were plenty of references that connected Georgia to the Empire State of the South. For example, I noticed the New Georgia Encyclopedia’s Georgia History Overview:
“By 1860 the ‘Empire State of the South,’ as an increasingly industrialized Georgia had come to be known, was the second-largest state in area east of the Mississippi River.”
The reference generally applied to the mid-Nineteenth Century. I can’t imagine anyone in Georgia — or any other Southern state — comparing itself to Yankees from the Empire State (New York) today.
Verdict: Retire the nickname.
Louisiana: Holland of America
I found plenty of information on the Holland America Cruise Line and precious little on Louisiana as a supposed Holland of America. The nickname made some sense though. Both geographic areas had extensive canals, dikes and levies designed to keep water from flooding low-lying terrain. Finally I discovered an obscure reference from 1905, an article from the Meridional newspaper based in Abbeville, Louisiana in the collection of the Library of Congress. I also found a few old books with similar references. The trail led back to the first quarter of the Twentieth Century.
Verdict: Retire the nickname.
Maryland: America in Miniature
I don’t live in Maryland although I’ve lived near Maryland’s border with Virginia for most of my life. I’d never heard anyone call it America in Miniature. Yet, I found numerous contemporary references to the nickname. This even included Maryland’s tourism website, Visit Maryland, on its Maryland Facts page:
“Maryland has been called ‘America in Miniature’ because so much is packed into its 10,460 square miles of land and water. You can find just about any kind of natural feature here, except a desert.”
Verdict: I guess people still use it.
Minnesota: New England of the West
Numerous references existed, both outdated and contemporary. However, uniformly, they all pointed to a single period of Minnesota history circa 1850-1870. For example, the Library of Congress referenced Pioneering the Upper Midwest:
“Early migration to Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota from the east came disproportionately from New England and New York. That pattern was mightily reinforced by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which funneled Yankees and ex-Yankees from New York into the southern portions of the Upper Midwest. Each state in turn for a time dubbed itself ‘the New England of the West’.”
I had ancestors who made that same journey, traveling from Maine to Wisconsin initially and then onward to Minnesota during its so-called New England of the West period. I found it interesting that the phrase also contained a double geographic reference, first to the New England region of the United States, and then farther back to England. That was a curious aside although it did nothing to legitimize the nickname for current usage.
Verdict: Retire the nickname.
New Mexico: New Andalusia
Using New Andalusia as a nickname for New Mexico held little water. I found a vague reference to New Andalusia referring to early New Mexico. That was back in 1583. Yes, 1583. There was a tiny Andalusia Court in one small town in New Mexico although I doubted it had any connection to the so-called nickname.
Verdict: Retire the nickname.
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