Cultural overlap

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Mount Rushmore is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan.

Differences in the definition of the Midwest mainly split between the Great Plains region on one side, and the Great Lakes region on the other. While some point to the small towns and agricultural communities in Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Nebraska of the Great Plains as representative of traditional Midwestern lifestyles and values, others assert that the industrial cities of the Great Lakes—with their histories of 19th- and early-20th-century immigration, manufacturing base, and strong Catholic influence—are more representative of the Midwestern experience. In South Dakota, for instance, West River (the region west of the Missouri River) shares cultural elements with the western United States, while East River has more in common with the rest of the Midwest.^[103]
Two other regions, Appalachia and the Ozark Mountains, overlap geographically with the Midwest—Appalachia in Southern Ohio and the Ozarks in Southern Missouri. The Ohio River has long been a boundary between North and South and between the Midwest and the Upper South. All of the lower Midwestern states, especially Missouri, have a major Southern component, and Missouri was a slave state before the Civil War.^{[citation needed]}
Western Pennsylvania, which contains the cities of Erie and Pittsburgh, plus the Western New York cities of Buffalo and possibly Rochester, share history with the Midwest, but overlap with Appalachia and the Northeast as well.^[104]
Kentucky is rarely considered part of the Midwest, although it can be grouped with it in some contexts.^[105] It is categorized as Southern by the Census Bureau and is usually classified as such, especially from a cultural standpoint.^[106][107]
In addition to intra-American regional overlaps, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has historically had strong cultural ties to Canada, partly as a result of early settlement by French Canadians. Moreover, the Yooper accent shares some traits with Canadian English, further demonstrating transnational cultural connections. Similar but less pronounced mutual Canadian-American cultural influence occurs throughout the Great Lakes region.^{[citation needed]}