The Central United States is sometimes conceived as between the Eastern United States and Western United States as part of a three-region model, roughly coincident with the Midwestern United States plus the western and central portions of the Southern United States; the term is also sometimes used more or less as a synonym for the Midwest, omitting all or most of the South.
Somewhat misleadingly, the central states are not in the exact center, but a bit towards the East Coast - states such as Colorado, geographically very close to the center of the continental United States, are almost never considered the central US, while Ohio, a relative stone's throw from the East Coast, is.
4 of 9 Census Bureau Divisions have names containing "Central", though they are not grouped as a region. They include 20 states and 39.45% of the US population as of July 1, 2007.
| West North Central States | East North Central States |
| West South Central States | East South Central States |
Almost all of the area of these 20 states is in the Gulf of Mexico drainage basin, and most of that is in the Mississippi Basin. Small areas near the Great Lakes drain into the Great Lakes and eventually the St. Lawrence River; the Red River Basin is centered on the North Dakota-Minnesota border and drains to Hudson Bay.
The Central Time Zone is the same area plus the Florida Panhandle, minus Ohio, Michigan, most of Indiana, westernmost fringes of Great Plains states, eastern and northern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and El Paso, Texas.
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Census Bureau Divisions with Central in name.
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Map of U.S. time zones between April 2, 2006, and March 11, 2007. The current situation is different only in that Pulaski County, Indiana, is now in the Eastern Time Zone and no longer in the Central Time Zone.
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Continental divides in North America.
Read more about Central United States: Central Regions Defined By Organizations
Famous quotes containing the words united states, central, united and/or states:
“When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Federal Constitution has stood the test of more than a hundred years in supplying the powers that have been needed to make the Central Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward uniform legislation and agreements between the States I do not see why the Constitution may not serve our people always.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“How many people in the United States do you think will be willing to go to war to free Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)