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The "Belt" Regions Of The United States
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Apr 30, 2025
Get NordVPN 2Y plan + 4 months free here https://nordvpn.com/knowledge It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ▶ In this video I talk about the territorial 'Belt' regions of the United States of America. When looking at a map of the US, you can divide it in various ways, including regions, states, counties, and urban vs rural areas. However, another interesting way is through "belts," which are regions sharing specific characteristics. Some well-known belts are the Rust Belt, known for its heavy industrialization and economic stagnation, and the Bible Belt, noted for its strong evangelical Protestant influence. These belts aren't formal divisions but rather labels for areas with shared traits. The term "belt" originally referred to agricultural regions following lines of latitude with similar climates, like the Corn Belt and Wheat Belt. Over time, the concept expanded to include economic, cultural, and climatic characteristics, leading to belts such as the Frost Belt and the Sun Belt. Each belt has its unique history and significance, reflecting the diverse nature of the United States. ▶ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 American Belts 00:44 What Is A "Belt"? 01:17 How Many Belts Are There? And Which Ones? 02:07 The Bible Belt 03:19 The "Unchurched" Belt 04:10 The "Jell-O" (Mormon) Belt 06:28 The Rust Belt 07:26 The Sun Belt 07:48 The Black Belt 08:51 The Cotton Belt 08:57 The Corn Belt 09:30 The Wheat Belt 09:37 The Rice Belt 09:46 The Frost Belt 09:57 The Snow Belt
View Video Transcript
0:00
When looking at a map of the US, you can divide it in various ways, region, states, counties
0:05
urban or rural among others, but one specific one is belts. You may have heard of some before
0:12
like the Rust Belt, in the past commonly known as the Manufacturing Belt or the Steel Belt
0:17
northeastern and central northern states where heavy industrialization and some economic stagnation
0:23
is now common. Or the Bible Belt, a collection of states where specifically in the American South
0:29
evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism are prevalent. Now, calling it a division of the country is kind of wrong
0:35
This is more of a way of labeling specific areas of the country. Some overlap and some areas don't belong to any specific belt
0:42
But what is a belt? The belt regions of the United States are portions of the country that share certain characteristics
0:50
The belt terminology was first applied to growing regions for various crops
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which often follow lines of latitude because those are more likely to have similar climates
1:01
The allusion was to a long clothing belt since they roughly took those shapes on a map
1:06
The usage has expanded since then to other climate, economic and cultural shared characteristics
1:13
plus these regions are not formally defined. At least that's the Wikipedia definition
1:18
So which are these belts? There's at least 20 of them, so get ready for me quickly reading off this list
1:24
so we get to know them all by name. Alphabetically, there are the following belts. The banana
1:29
bible, black, borscht, corn, cotton, fruit, frost, indiana, gas, jello, lead, pine, pretzel
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rice, rust, salt, snow, stroke, sun, unchurched, and wheat, among a few others. Now, we're not
1:46
going to cover all of them in this video. I think they will be a little boring and repetitive
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Instead, I chose around 9 or 10 that I think teaches something interesting about these areas that make up the belts
2:07
So, let's jump into it, starting with the Bible Belt. The Bible Belt is a part of the Southern United States and includes one Midwestern state, Missouri
2:15
Here, conservative Protestant Christianity is very influential, and people attend church more than in other parts of the country
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In it, fewer people identify as non-religious compared to the West and Northeast regions
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For example, only 12% of people in Alabama say they're not religious, while Tennessee has the highest percentage of evangelical Protestantism at 52%
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The influence of this religion is strongest in certain parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama
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Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, and even stretching as far as Texas The term Bible Belt was first used by American journalist H Mencken in 1924 and he meant that religious beliefs were strongly held in this area This is connected to the early
3:01
rural nature of the region, as well as specific evangelical movements which began in the 1800s
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Now, it's used in other countries too, to describe regions with strong religious beliefs
3:11
such as the Netherlands. These usually have political implications, with states or regions
3:16
belonging to them, usually voting more conservatively. On the opposite end, we have the unchurched belt, which was labeled in opposition to the
3:24
Bible Belt, defining states where religion isn't as important. In 1985, researchers found that California, Oregon and Washington had pretty low church
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membership rates. By 2000, several states including Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada and West Virginia also began
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reporting even lower religious adherence. By 2006, Nevada and New England had the lowest church attendance rates, followed by Oregon
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Washington and California. A 2008 Gallup poll even showed that belief in God was also lower in the western United
3:57
States when compared to other regions of the country. However, there's still debate whether the western United States is still the most irreligious
4:05
region as New England now has more people unaffiliated with any faith
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And in addition, although one wouldn't tell just by the name, we have the Jello Belt
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This one is also known as the Mormon Corridor or the Mormon Belt, portraying Western states
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with a large Mormon population. Apparently it's called Jello due to a stereotype that these people like it a lot
4:26
Maybe that's what they're referring to in the Fallout TV show, when they have the Jello cake all the time in the vault, but anyway, it might not be so much of just a stereotype
4:35
Apparently according to the Los Angeles Times, Salt Lake City holds the title of America's
4:39
jello eating capital. Mary Jane Kincaid of Kraft Foods, the maker of jello, even stated that every
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resident of Salt Lake City, on average, purchases two boxes of jello annually, which is twice the
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national average. Additionally, Utah residents consume, also, twice as much lime jello as anyone
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else in the world. The Church of Latter-day Saints, however, has not shown great affection
5:02
towards the term. But this is what the belt is, the region of the U.S. where Mormon religion is
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5:13
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money-back guarantee. And now let's get back to the video. Moving on from religion, we have the
6:29
other iconic one I mentioned at the start, the Rust Belt. It was once known as the Steel Belt
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It's a region in the northeast and midwestern United States, sometimes painted along with parts
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of the northern southern states. It includes areas like western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio
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West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan's lower peninsula, southeastern Wisconsin, and small parts of Kentucky, New Jersey, and the St. Louis metropolitan area in Missouri
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The term rust belt refers to the decline of industry, especially steelmaking, since steel
7:00
rusts, automobile manufacturing, and coal mining due to factors like deindustrialization, economic decline, population loss, and urban decay, sort of in a vicious cycle where each
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caused all of the rest. While Boston and New York adapted and shifted their economy towards the third
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sector, many of these other states failed to. The term became popular in the 1980s
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contrasting with the booming Sun Belt in the South, which is the next on our list
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It includes the Southeast and Southwest regions of the US, with climates ranging from deserts to
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tropical zones. After World War II, many people moved to the Sun Belt, seeking warm weather
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retirements, and job opportunities. And still lots of people have been moving to the Sun Belt lately
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with 12 out of the 15 fastest growing US cities located there as of 2023
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And what about the Black Belt? It stretches along specific counties of Louisiana, Alabama
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Mississippi, Georgia, and the Carolinas, as well as Virginia. By 1894, political commentators used
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the term black belt, so often that it was already very well known in the US. And by 1900, the term
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was commonly used to denote the geopolitical region. The 2020 census map shows us how this
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is still a reality today. Its origin is related to the social history of slavery and black labor
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within the southern region, which is coincidentally also known for its rich black soil, giving the
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second meaning to the term. This area is historically centered around cotton plantations
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also included tobacco, near the Virginia-North Carolina border. Controlled mainly by wealthy white people, the land was cultivated by predominantly black slaves
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who often made up the majority of population in many counties. Following 1945 mechanization replaced much of the labor force leading to the great migration of workers to cities in the midwest and west instead Despite changes in labor dynamics the term black belt persists and the cotton belt which
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is also known in the region, is necessarily connected to it for the same reasons
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To wrap things up, and like I mentioned at the start, the concept first emerged with agriculture
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and farming, so what are some of those belts that still remain today
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One example is the Corn Belt which spans from Ohio to parts of Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas
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it includes portions of Minnesota in the north and Missouri and Kentucky in the south
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Iowa and Illinois are the central hubs of the region, collectively producing a third
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of the nation's corn, a disproportionate amount considering its size, the reason being
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adequate soil and federal subsidies. Or the Wheat Belt which almost divides the US in half and consists of the areas where
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wheat is the primary crop. The rice belt is another example, a stretch of counties that produces almost all of the
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rice in the US since it has the terrain and weather conditions that encourage it
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And then we have other ones like the frost belt, a region known for its icy winters and
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heavy snowfall. It includes the entirety of New England and much of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions
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which is different for instance from the snow belt, which is made up of three areas near
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the Great Lakes that get a lot of snowfall. The reason for all the snow is something called the lake effect snow which happens when cold
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dry air moves over the warmer water of a lake, picks up moisture and then drops it as snow
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when it moves inland. Each of the 5 Great Lakes actually has its own snow belt
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Lake Ontario's is in upstate New York, Lake Aries stretches from Cleveland, Ohio to New
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York, Lake Michigan's covers the western part of Michigan and Lake Superiors includes
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northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. So those are the so-called belt regions of the United States
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Some defined and named based on economic factors, others on cultural or religious ones
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And some due to the origin of the belt concept belonging to an area where a specific crop
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is grown. Here we mostly understood why the regions have these names
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If you want to learn about why and how each belt came to be this way, like we did for
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instance with the black belt or the bible belt, I can also make dedicated videos on each
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Do you agree with these belt regions or would you remove slash add any states or part of
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states to them? In addition, are there any other interesting belts that you know of that I didn't mention
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here, either in the US or any other place, I know for instance India has a Hindi belt
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Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching this video, subscribe to catch future ones and I will see you next
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time for more general knowledge
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