Symbiotic "Twin" Cities in the U.S. 

Superior, WI and Duluth, MN are in that same kind of category. Both are decent areas that have similar characteristics. And both are separated by the southwestern tip of Lake Superior

I grew up in St. Paul, but have lived in South Minneapolis for the last 30 years. You gave the most concise, succinct description of the Twin Cities I have ever heard. Like all fraternal twins, we strive to accentuate our differences but, in reality, could not exist without each other.

An interesting thing about Minneapolis and Saint Paul is that they aren't so much on opposite sides of the Mississippi but 10 miles upstream/downstream of each other, the cores of both cities have old neighborhoods on both sides of the river. Saint Paul exists where it is because it's the last decent place to unload tons and tons of goods from a boat without having to haul them up a cliff. Minneapolis was founded around the hydro power available from Saint Anthony Falls, the biggest natural waterfall on the Mississippi river.

It’s important to note that the northeast part of Minneapolis used to be a separate city called St Anthony and the two former twin cities merged in 1872.

Thought that maybe Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, WA would be on this list. Portland is much bigger than Vancouver (650,000 vs 200,000), but they are only separated by the Stateline and the Columbia River.

You can easily make another part to this. Some other twin cities you can include are: Ontario OR and and Payette ID, Huntington WV and Ashland KY, Weirton WV and Steubenville OH, Fargo ND and Moorhead MN, Wahpeton ND and Breckenridge MN, Spokane WA and Coeur d'Alene ID, Duluth MN and Superior WI, and many more!

Technically, Maine's twin cities, Lewiston & Auburn are basically one city now. Auburn was incorporated about 20 years before Lewiston. They are separated by the Androscoggin River.

Marinette, Wisconsin & Menominee, Michigan. Two smaller towns connected by a coupla bridges over the border waters of Menominee River (one of the most threatened rivers in the country where people get their drinking water out of). Lived on the Wi side for a while as a kid. Always thought it was weird that the Menominee side had traffic signals dangling from wires across the roads. Especially since the area gets a fair amount of tornados/storms. Apparently the type of signals are set at the state level

I grew up in the Tri Cities in Eastern Washington, separated from each other by the Columbia River and the Yakima River. No major University, but about 150,000 population. Home of one of the top races in the Unlimited Hydroplane Circuit.

It would be interesting to see this with annexed cities or throughout history as well that still are relatively unique. New York City and Brooklyn used to be independent cities and top 2 or 3 sized by population at the same time. The only inverse I can think of is D.C. and Alexandria/Arlington, which used to be one city and are now multiple due to the retrocession back prior to the Civil War.

Thank you for addressing the inaccuracy in “Cotton Fields”! Had there been a map we could have ended up with “just about 35 miles from Texarkana”

Kyle, I'm glad you mentioned Grand Forks and EGF. I find it a bit interesting that the border cities run from South Dakota to Canada. You also have Wahpeton Breckenridge, Fargo Moorhead, amd even Drayton and Pembina have tiny counterparts on the Minnesota side. Great job pointing out the 97 flood ik Grand Forks.

There's also Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana in Illinois

Washington double feature got me more excited than Barbenheimer

There's also Champaign and Urbana, Illinois. The university of Illinois campus is shared between both cities, and being such a large university, it gives champaign-urbana a large population, Champaign having 88k people and Urbana having 38k

Texarkana was "supposed" to be on the LA border too; the ana represented Louisiana, but the surveyors were off just over 30 miles. Some call it quad state area since Oklahoma is close by also, though of course not as close as the four corners.

I first came to know of the CCR song with Texarkana being a mile from Louisiana when I was a kid. I told my mom about it, and even showed her a map. She didn't care much for that kind of music. She was a music major and was more into classical music, but she understood the concept of artistic license and helped me to see it on those terms.

"It Came Out of the Sky" is another CCR song that mentioned Moline.

One thing, they pronounce Moscow, Idaho as "Moss-Co". The rumor from going to one of those schools was that that started during the Cold War

Fargo/Moorhead is another Twin City along the ND/MN border. Just like Grand Forks/East Grand Forks... the ND town has the bigger population.

I feel like another good example is Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Michigan, they BOTH have large universities despite being situated right next to eachother, so due to that they share a lot of people, students, and systems together including a transportation system! All together it’s about a 15-20 minute drive from one downtown to the other

What-what-what?!?! I stumble across the latest GK upload and I am THE FIRST MINNESOTAN ON THE SCENE?!?! Life is good. I am going to sip my tequila on my balcony here in Bloomington, MN and enjoy this video.

Nogales, Arizona is a twin city in the US, but it's twin is Nogales, Sonora in Mexico.

Back in the early 1900s there was an intense rivalry between the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. There was joke going around to the effect that if the two cities merged, the combined entity ought to be named Minnehaha - Minne for Minneapolis and Haha for St. Paul. You can guess which side of the county line (Hennepin vs. Ramsey) that joke came from.

There's also another Lewiston twin city duo- Lewiston and Auburn, Maine. Would love to see some coverage on these old northeast small cities some time. I really love hearing these small towns got built up and found their niche (in this case via hydro-powered industry as far as I understand).

Champaign and Urbana, Illinois - jointly home to the sprawling U. of Illinois - are referred to as Twin City, not quite a copy of the Minneapolis-St. Paul nickname. The university buildings center on a section straddling the boundaries of the cities. Since Champaign is larger and more of the contemporary campus buildings are in it, the university is commonly placed in Champaign. The quad, the original heart of campus, lies in Urbana, so officially the college is named the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. There’s no indication of crossing the municipal boundary as one walks around campus or nearby neighborhoods. A nickname for the metro area is Chambana. I think a cooler one would be Urbaign.

Please do another on a theme of Tri-Cities. I live near Pasco, Kennewick & Richland Washington; yes, I know there are more. PS: I spent three days last week in both Moscow-Pullman & Lewiston-Clarkston.

Shout out from Winston-Salem, NC -- I believe we are unique in describing ourselves as the "Twin City" (singular; the city that is its own twin) Salem was founded by the Moravians in the 18th C, and Winston was founded by the British in the 19th C Because of all the British immigrants, Winston grew much faster than Salem, and eventually surrounded it.

Love this channel! Great detailed information!

There's actually a bunch of twin cities in the PNW. There's Portland/Vancouver, Longview/Kelso, Hood River/White Salmon and even a "Tri-Cities" with Kennewick/Pasco/Richland. Probably even more I'm not remembering.

YOOOO THANK YOU FOR THE CCR REFERENCE😂 been saying that forever

Last November there were some "pranks" between Pullman and Moscow that sure didn't turn out very well 😲

Another great job, thanks Kyle!

Interesting and fun as always, thanks.

Excellent content as usual. Thanks GK.

My hometown of Springfield Oregon and the neighbor city Eugene are definitely symbiotic cities. It really seems like one big contiguous city (of around 250,000), the border is I-5 running down the middle but they share multiple highway overpass connections and own 'islands' within each other's borders. The major difference is Eugene being the home of the University of Oregon and larger in population with more urban development. Eugene also has the highest homeless per capita of any city in the nation

In the classic post-apocalyptic novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz", in the future, Texarkana emerges from the devastation to become a powerful city-state. I got quite a kick out of that.

Champaign-Urbana in east central Illinois are also twin cities to the point that the University of Illinois here had to be named after both of them.

I did not expect to see Texarkana recognition ever! My grandparents live there, awesome vid

Nice job, Kyle. I will need to watch this several times to take in all the info. Greetings from Minneapolis.

Kyle left out Fitchburg & Leominster, MA because he didn't want to deal with trying to pronounce Leominster

I can get lost for hours in your videos. I appreciate what you do

Another great one! Thank you, Kyle! I grew up in the Tri-Cities! Lived in Bristol, Virginia, and Johnson City, Tennessee! Beautiful area! Later I went to college at the University of Illinois, and had many friends from the Quad cities.

If you do a part two you should include Waterloo/Cedar Falls Iowa. Waterloo is the home of the original John Deere tractor (which still produces tractors here) and the five Sullivan brothers (WWII history). Cedar Falls is home to the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Both places were founded around the same time, Waterloo was Prairie Rapids Crossing and CF was Sturgis Falls before being changed later.

Excellent. I have just learned many things right now . Thanks brother from Buffalo New York. I have been living in the USA 🇺🇸 since 1993 and learning everyday . I love 💕 USA 🇺🇸

There are so many great twin cities! Would love to see another video like this! Can’t leave out Lewiston-Auburn, ME!

Never thought the Lewiston Clarkston valley would get mentioned in any sort of one of your videos. It’s a pretty unique little place to live

Very nice. Thank you.

I love your videos. I watch at least one of them each day. I live in the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County. I really find it especially interesting to hear from a Californian now living in Tennessee. I have more to say about this topic, but I will not be long-winded for now. I will tell you the entire story at another time.

Omaha-Council Bluffs Has Left the Chat

I would add: Hartford, Connecticut & Springfield, Massachusetts. Both settled around the same time and by the same people. Both about 400+ years old and the next largest Metro Area between New York City & Boston. Thanks and great work as always! Abel 😉✌🏼

Love my Twin Cities. Live in the SeaTac area for years too. Similar in that Seattle/Mpls are steel and glass, where Tacoma/St Paul are brick and mortar.

I grew up in Culdesac, ID, a small farming town about 30 minutes outside of Lewiston. There were a number of small farming towns around that area that helped Lewiston and Clarkston economically. Same for Moscow and Pullman. As when we needed to do any type of shopping, we would go to “town.” Mostly in Lewiston, but once Clarkston got a Costco my parents would do their bulk shopping there. Before that they would make a monthly trip to Spokane, WA to Costco (in the 90’s) and buy like $1,000 worth of groceries to stock up, I guess with gas at $1.00 a gallon and no low cost grocery stores (like Walmart Supercenter) in the area was probably worth the trip. And we had 8 kids in our family. Interesting that WA has no state income tax, but Lewiston is bigger. Of course more jobs in Lewiston, including the paper mill (always stunk), so if you worked in ID as a WA resident would have to pay income tax anyway. My mom commuted to Lewiston to work at the hospital, my dad was a teacher in Culdesac. All my summer jobs when I was in college were in Lewiston, worked on a farm in Culdesac in HS. Both my parents are alumni of U of I, but I was always a WSU fan for basketball and football. My grandparents owned a home on Prospect Ave overlooking the Snake river but at a higher elevation. Fireworks for 4th of July were shot off from the HS football field on the WA side, so we could sit in the front yard and watch them, and then watch all the traffic afterward as it was a prime location, with a big park nearby. The NAIA World Series was held at LCSC in Lewiston growing up, and was always a big deal for the town. And LCSC always had a really good baseball team and had many NAIA championships during that era.

I have never lived more than a 1 hour drive from the hospital where I was born. I never regretted this until I started watching this channel. I’ve been missing out on some neat places.

4:30 If you haven't already you should do a video on geographical inaccuracies in songs. I would nominate Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves "Picked up a boy just south of Mobile". That would be hard to do unless they were in a boat. And North To Alaska "Below that old white mountain, just a little South-East of Nome". I'm pretty sure that should be Fairbanks, not Nome.

Earlier today I was driving though Petersburg and Colonial Heights VA. Including Hopewell they are called the tri-cities. For some reason I remembered about quad cities, Google it and hours later this video was posted. Get out my head Geography King.

Thank you for making this video! I enjoy these type of comparisons. I actually live just outside of Bristol, VA and have lived here most of my life. Living in a city that is split between two states is a unique environment but also can be a little complicated as the cities sometimes disagree with each other over policies, and such. Having two different sets of state laws to deal with can complicate things as far as city planning... But most of the time they can get it worked out.

Kyle, interesting video. In regard to the Quad Cities, although Bettendorf holds claim to a number of stats, including the annual running of the Bix 7 (7 miles) race, it's the Illinois side--Moline, specifically--which is home to the area's international airport.

When mentioning Washington I fully expected Seattle/Portland or Bellingham/Vancouver xD Thanks for highlighting the lesser known part of the state!

18 big "10" teams now 🙄😅. Great video, as always. Your videos inspire me to travel!

❤ your humor at the end😄 👍🏻

Hey Kyle, how about a diversion into physical geography do some in-depth looks at river drainages in the US?

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada are international twin cities, both founded in the 1600s and separated by the St. Mary's River and the Soo Locks.

Mileage Mike has a RU-vid video about Texarkana. He focused on how empty and derelict both towns were, especially the Texas side. But he also pointed out that when certain interstate highways are completed Texarkana has the potential to grow substantially as it will then be a major crossroads metropolitan area. Things can change for better or worse in any of these twin/tri/quad cities regions.

Great video as usual. Others perhaps for a second video could be; Memphis, TN and West Memphis, AR. St. Louis, MO and East St Louis, Il. Chicago, and East Chicago, In. One interesting binational pair as far as names go is Mexicali on the Mexican side and Calexico on the California side. The cities of Oakland, CA and Berkeley, CA have a very close sort of symbiotic relatioship with one another.

Could definitely do another similar video with those not mentioned. I live in one myself, Waterloo/Cedar Falls, Iowa. Yeah, several of these in Iowa, we have ALOT of rivers, heck, our east/west borders are rivers, and also a alot of railroad/industry towns that merged together around twisty rivers.

awesome video, i didn’t know there were so many twin cities :)

In between the yellow lines in the center of State Street in Bristol are small brass markers that say “Tennessee” and “Virginia” on their respective halves. Lovely touch.

Would Duluth MN and Superior WI be considered Twin Cities? They share a port.

Nice to see Pullman, Washington and Moscow, Idaho get a mention. Anyone who went to Washington State back in the day remembers making that 8-mile beer run to Moscow when the drinking age in Idaho was still just 19…

South Sioux City, Nebraska (pop: 13,353); Sioux City, Iowa (pop: 85,617) North Sioux City, South Dakota (pop: 3,042). Bonus: the three letter code for the Sioux City airport is... SUX.

The KING has come and blessed upon us another of his masterful pieces of geographic artistry!! Oh King, we are not worthy!! You rule with compassion over us plebeians and we will forever call you KING 👑

Richland-Pasco-Kennewick Washington on the three banks of the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers

Your mention of Tri-Cities (and the recent release of Oppenheimer) got me thinking: What about a video covering the various Manhattan Project cities? Hanford, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos. Many might be interested to learn what remains of the instant-cities they built for all the workers. Maybe discussion about the positive and negative effects of their respective operations to the surrounding communities.

Hey Geography King! I think a good idea for a video would be places in US where you could build a new city

I'm surprised you did not cover Greenville-Spartanburg, SC. I'll bet you could easily do a part 2 with another dozen or so cities. Thanks!

Hi! I can bring up the song saying a mile from Texarkana, from growing up near there... Those 'towns' around Texarkana aren't very much, so even little people I know from towns like Queen City and Atlanta actually just say they're from Texarkana. Kinda just association by being the only 'larger' city nearby, so people actually have a clue where you're talking about.

It would be cool to see a video about cities that punch above their weight - as in have far more recourses and options than they would otherwise based on their size. I thought about this because you mentioned two sets of twin cities that are the sole real city in their area, but I’m assuming there are a fair amount of people in a surrounding radius that enter those cities for nights on town, groceries, etc.

I always thought of Clovis as a suburb of Fresno. And when I was in the Air Force, I was based in the Marysville/Yuba City, California area. The people in the area often called them the Twin Cities. Lots of businesses names there have "Twin Cities" in them, e.g., my old gym in Marysville was called the Twin Cities Health Club.

This was so much fun! I learned a lot as usual. So as a suggestion…since Dallas-Fort Worth was not included (and you had great reasons why) perhaps you could do a follow up video on double metros and their rivalries, personalities, and future. You could call the topic Rival Cities and have some fun. As you well know, When you have two powerhouse metros side by side, there’s always the underdog city striving to gain recognition under the shadow of the dominant city. So for example…cow town Fort Worth is always trying to beat glittery glitzy Dallas; poor super rich San Jose can’t hang on to its elite million+ people status on the census count while smaller San Francisco seems to always be “famous” about something. Other examples, Miami always beats little brother Ft. Lauderdale at everything, but rival Saint Petersburg seems to be finally getting some recognition under the dominance of Tampa. I think stipulating that these are cities only 30 or less miles away should be added. Some are so lopsided (like Seattle and Tacoma) that it’s almost painful to talk about. And my advice, Central North Carolina is so confusing that I would just leave it alone! All the best Kyle.

While I would have liked to see Bloomington-Normal make this list, I’m glad IL was at least represented! As always, great content! I was always really confused by Kansas City when I was a kid. I just couldn’t fathom that there were 2 😂

Laredo, Texas was Mexico's original Laredo until 1848 where they let their Laredo stay with the USA (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) and they founded their Laredo across the river forming Nuevo Laredo

There's Sault Ste Marie Michigan and Sault Ste Marie Ontario, too. Just seperated by the St Mary river. I know these aren't both in the US, but i think it's worth a mention!

for not just Canada but for North America, Lloydminster in Alberta-Saskatchewan is the PERFECT example of a "Twin City"

Greetings from Texarkana!!

not nearly as well known but worth talking about is the Triple Cities of Endicott, Johnson City and Binghamton in upstate New York. very interesting history there, from EJ shoe factories all the way to the start of IBM and Dicks Sporting Goods. all 3 cities work together in tandem with each other

At least a third of the St Paul-Mpls border is land. The entrance walk to the KSTP studios straddles two cities, two counties, and two congressional districts.

You should've included the Quad cities of North West Alabama: Florence, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia & Sheffield. As far as twin cities separated by state lines and a river, there is also Augusta, GA & North Augusta/Aiken, SC separated by the Savannah river: Augusta on the southwestern bank and North Augusta/Aiken on the Northeastern bank.

Here in Wisconsin in the Appleton area are two small cities which are joined at the hip. They are Neenah and Menasha. Basically, they are divided by the Fox River more or less. Neenah is the larger of the two at 27,000 while Menasha has 18,000. They share a fire department, but the rest of their municipal departments are separate, as are their elected officials. Often the towns are simply referred to in toto as Neenah-Menasha.

Champaign-Urbana in Illinois, home of the main campus of University of Illinois, which straddles the border of both cities.

Gulfport and Biloxi, MS Shreveport and Bossier City, LA

My state has Augusta and across the Savanah River is north Augusta SC. It technically is less than 120 years old but the original city of hamburg was older

Very informative! Consider doing one on international cross-border cities. I live in Vancouver, BC, on the border with Blaine, WA. Tonnes of Canadians go to Blaine everyday to shop and work.

I think a really interesting set of twin cities is marinette-Menominee, with marinette Wisconsin being south of menominee in the upper peninsula of Michigan

Not necessarily twin cities but the Charleston/North Charleston/Mt Pleasant, SC area would be a cool place to check out. You have 10+ small, distinct areas within the region that are all culturally, economically, and demographically somewhat unique compared to the other parts

When I was a kid... 30 years ago the quad cities was called the TriCities. Davenport Moline and rock island

A pleasant surprise that you included Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, which is were I currently live. I was thinking about it earlier in the video that it would be cool if you mentioned them, but was starstruck when you did.

No Cincinnati/Covington?

Another good one would be HEB (Hurst, Euless, Bedford) they reside within DFW and all three cities touch each other on all sides and make up a massive amount of population for DFW. Great video!

Also an fun one Baarle-Nassau (the Netherlands) and Baarle-Hertog (Belgium)