Does your state have a particular claim to fame with which it is closely associated?

For reasons too complicated to explain (like most things in my brain), I posed this question in a writing project recently, and then wondered how to answer it. On a gut instinct whim, I opened Google, and typed a search stream in the form of “Famous [State Name] [space],” then noted the first suggestion made by Google’s auto-fill engine. So, for instance, here’s what the search for Alabama looked like:

Famous Alabama Football Players? Okay, I’ll buy that . . . since the correlation between “Alabama” and “Football Players” does seem to be pretty strong in public perception. But what happens when you run this same test with all of the other states and major territories or affiliated entities in the United States? Do the correlations still ring as strongly? Let’s look and see!

As was the case with alphabetical alpha Alabama, college (and occasionally professional) athletics are among the most common categories of “Famous State” suggestions, as follows (with some notes):

• Alabama Football Players
• Colorado Rockies (Could also be the mountains, of course).
• Idaho Potato Bowl (Interesting that the Bowl Game scores higher than the potatoes it is named after).
• Kansas City Royals (Go Beloved Royals!).
• Kentucky Derby Winners (This is the only animal related response in the mix, if people are looking for the horses, not the jockeys).
• Minnesota Twins (Go Marcia’s Beloved Twinkies!)
• Nebraska Fans (Wonder why fans over players? Is it because the Cornhuskers are so hated that it’s hard to imagine what famous people might like them? Probably).
• Ohio State Football Players (Complete with mug shots).
• Oklahoma Football Players
• Oregon Runner (The singular is interesting. There’s only one famous Oregon runner?)
• Texas Rangers (Could be the law enforcement types, too).
• Utah Jazz Players (Because it’s Utah, we know these are basketball players, and not saxophone players).
• Washington Redskins (Sad that Washington State’s search fame hinges on an ethnically offensive sports team mascot from the other side of the country).

Some states’ claims to fame are similarly linked to their colleges, though not for their athletic programs, but instead for those who matriculated from their institutions of higher learning:

• Arizona State Alumni
• Georgia Tech Alumni
• Maryland Alumni
• Michigan Alumni
• Virginia Tech Alumni

The next most common category of responses are related to food, with some interesting variations between “restaurant(s)” and “food(s)” perhaps indicating where people dine out more, and where people eat in more:

• Connecticut Pizza
• Delaware Food
• Guam Food
• Illinois Food
• Louisiana Restaurants
• Mississippi Restaurants
• Missouri Food
• New Jersey Food
• New York Restaurants
• North Carolina Foods (interesting that this is the only plural incidence of “food” . . . apparently the Tarheel State does not have one singular signature cuisine item?)
• Pennsylvania Food
• South Carolina Food (Complete with organ meat).

Two states improve on the food cluster by prioritizing sudsy libations over eats:

• Vermont Beer (A little surprising).
• Wisconsin Beer (Not at all surprising).

Some states are apparently best known (or searched) for their cultural resources:

• Arkansas Rappers (Really?!? Okay, I’ve got to do some research here and figure out what’s going down in the Little Rock hip hop scene).
• Maine Artists
• Massachusetts Artists
• New Mexico Artists
• North Dakota Artists (Okay, this one surprises me. Sorry, North Dakota. Just saying).
• Rhode Island Actors (Because Providence is the Hollywood of Southern New England).
• Tennessee Authors (I wonder if “Tennessee Williams” skews this one?)

There are a cluster of states whose geography resonates most strongly with Google searchers:

• Alaska Cities (Are people surprised to learn there are more than one?)
• California Beaches
• Florida Beaches
• Hawaii Beaches
• Puerto Rico Beach (Is there only one?)
• South Dakota Landmarks (Plural? Does that infer that there’s something other than Mount Rushmore?)
• West Virginia Hotel (Just one? Why does that make me think about some weird combo of The Shining and Deliverance?)

A couple of states apparently raise the question “Who the heck actually lives there?”

• Montana Residents
• New Hampshire Residents

Sadly enough, there are a few regions in the United States that apparently have nothing famous worth searching for, including our Nation’s Federal District:

• American Samoa NOTHING
• District of Columbia NOTHING
• U.S. Virgin Islands NOTHING
• Northern Mariana Islands NOTHING

Then there are some weird ones that don’t quite fit into any other category:

• Indiana Jones Quotes (Harrison Ford’s limited dialog in an action movie series is more searchable than everything else in the Hoosier State? Wow).
• Nevada Brothels (Well, yeah, sex sells, apparently even more than casinos do).
• Wyoming Attorney (There’s only one? Apparently that’s enough).

And, then, finally, there’s the state where I’ve made my home for the past three years. I figured that when I searched for “Famous Iowa [blank]” that I might get “Iowa State Football Players” or “Iowa Wrestlers” or “Iowa Corn” or something along those lines. But how wrong I was, since here’s a screen capture of the actual result:

Murders? The most searchable thing in Iowa is homicide?!? Well, I guess I might have done my part to help that out when I visited and wrote about the Villisca Axe Murder House, but, still, why is Iowa the only state in the Nation where searchers are most interested in the taking of someone else’s life?

This remains an open question for me. I’d welcome your thoughts on what the answer might be!