Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:3 (Summer 2011).
Abstract
Standard time zone boundaries are invisible in the landscape, yet they abruptly delineate a temporal difference of one hour between two large areas located relative to one another on Earth. In most cases, standard time zone boundaries follow political ones and define areas within which daylight saving time (DST)-the seasonal advancement of standard time by one hour-is observed. Moving time zone boundaries and the decision to observe daylight saving time occurs throughout the world for various reasons that result in the synchronization of socioeconomic and political activities within and between communities and the simultaneous separation from others.
The zone boundary between mountain standard time (MST) and central standard time (CST) in the Great Plains of the United States now follows the mostly rectilinear political boundaries of counties and states from the Canadian border in the north t'o the Mexican border in the south. North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas are bisected by the standard time zone boundary. All Plains states observe DST. Two consequences result from this current configuration: first, communities on either side of the MST-CST zone boundary are united by time but may not be related by environmental characteristics; and second, that observing or eliininating DST in one state depends upon observance or elimination in neighboring states.
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.