Fourteen US states aren't fully inside one time zone — a longer list than most people expect, and one that catches out plenty of domestic travelers and remote teams who assume a state name tells you everything you need to know.
The full list
| State | Zones | Where the line falls |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Alaska / Hawaii-Aleutian | Western Aleutian Islands only |
| Florida | Eastern / Central | Panhandle, near the Apalachicola River |
| Idaho | Mountain / Pacific | Northern counties on Pacific Time |
| Indiana | Eastern / Central | Northwest (Chicago area) and southwest corners |
| Kansas | Central / Mountain | Four western counties |
| Kentucky | Eastern / Central | Roughly the western two-thirds of the state |
| Michigan | Eastern / Central | Upper Peninsula's four westernmost counties |
| Nebraska | Central / Mountain | Western panhandle counties |
| Nevada | Pacific / Mountain | West Wendover, on the Utah border |
| North Dakota | Central / Mountain | Southwestern counties |
| Oregon | Pacific / Mountain | Malheur County, in the far east |
| South Dakota | Central / Mountain | Roughly the western half |
| Tennessee | Eastern / Central | East Tennessee vs. the rest |
| Texas | Central / Mountain | El Paso and Hudspeth County |
Why the lines rarely follow state borders
Almost none of these boundaries were drawn to split a state evenly — they follow historical economic and travel ties instead. A community near a state border in the "wrong" time zone will often have stronger commercial and social connections to the neighboring state's major city than to its own state capital, and the boundary tends to reflect that rather than pure geography. El Paso, for instance, has closer trade ties to Las Cruces, New Mexico than to Dallas — which is a large part of why it sits in Mountain Time despite being in Texas.
Why this catches people out
The practical risk is assuming a state maps cleanly to one time zone. "Call me at 3pm Texas time" is genuinely ambiguous if the other person is in El Paso rather than Houston — a full hour of difference hiding behind a state name that most people assume is unambiguous. The same applies to Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, and the rest of this list: state-level assumptions about time zones are wrong often enough to be worth double-checking by city rather than by state.
It shows up in more than just phone calls, too. Flight schedules, TV broadcast listings, and retail store hours all have to be set by the specific time zone a location actually falls in, not by the state it's nominally part of — which is why a national chain with a store in, say, the Florida Panhandle or western Nebraska will typically post that location's hours with an explicit time zone label, rather than assuming customers will infer it correctly from the state name alone.
If you're unsure which zone a specific city actually falls in, the time zone converter resolves it by city rather than by state, so a split state never gets treated as one uniform clock.
Frequently asked questions
How many US states are split across two time zones?
Fourteen: Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. Some sources say thirteen, because Alaska's split is between Alaska Time and Hawaii–Aleutian Time rather than a mainland boundary. In most of them the split affects only a corner or a handful of counties.
Why don't time zone lines just follow state borders?
Because almost none of these boundaries were drawn to split a state evenly — they follow historical economic and travel ties instead. El Paso is the classic case: it sits in Mountain Time with New Mexico rather than Central Time with the rest of Texas, because its commercial connections run west.
Is all of Texas on Central Time?
No. Most of Texas is Central, but El Paso County and Hudspeth County in the far west are on Mountain Time, an hour behind. That is why “call me at 3pm Texas time” is genuinely ambiguous — one person may mean El Paso while the other assumes Houston.
Which parts of these states are in the second time zone?
Usually a small slice: Florida's western Panhandle, northern Idaho, Indiana's northwest and southwest corners, four western Kansas counties, four Michigan counties on the Wisconsin border, Nebraska's panhandle, West Wendover in Nevada, southwestern North Dakota, Oregon's Malheur County, and Alaska's western Aleutians.