State Line Avenue runs through the heart of Texarkana, dividing the city between Texas to the west and Arkansas to the east. It is a normal commercial street in most respects — gas stations, fast food, small shops — but the median strip is literally the state line, painted and marked to leave no doubt about which state you are walking on. The novelty wore off for locals long ago, but for visitors there is something genuinely pleasing about a street that belongs to two states simultaneously.
On the Arkansas side, the downtown is somewhat more intact than on the Texas side, with a cluster of historic commercial buildings. The local joke is that Texarkana is a city where a traffic citation can be contested on the grounds that the officer was out of his jurisdiction — which side of the median he was on matters. Both city governments maintain a cooperative relationship that manages the shared infrastructure of fire protection, water, and policing along the border.