I'm not sure when this happened (though I immediately want to say John Byrne's MAN OF STEEL miniseries in 1986 is the culprit), but I dislike the fact that Smallville has a real specific state/province assigned to it. I liked it better when ALL the places in the Superverse were both fictional and hard-to-pin-down. I believe Smallville was initially a day trip away from Metropolis, or even one of it's outlying areas.
It just seems unnecessarily incongruous that we never get more real-world specific than "America" for the Superverse, except for Smallville, which, instead of being any small town USA (could be the nearest farm to you), becomes limited to one out of 50 states.
It's ultimately a small deal, I know, but it bugs me as a fan. Smallville should have remained generic and not tied down to any real state.