Welcome to our first ever weekly discussion thread. I’m looking forward to having a space to get to know each other and chat about big ideas and books and cocktails each week.
Right now, I’m deep in the books and historical research about how the geographic boundaries of the Midwest are defined. And I’m interested … how do you define it? By states? By geography? Or is it a culture? Are the Dakotas part of it? What about Kansas? The Upper Peninsula of Michigan?
Don’t worry about “sounding smart” or “right.” And you don’t have to live in the Midwest to answer. This is a scratchpad for us to compare notes and explore ideas and meaning together.
I’ll be here, snuggled under this guy, waiting to chat back with you :-)
Tell me … How do you geographically define the Midwest?
I know that place names and definitions can make us passionate. And I want that! But let’s also commit to leading with empathy and curiosity so that we can learn from each other and discover new perspectives.
As an Ohioan, we always heard we were midwestern in national media, but my parents insisted we were too far east to be midwestern. We were great lakes region, with the kinds of industry, education options, geography, weather, etc., shaped by the lakes and the big rivers. They compared our mindset and lives to family who lived in Nebraska, saying they were the true Midwesterners. Flatter land, more spread out population, prairie, not forests. That felt and feels true.
It is interesting. As I'm reading the history, there is a definite dividing line between "prairie" Midwest and the "lake/forest" Midwest. Because I'm here in Michigan, I have that myopic sense that lake Midwest is the Midwest, but as I talk to more people and read more, I'm learning that the prairie Midwest is more seen as the default. Thanks for commenting!
As a former Ohioan, I agree to an extent. Ohio is a bellwether state, or was, and can represent electorally what many people will vote for. Also, if mid-westerners are very nice, Ohioans are the very definition of nice.
And on another thread, someone said it's a cliche to be "Minnesota nice"! I'm finding that there is a sense of uber niceness in each state that claims Midwesterness. Ohio is such an interesting study as it touches Michigan and Kentucky, really straddling two lines.
I thought I was nice, then I moved to North Carolina, and almost immediately I was marked as too direct, if not rude. My husband still jokes that he NEVER used his horn in traffic until he got comfortable seeing me do it.
Howdy friend! I'm going to email you a map of where I think the West and Midwest are in relation to each other. But to me, the Midwest's western boundary is the 100th meridian - it's where the high elevation, arid West eases out into the lower elevation, more humid Midwest. You can see this line from an airplane, where farm boundaries shift from irregular to square/circle. Irrigation, baby! The eastern boundary of the Midwest is a bit more uncertain, but I would include Ohio in the Midwest. And the eastern parts of the Dakotas. To me, the Midwest is oriented toward inland water - the Great Lakes and the Missouri/Mississippi. Corn more than wheat. Pigs more than cattle. And Midwesterners (I went to the University of Iowa, so I experienced this there firsthand) are nice to your face but mean behind your back. Easterners are the opposite - mean to your face and nice behind your back. LOL. What the Midwestern cities and towns share with Western cities and towns is the classic grid pattern. You know you are in those regions when you can take a couple of right turns and get back to where you started. In the east, who knows where you'll end up?
Hey friend. I love this so much. Thank you for thinking about the actual geographic markers. The 100th parallel makes a lot of sense when I see it on a map. In fact, it explains so much of the conundrum I hear about the Dakotas, with the eastern side identifying Midwest and the western side claiming west. I've also been reading about the move of big ag from the Kansas/Iowa area that we think of more up into the Dakotas as a result of changing climate so that may reinforce cultural identifiers, too. But I hadn't thought much about the crops/livestock aspect. Interesting!
Living in Michigan, I tend to default to the Midwest as these upper water-oriented states, too. Over on my Facebook page, where I asked this question, the comments really skew toward the corn/prairie regions as the "heart" of the Midwest. Some say Ohio is definitely in it; others are like, uh, Ohio is the east.
And I remember getting so so lost in NYC the first time. I was like, where is my grid! And nobody understands me when I tell them Denver is on a grid and that Broadway and Colfax are the zero lines. So if you have an address, like 1512 S. Gaylord, you know you are 15 blocks south of Colfax. And I grew up at 117 1/2 17 1/2 road, which meant that I was on 17 1/2 road - halfway between 17 and 18 roads -- and 1/2 the lot that is 117. My grandparents were on H 1/4 Road. I love a grid.
I was born and raised in North Dakota. I always thought of us as the heart of the Midwest. In fact any state East of the Mississippi is pretty far East to me. Any state that was part of the USA during the times of war on American soil can't likely call itself a Midwestern state. I recently heard Ohio labeled as a Midwestern State and was blown away. It's not really middle and it's not really Western and although I've never been there I'm guessing it's not as flat and agrarian as the Plains. I think Midwest has been used too broadly......
I love that you say that because I keep thinking that the Dakotas have nothing in common with the Midwest -- but I realize that's because I'm sitting here on the Eastern side of Michigan, which skews my concept of Midwest. But here, we definitely say Ohio is the Midwest.
I also realize that I don't usually put the Dakotas in the Midwest because it was still the Dakota Territory at the Civil War. And so much of our regions are based on that. But then I look at the map and wonder, if Missouri is considered Midwest today, why didn't Kentucky and WVa. make it too?
And the Midwest, to me, has been defined as the former Northwest Territory, giving it the name "midwest" because it was no longer the West and was now midway between the East and the new west. Whereas the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc., to me, are the Great Plains. But that doesn't seem to be a region that sticks.
Again, thanks so much for your insight. It's really wonderful to hear how we're all thinking about things.
I went to college in Pittsburgh and a classmate of mine from Massachusetts called the city “The Gateway to the Midwest.” Having lived in the Great Lakes region, I also refer to the Milwaukee-Chicago-Detroit-Cleveland-Buffalo corridor as just that, but Buffalo is not the Midwest, even though it definitely has Midwestern sensibilities.
Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska — the Midwest?
The other qualifier: schools in state that were in the original Big Ten Conference, pre-Penn State.
I've been told that the Big Ten is an important delineator in the culture of the region! I will have to get my sports ball people to educate me more :-)
It is interesting to me, being in the Great Lakes part of the region, how we see that as the defining aspect of Midwest. But then Cari from the Dakotas weighs in saying he feels like that's the centrality of the Midwest. It's a big swath of land to try and hold together!
And yes, I feel like Detroit has more commonality with Buffalo than we do with, say Kansas City. I wonder how Buffalo residents feel... Midwest or North East. And then, of course, there is the North East and New England and how those regions are defined.
It strikes me as like “Boomer”, in that the definition has probably shifted and gotten used different ways in different times and contexts. Strictly, I think “Midwest” might be the Louisiana Purchase…everything to Wisconsin and Illinois would have been the “regular” west, since it was part of the original 13 colonies. And, of course, California would be the West West.
Growing up in Michigan, I was in the Midwest, but we travelled to Iowa every summer to see family and THAT is unequivocally the Midwest. In Minnesota, we were in the “Upper Midwest”, which seems fair. Minnesotans would have included the Dakotas in that…I’m less sure about Wisconsin actually. I don’t think you can split Iowa from Kansas or Missouri, but that might just be thinking it all looks alike.
Oh and Minnesota Nice is 100% a thing. Unlike any other “nice” out there. Michigan, at least in the Detroit area, has zero claim to nice, until you get to the east coast and freak people out by saying hello. And we do wave if you let us in. So I guess I’ll let Michigan claim that much nice, but I found the Detroit area very elbows-out-take-no-prisoners.
Thanks so much for this, Ann! You're right about the Louisiana Purchase being part of the official geographic delineators, as I'm learning. It turns out longitude and latitude on a map might not be the best decider of cultural alignment 🤣 Until I started this research, I was like, uh, no, the Dakotas are definitely not Midwest. But I'm being swayed but other's experiences and history. I'm also definitely discovering that there are a lot of micoregions. I think the geography is a great place to start, for me, if only because it elevates what's the same and what is not. And I'm dying over your "niceness" comment. Chef's kiss!
A geographer would survey people all over the region and map out where the self-defined Midwesterners end. I wonder how closely we would align with state borders. I've been learning about schismogenesis from The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow), which is the process of groups of people doing things a certain way or defining themselves a certain to be different from their neighbors. I think the Midwest might be defined that way: Those of us in the middle saying "we are not like them (east coast, south, westerners, west coast, etc.)"
Oh, fascinating, Nicole. Now I want to learn about schismogenesis. My reading has shown me that historians have considered "anti East Coast elitism" to be a hallmark of Midwest definition (culturally) since the late 1800s, as the region was coming into definition. And you bring up a good point: Self definition is often different than how a place is described or named by those in authority or the dominant group, which brings up huge tensions in who gets to claim a place.
For this piece I've been reading mostly history and sociology texts, but now I have to see if I can find any geography books on the issue.
Such a great point. I was just talking with a friend about this. We're the Midwest, but don't we culturally have more in common with, say, Buffalo than Fargo? And, of course, Detroit has such strong Southern culture, as does Chicago. I feel like the answer is going to be that we have boundaries for measurement (government, census, etc.) and that there are going to be different cultural boundaries or micro-regions.
I've always thought that all American cities should be classified as their own region ("Urbanity"). They have much more in common with each other than with their hinterlands.
I was just reading a piece about the architecture of place, and specifically the 5-over-ones being built in most cities -- and how it's creating a common fascade for cities, papering over their uniquenesses. But I haven't thought much, yet, about how the Sears catalogue did that, too, in a way, with its kit houses. You could build the same thing anywhere. But now we can do it at scale and speed.
I feel like I tend to think about regions in general in terms of culture, but I always have this nagging voice in the back of my mind that's saying "But the real definition of a region is by states."
My husband just said "while photographing the new furniture at the book depository, The client, from Canada said 'out and about' in the most canadian accent, the woman from TX said 'y'all' and my assistant said 'yous guys'. Everyone said something stereotypical from their parts of the continent"and I said "oh is 'yous guys' a midwest thing?" and he was blown away I didn't know that one. Having grown up in CA, I think the pop vs soda thing defines the midwest.
Interesting! And I grew up in Colorado saying pop or soda pop -- which are common here. And now I say y'all after having lived in the South. But I find it such a good way to get away from "you guys," which I grew up with. I'm going to be exploring some of the cultural and linguistic aspects of Midwestern-ness. Right now, I'm like, but where is this place, exactly? Everyone seems to have such a different definition of where is the Midwest.
Growing up in CA and then TX for a while before moving to MI, I don't think I ever put much thought into the 'midwest'. My grandparents live in IL so we'd go see them every summer... looking at your original post, even now I don't think about Kansas or the Dakotas are part of the midwest, but thinking about it now, having been there, they seem midwest to me... in my head midwest seems like any state that defines itself with some sort of agricultural farming. so MI gets in there with apples, Idaho with potatoes.... states that just scream 'open farmland while driving through on the highway.' TX falls into Southern and not midwest, because it's wide open land on either side of the highway is baren. Same with NM. Colorado is mountains... so I would say Kansas is the bottom corner on one side and midway through TN and Kentucky on the other. but maybe it's all fluid....
Moving around like that does give such different perspectives. I started in Colorado, then New York, then Mississippi, then back to NY, and now Michigan. And I think you're on to something with the agricultural aspect of the definition. I've never considered the Dakotas to be Midwest -- like how do we have anything in common with them -- but yet I'm finding that they are in the technical definitions and in so many people's lay definitions. As you say, it's so fluid. And I'm learning why the borderline of Kentucky/Ohio feels so Midwest and Southern.
The Packers are by far the most successful team in the NFL North (formerly Central). They beat up on everyone in the division. The Bears (Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa), Vikings(Minnesota, Dakotas, Iowa), and Lions (Michigan, Some of Ohio) fan bases all have a heated rivalry with the Packers. The Lions aren't beating up on anyone.
You're right, it is a state of mind. That's the cultural aspects. But the actual physical boundaries are defined by the federal government and by historians since about the late 1800s. Now, their definition, while official, may not align with how it is lived and felt, your "state of mind," on the ground. So I am curious how people create those delineations for themselves.
I would say that Philadelphia is an East Coast city, whereas Pittsburgh is a mid-west rust belt city, even though both are in the same state. Although I imagine any cynical New Yorker would define the Mid-West as the flyover states east of the Mississippi River.
As an Ohioan, we always heard we were midwestern in national media, but my parents insisted we were too far east to be midwestern. We were great lakes region, with the kinds of industry, education options, geography, weather, etc., shaped by the lakes and the big rivers. They compared our mindset and lives to family who lived in Nebraska, saying they were the true Midwesterners. Flatter land, more spread out population, prairie, not forests. That felt and feels true.
It is interesting. As I'm reading the history, there is a definite dividing line between "prairie" Midwest and the "lake/forest" Midwest. Because I'm here in Michigan, I have that myopic sense that lake Midwest is the Midwest, but as I talk to more people and read more, I'm learning that the prairie Midwest is more seen as the default. Thanks for commenting!
As a former Ohioan, I agree to an extent. Ohio is a bellwether state, or was, and can represent electorally what many people will vote for. Also, if mid-westerners are very nice, Ohioans are the very definition of nice.
And on another thread, someone said it's a cliche to be "Minnesota nice"! I'm finding that there is a sense of uber niceness in each state that claims Midwesterness. Ohio is such an interesting study as it touches Michigan and Kentucky, really straddling two lines.
I thought I was nice, then I moved to North Carolina, and almost immediately I was marked as too direct, if not rude. My husband still jokes that he NEVER used his horn in traffic until he got comfortable seeing me do it.
Howdy friend! I'm going to email you a map of where I think the West and Midwest are in relation to each other. But to me, the Midwest's western boundary is the 100th meridian - it's where the high elevation, arid West eases out into the lower elevation, more humid Midwest. You can see this line from an airplane, where farm boundaries shift from irregular to square/circle. Irrigation, baby! The eastern boundary of the Midwest is a bit more uncertain, but I would include Ohio in the Midwest. And the eastern parts of the Dakotas. To me, the Midwest is oriented toward inland water - the Great Lakes and the Missouri/Mississippi. Corn more than wheat. Pigs more than cattle. And Midwesterners (I went to the University of Iowa, so I experienced this there firsthand) are nice to your face but mean behind your back. Easterners are the opposite - mean to your face and nice behind your back. LOL. What the Midwestern cities and towns share with Western cities and towns is the classic grid pattern. You know you are in those regions when you can take a couple of right turns and get back to where you started. In the east, who knows where you'll end up?
Hey friend. I love this so much. Thank you for thinking about the actual geographic markers. The 100th parallel makes a lot of sense when I see it on a map. In fact, it explains so much of the conundrum I hear about the Dakotas, with the eastern side identifying Midwest and the western side claiming west. I've also been reading about the move of big ag from the Kansas/Iowa area that we think of more up into the Dakotas as a result of changing climate so that may reinforce cultural identifiers, too. But I hadn't thought much about the crops/livestock aspect. Interesting!
Living in Michigan, I tend to default to the Midwest as these upper water-oriented states, too. Over on my Facebook page, where I asked this question, the comments really skew toward the corn/prairie regions as the "heart" of the Midwest. Some say Ohio is definitely in it; others are like, uh, Ohio is the east.
And I remember getting so so lost in NYC the first time. I was like, where is my grid! And nobody understands me when I tell them Denver is on a grid and that Broadway and Colfax are the zero lines. So if you have an address, like 1512 S. Gaylord, you know you are 15 blocks south of Colfax. And I grew up at 117 1/2 17 1/2 road, which meant that I was on 17 1/2 road - halfway between 17 and 18 roads -- and 1/2 the lot that is 117. My grandparents were on H 1/4 Road. I love a grid.
If you live in a state where most of the football fans really hate the Packers or really love the Packers, then your probably in the Midwest.
Why the Packers specifically? What about the Lions? Is it the same?
I was born and raised in North Dakota. I always thought of us as the heart of the Midwest. In fact any state East of the Mississippi is pretty far East to me. Any state that was part of the USA during the times of war on American soil can't likely call itself a Midwestern state. I recently heard Ohio labeled as a Midwestern State and was blown away. It's not really middle and it's not really Western and although I've never been there I'm guessing it's not as flat and agrarian as the Plains. I think Midwest has been used too broadly......
I love that you say that because I keep thinking that the Dakotas have nothing in common with the Midwest -- but I realize that's because I'm sitting here on the Eastern side of Michigan, which skews my concept of Midwest. But here, we definitely say Ohio is the Midwest.
I also realize that I don't usually put the Dakotas in the Midwest because it was still the Dakota Territory at the Civil War. And so much of our regions are based on that. But then I look at the map and wonder, if Missouri is considered Midwest today, why didn't Kentucky and WVa. make it too?
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/union-confederacy
And the Midwest, to me, has been defined as the former Northwest Territory, giving it the name "midwest" because it was no longer the West and was now midway between the East and the new west. Whereas the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc., to me, are the Great Plains. But that doesn't seem to be a region that sticks.
Again, thanks so much for your insight. It's really wonderful to hear how we're all thinking about things.
I went to college in Pittsburgh and a classmate of mine from Massachusetts called the city “The Gateway to the Midwest.” Having lived in the Great Lakes region, I also refer to the Milwaukee-Chicago-Detroit-Cleveland-Buffalo corridor as just that, but Buffalo is not the Midwest, even though it definitely has Midwestern sensibilities.
Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska — the Midwest?
The other qualifier: schools in state that were in the original Big Ten Conference, pre-Penn State.
I've been told that the Big Ten is an important delineator in the culture of the region! I will have to get my sports ball people to educate me more :-)
It is interesting to me, being in the Great Lakes part of the region, how we see that as the defining aspect of Midwest. But then Cari from the Dakotas weighs in saying he feels like that's the centrality of the Midwest. It's a big swath of land to try and hold together!
And yes, I feel like Detroit has more commonality with Buffalo than we do with, say Kansas City. I wonder how Buffalo residents feel... Midwest or North East. And then, of course, there is the North East and New England and how those regions are defined.
Place. It's a wild thing!
It strikes me as like “Boomer”, in that the definition has probably shifted and gotten used different ways in different times and contexts. Strictly, I think “Midwest” might be the Louisiana Purchase…everything to Wisconsin and Illinois would have been the “regular” west, since it was part of the original 13 colonies. And, of course, California would be the West West.
Growing up in Michigan, I was in the Midwest, but we travelled to Iowa every summer to see family and THAT is unequivocally the Midwest. In Minnesota, we were in the “Upper Midwest”, which seems fair. Minnesotans would have included the Dakotas in that…I’m less sure about Wisconsin actually. I don’t think you can split Iowa from Kansas or Missouri, but that might just be thinking it all looks alike.
Oh and Minnesota Nice is 100% a thing. Unlike any other “nice” out there. Michigan, at least in the Detroit area, has zero claim to nice, until you get to the east coast and freak people out by saying hello. And we do wave if you let us in. So I guess I’ll let Michigan claim that much nice, but I found the Detroit area very elbows-out-take-no-prisoners.
Thanks so much for this, Ann! You're right about the Louisiana Purchase being part of the official geographic delineators, as I'm learning. It turns out longitude and latitude on a map might not be the best decider of cultural alignment 🤣 Until I started this research, I was like, uh, no, the Dakotas are definitely not Midwest. But I'm being swayed but other's experiences and history. I'm also definitely discovering that there are a lot of micoregions. I think the geography is a great place to start, for me, if only because it elevates what's the same and what is not. And I'm dying over your "niceness" comment. Chef's kiss!
A geographer would survey people all over the region and map out where the self-defined Midwesterners end. I wonder how closely we would align with state borders. I've been learning about schismogenesis from The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow), which is the process of groups of people doing things a certain way or defining themselves a certain to be different from their neighbors. I think the Midwest might be defined that way: Those of us in the middle saying "we are not like them (east coast, south, westerners, west coast, etc.)"
Oh, fascinating, Nicole. Now I want to learn about schismogenesis. My reading has shown me that historians have considered "anti East Coast elitism" to be a hallmark of Midwest definition (culturally) since the late 1800s, as the region was coming into definition. And you bring up a good point: Self definition is often different than how a place is described or named by those in authority or the dominant group, which brings up huge tensions in who gets to claim a place.
For this piece I've been reading mostly history and sociology texts, but now I have to see if I can find any geography books on the issue.
This is so odd because I feel culturally midwestern but living in the Detroit area I obviously geographically on the eastern side of the US.
Such a great point. I was just talking with a friend about this. We're the Midwest, but don't we culturally have more in common with, say, Buffalo than Fargo? And, of course, Detroit has such strong Southern culture, as does Chicago. I feel like the answer is going to be that we have boundaries for measurement (government, census, etc.) and that there are going to be different cultural boundaries or micro-regions.
I've always thought that all American cities should be classified as their own region ("Urbanity"). They have much more in common with each other than with their hinterlands.
I was just reading a piece about the architecture of place, and specifically the 5-over-ones being built in most cities -- and how it's creating a common fascade for cities, papering over their uniquenesses. But I haven't thought much, yet, about how the Sears catalogue did that, too, in a way, with its kit houses. You could build the same thing anywhere. But now we can do it at scale and speed.
I feel like I tend to think about regions in general in terms of culture, but I always have this nagging voice in the back of my mind that's saying "But the real definition of a region is by states."
What do you mean by that? Tell me more! And what would the cultural markers of Midwestern be for you?
My husband just said "while photographing the new furniture at the book depository, The client, from Canada said 'out and about' in the most canadian accent, the woman from TX said 'y'all' and my assistant said 'yous guys'. Everyone said something stereotypical from their parts of the continent"and I said "oh is 'yous guys' a midwest thing?" and he was blown away I didn't know that one. Having grown up in CA, I think the pop vs soda thing defines the midwest.
Interesting! And I grew up in Colorado saying pop or soda pop -- which are common here. And now I say y'all after having lived in the South. But I find it such a good way to get away from "you guys," which I grew up with. I'm going to be exploring some of the cultural and linguistic aspects of Midwestern-ness. Right now, I'm like, but where is this place, exactly? Everyone seems to have such a different definition of where is the Midwest.
Growing up in CA and then TX for a while before moving to MI, I don't think I ever put much thought into the 'midwest'. My grandparents live in IL so we'd go see them every summer... looking at your original post, even now I don't think about Kansas or the Dakotas are part of the midwest, but thinking about it now, having been there, they seem midwest to me... in my head midwest seems like any state that defines itself with some sort of agricultural farming. so MI gets in there with apples, Idaho with potatoes.... states that just scream 'open farmland while driving through on the highway.' TX falls into Southern and not midwest, because it's wide open land on either side of the highway is baren. Same with NM. Colorado is mountains... so I would say Kansas is the bottom corner on one side and midway through TN and Kentucky on the other. but maybe it's all fluid....
Moving around like that does give such different perspectives. I started in Colorado, then New York, then Mississippi, then back to NY, and now Michigan. And I think you're on to something with the agricultural aspect of the definition. I've never considered the Dakotas to be Midwest -- like how do we have anything in common with them -- but yet I'm finding that they are in the technical definitions and in so many people's lay definitions. As you say, it's so fluid. And I'm learning why the borderline of Kentucky/Ohio feels so Midwest and Southern.
The Packers are by far the most successful team in the NFL North (formerly Central). They beat up on everyone in the division. The Bears (Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa), Vikings(Minnesota, Dakotas, Iowa), and Lions (Michigan, Some of Ohio) fan bases all have a heated rivalry with the Packers. The Lions aren't beating up on anyone.
Excellent. Thank you for my sports history. *bows down* ♥️
Who's to say? As such, it strikes me as a state of mind.
You're right, it is a state of mind. That's the cultural aspects. But the actual physical boundaries are defined by the federal government and by historians since about the late 1800s. Now, their definition, while official, may not align with how it is lived and felt, your "state of mind," on the ground. So I am curious how people create those delineations for themselves.
I would say that Philadelphia is an East Coast city, whereas Pittsburgh is a mid-west rust belt city, even though both are in the same state. Although I imagine any cynical New Yorker would define the Mid-West as the flyover states east of the Mississippi River.
Haha. Yes. You’re probably right.