What Is the Midwest? Where Is it?

Writing about the Midwest presents a problem unknown to those who write about, say, the South or New England. The problem is that no one can define, with any precision, just what the Midwest is.

I made a stab at it in my book on the Midwest, Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism. I based my definition on what I could see and sense when I was doing my research. So I've been charmed, not to say gratified, to read a book that says that the Midwest exists as it is today because of the four great glaciers that rolled across the region, starting about a million years ago, and that this glacial expanse pretty much matches my impressionistic definition.

Geology, it seems, is destiny.

In my book, I defined the Midwest mostly as the eight states of the Upper Midwest -- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. But I made a point of cutting across state lines when it seemed appropriate, if only to stress how little these artificial political boundaries have to do with the reality of Midwestern life.

Thus, I let the Midwest edge across the Missouri River to take in the eastern fringes of Nebraska and Kansas. More drastically, I lopped off the southern thirds of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and consigned these regions to the South. I included only the half of Missouri north of the Missouri River, figuring that the southern half was more Ozark and Southern.

What was left was a cohesive region bound together by its economy, which is heavy industry and intensive farming, and its character, shaped by the first great migration of people from northern Europe and New England. The southern fringe, I reasoned, was a different region, harder and hillier, more given to small-scale farming, more shaped by its first settlers, who were the Scots-Irish from the Piedmont whose movement took them down the Ohio River and into the border states.

I also chopped the Midwest off at the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, reasoning that any states that touched the Atlantic Ocean, such as New York and Pennsylvania, couldn't be Midwestern. 

Admittedly, this was less than scientific. I felt a place was Midwestern if it felt Midwestern. This wasn't perfect: I've received complaints from western Pennsylvania and upstate New York, arguing that their history and their problems are identical to those in the Midwest and they want to be part of this conversation. But folks in southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio haven't made a peep. My bet is that they don't feel Midwestern and don't mind being left out.

There are reasons for this, and these reasons go back more than a couple of hundred years. I learned this from a book called Portrait of the Midwest: From the Ice Age to the Industrial Era, written fifty years ago by a Chicago businessman and jack of all trades named Douglas Waitley. The book, now long out of print, was given to me by a friend who found it in a used book stall in Detroit. It's a prize.

What I discovered was that my definition of the Midwest -- that inclusion of that fringe across the Missouri, the exclusion of the area south of Interstate-70, the belated inclusion of upstate New York -- corresponds almost exactly to the furthest reach of the four great glaciers that descended and retreated over the region from a million years ago until barely 16,000 years ago.

As the glaciers advanced, they not only flattened the landscape into the great prairies we know today. They carried along a mass of debris, rocks, gravel, and grit that remained behind when they receded. This combined with the decomposed grass and leaves from earlier eras to create the rich black soil that is the basis for Midwestern agriculture.

The regions beyond the glaciers -- southern Illinois and Indiana, for instance -- didn't share this bounty of rich soil. Instead, they received the churning meltwater from the glaciers that carved the upland hills and deep valleys that remain today. (The same thing happened in the so-called Driftless Area, a small region in southwestern Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa that the glacier missed, leaving behind an area of great natural beauty but fewer natural resources and a legacy of relative poverty and underdevelopment similar to, say, southern Illinois.)

The Midwest politically is the result of two events 200 years ago -- the Northwest Ordinance of 1803, which created the Northwest Territory embracing what was to become Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, and the Louisiana Purchase sixteen years later, from which the other Midwestern states were carved.

In a sense, this area had natural boundaries -- the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers bounded the Northwest Territory, while the Missouri and Red Rivers marked the western limits of Minnesota and Iowa. In fact, these natural boundaries don't amount to much, at least as compared to the mountains that give other regions a natural territory, not to mention the history that delineates the South.

For that reason, no one can say for sure where the Midwest begins and ends. Do the mining and forestry areas of northern Minnesota and Michigan really belong? Are the Great Plains Midwestern, or are they a separate region defined by a different climate and a different economy? Can parts of Ontario and Quebec, which share the Midwest's economy and proximity to the Great Lakes, be admitted to membership? Do Buffalo and Syracuse belong to the Chicago-centered Midwest, or to the New York City-centered East?

The Midwest Governors Association includes twelve states -- the eight states of the Upper Midwest and the four Great Plains states. Our Global Midwest Initiative includes the same twelve states, although almost all the interest we've generated has come from the Upper Midwest: it's easy to conclude that the Great Plains states don't really consider themselves Midwestern. 

Joel Garreau, in his fascinating book, The Nine Nations of North America, split the area between what he called The Foundry, the industrial heartland embracing the Great Lakes from New York to Toronto to Chicago, and The Breadbasket, a vast agricultural area stretching from southern Texas well into Manitoba. Considering that the three industrial states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa are consigned to The Breadbasket, this isn't entirely satisfying.

With all this confusion over the Midwest, it's no wonder that there's even less agreement on what constitutes The Heartland. This mushy concept can be used as a synonym for the Midwest, or for a down-home state of mind, or for a certain populist or conservative politics, or seemingly, for whatever the author has in mind, with no need for geographic precision.

A recent example is a new book, Remaking the Heartland: Middle America Since the 1950s, by a Princeton sociologist named Robert Wuthnow. A native of Kansas, Wuthnow refers to his territory as the Midwest, but has virtually nothing to say about the Midwest east of the Missouri River. Rather, he concentrates on the Plains states and, especially, Kansas, seeing the region's revival exemplified in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, which is basically an overgrown office park that, in its soullessness, could be anywhere.

I understand that the Midwest Governors Association is about to launch a project on "rebranding the Midwest," presumably to give it a sharper image. A noble effort, to be sure, but perhaps a vain one, given the general confusion on just where the place even is. 

Comments

[D]

Well, even if no one said anything, people in Cincinnati certainly see themselves as Midwestern. They definitely don't consider themselves Southern.

I'd suggest that the fact these regions were settled earlier and in different ways as you described accounts for the reasons these regions may seem less connected to the rest of the Midwest. Essentially, the patterns of settlement and institutions persist. There's a general pattern of moving East for college, for example. More people seem to come to Ohio universities and college from the more westerly parts of the Midwest than vice versa. The greater Cincinnati region, because it is so much older, has a stronger connection to the University of Michigan than much younger OSU than any other Ohio region aside from Toledo.

Nevertheless, these "border cities" are key areas for the Greater Midwest, partly because they have very similar issues and partly because they connect the Midwest region to the other major American regions. Louisville, the cities of West Virginia, Pittsburgh and western New York (an area you mentioned) are likely to see their prosperity rise and fall with the rest of the Midwest before the Atlantic Coast or the South.

[Matthew Hall]

Cincinnatians may not see themselves as upper south/appalachian, but true midwesterners certainly do. The Ohio valley is quite distinct from the flat agricultural lands to its north, with a different history and economy than the farm towns turned industrial cities of the Midwest. Cultural anthropologists locate cincinnati directly on a cultural border between the midwest and upper south. I think this helps to explain its confused and intense social and political life with two separate cultural traditions bumping into each other around every political issue and social event. There is a messy, disorderly, and class conscious quality to life in Cincinnti, louisville, and St. Louis that is very different from the well-organized soberness of columbus, indy, or even chicago.

[Jason Laughlin]

I think this post gets at the idea that there is no "True Midwesterner." You don't have to be in Cincinnati long to see that while there may be hills it is at the very least midwestern (with a small 'm'). Even Louisville, with it's Southern proclivities harbors more in common with Cincy and Indianapolis than it does with, say Nashville.

Perhaps the river city identity of the border cities like Cincy, Louisville and St. Louis make them a certain sect of midwesterners.

[Brent]

For the first 150 years or so after its founding the U.S. was generally divided into 3 regions: East, South, and West. (Hence the words, "Hail! Hail! to Michigan, the Champions of the West.) I consider anywhere that was in the old Northwest Territory to be the Midwest, regardless of settlement patterns, economy, etc. The South is hardly homogeneous, either. What does New Orleans have in common with Richmond, or Charleston with Memphis? Historically, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Buffalo, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, etc., were consider "Western" cities...now Midwestern. Also, having been raised in northern Indiana and educated in the southern part of the state, I definitely see differences, but I don't think the people in either part consider themselves as not part of the Midwest.

[Matthew Hall]

Cultural anthropologists have sought to map exactly this sort of thing. A New book addresses these and the implications of such views of U.S. regional cultures.http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0670022969

[pete-rock]

I've maintained for quite a long time that there is no "true" singular Midwest, but five -- crossing traditional state lines. Each can lay claim to be truly Midwestern but all are in competition with each other. My Five Midwests, from north to sourh, are:

North Woods: Northern MI and the UP; northern WI and MN

Rust Belt: The Great Lakes from Rochester, NY to Chicago, reaching up to Green Bay

Heartland: The arc that starts around Akron and continues through central OH, IN, IL and goes up the Mississippi River valley to Minneapolis

Midland Valley: The Ohio and lower Mississippi/Missouri Valley, from Pittsburgh, past Cincinnati and Louisville, up to St. Louis

Great Plains: western portions of MO, IA and MN, and the eastern halves of ND, SD, NE and KS

I've tried to explain it as best as I can; I've done a hand-drawn map using county boundaries that illustrates it better.

Just as the Midwest itself is poorly understood, I think the subregions I've identified are as well. There are subtle distinctions in their settlement histories and patterns; the North Woods has a stronger Scandinavian immigrant influence, while the Midland Valley was initially settled by Kentuckians and Tennesseans. what I've also found is that the population centers and economic engines are in the Rust Belt, but state capitals are largely in the Heartland (Columbus, Indianapolis, Springfield, Des Moines). However, the one thing they do have in common is that they were once all considered to be "west".

[Brent]

Interesting that those states' capitals were all originally in the southern parts of their respective states (except Iowa, with Iowa City in the eastern part), because of early migration patterns. I can totally see the crossover when I go back home to Northeast Indiana to visit. My hometown is at the dividing line of the Lutheran/Catholic, German/Irish/Slavic-dominated Rust Belt and the Evangelical Protestant, Scots-Irish/Anglo Midland (trying not to overly generalize.) You can almost tell someone's ancestry by their accent.

[David]

I have to agree with the other commenters here. You are being too restrictive.

People from Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and St. Louis consider themselves Midwesterners. Although some of the younger foreign born people from Buffalo do not. Louisville is a borderline case.

Heck I met plenty of people from North Dakota who consider themselves Midwestern.

West of the Appalachia makes one dependent on the rivers and Great Lakes and not the Eastern Seaboard. Read Ed Glaeser's article in City about Buffalo (yes I know you do not agree w/his politics).

Also I think there is an ethnic difference. The Upper South is Scots-Irish and rural black . The Midwest is Central European, such as German, make up the bedrock. These are very different ethnicities culturally.

[Ben Greenman]

I would like to propose a focus on two significant aspects of the Midwest. It seems there is a stark contrast in economic and cultural dynamics between Midwestern areas that are most affected by the rust belt, and then those that are most affected by the evolution of corporate agribusiness. I believe this is significant in acknowledging how Midwesterners perceive or place the Midwest within their worldview.

[CK]

Growing up in Columbus, I resented being told I was mid-western. The connotation that seems to surround that is growing up on a farm. I felt I grew up in an urban setting with absolutely no knowledge of farm life. I do not like, at all, to tell people I grew up in the midwest. They get a much different picture of my life than was reality. And I'm pretty sure that holds true for most large cities in the US no matter what region they're located in.