Midwestern United States - Definition

Definition

Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance "Old Northwest" states and many states that were part of the Louisiana Purchase. The states of the Old Northwest are also known as "Great Lakes states". Many of the Louisiana Purchase states are also known as "Great Plains states".

The Midwest Region is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as these 12 states:

  • Illinois: Old Northwest, Ohio River, and Great Lakes state.
  • Indiana: Old Northwest, Ohio River, and Great Lakes state.
  • Iowa: Louisiana Purchase.
  • Kansas: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
  • Michigan: Old Northwest and Great Lakes state.
  • Minnesota: Old Northwest, Louisiana Purchase, part of Red River Colony before 1818, Great Lakes state.
  • Missouri: Louisiana Purchase, Border state.
  • Nebraska: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
  • North Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, part of Red River Colony before 1818, Great Plains state.
  • Ohio: Old Northwest (Historic Connecticut Western Reserve), Ohio River, and Great Lakes state. The southeastern part of the state is part of Southern Appalachia.
  • South Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
  • Wisconsin: Old Northwest and Great Lakes state.

The Midwest Region of the National Park Service consists of these twelve states as well as Arkansas.

Read more about this topic:  Midwestern United States

Famous quotes containing the word definition:

    ... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals—just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.
    Ana Castillo (b. 1953)

    Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.
    Walter Pater (1839–1894)