| There are at least two different definitions of 'midwest' I've run across.
The first -- and the one I grew up with -- is Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and maybe Minnesota and/or Iowa.
The second is North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and maybe Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. I call those the Plains States.
A third definition, which I just looked up, is from the Census Bureau, which calls the Midwest all of the states I listed above. (https://www.census.gov/geo/www/us_regdiv.pdf)
But the thing that really blows my mind is that the University of Michigan fight song -- written in 1898, after Texas, California, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah were all admitted as states to the US -- calls the university "champions of the west". |
