As with all opinions that don’t matter, I hold firmly to the idea that the Midwest consists of Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. It seems to me that the historical roots of the Midwest lie in the Old Northwest Territory (named because it was northwest of the Ohio River), which consisted of the states named above plus a piece of Minnesota.

The Midwest is also characterized by industrial centers–Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee. The further you get from those classic industrial cities the less Midwestern you are. Honestly, here in southern Indiana we’re more of a border region between the Midwest and the South.

But you know what’s even better than state line and arbitrary region names? Watersheds. It grounds our sense of geography in something more real than political boundaries. In this post, Todd writes about one way to do that. If we use his system of naming regions after river watersheds, I live in the nation of Ohio, state of Wabash, county of Patoka-White, and city of East Fork White.