The East North Central Region

East North Central is one of the nine statistical divisions of the US Census Bureau and the eastern half of the Midwest region. Its five members are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The other half of the Midwest is the seven-state West North Central division. All five were carved out of the Northwest Territory, so they entered the Union under one body of law, one survey grid and one ban on slavery.

States in the East North Central division

State	Capital	Statehood	2020 population
Illinois	Springfield	1818	12,812,508
Ohio	Columbus	1803	11,799,448
Michigan	Lansing	1837	10,077,331
Indiana	Indianapolis	1816	6,785,528
Wisconsin	Madison	1848	5,893,718

The five were admitted in the order the territory filled, from Ohio in 1803 to Wisconsin in 1848. Columbus and Indianapolis are their state's largest city; Springfield, Lansing and Madison are not, having lost that race to Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee.

Population, area and economic weight

The division counted 47,368,533 residents in 2020, about 14 percent of the country and third among the nine divisions behind South Atlantic and Pacific. It covers roughly 301,400 square miles of total area but only about 243,000 square miles of land, because Michigan's and Wisconsin's totals include huge stretches of the Great Lakes. Michigan's 96,714 square miles shrinks to roughly 56,500 once lake water is removed. The five send 62 members to the House and cast 72 electoral votes, and Illinois, Michigan and Ohio each lost a seat in the apportionment following the 2020 Census. Chicago is the third largest city in the United States, and Wisconsin produces more cheese than any other state.

The geography that holds the region together

The Laurentide ice sheet shaped this region too, with the opposite result from New England. The ice left deep till plains and moraines over soft sedimentary rock, which is why this is some of the flattest and most productive farmland on the continent, and it gouged the Great Lakes basins that hold roughly a fifth of the world's surface fresh water. Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely inside the United States. The one place the ice missed is the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin, which kept its bluffs and deep valleys. A low subcontinental divide runs through the region, so water falling a few miles apart near Chicago ends up either in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence or the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers made that literal in 1900 by reversing the Chicago River through the Sanitary and Ship Canal so the city's waste flowed away from its drinking supply. The Ohio River forms the entire southern edge of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and the Mississippi forms the western edge of Illinois and Wisconsin. Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes and has the longest freshwater shoreline of any state. Lake-effect snow belts pile up on the downwind shores in western Michigan, northeast Ohio and the Upper Peninsula. The division's highest point, Mount Arvon in Michigan, is only 1,979 feet.

How the region was settled

The Land Ordinance of 1785 imposed the township and range survey that still governs the road grid across all five states, and reserved one section of every township to fund schools. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 barred slavery north of the Ohio River and set out the path from territory to statehood, which is why the Ohio River became a hard cultural and legal line rather than just a river. Settlement then arrived from two directions at once. The Erie Canal opened in 1825 and turned New York Harbor into the outlet for the Great Lakes, sending New Englanders into Ohio's Western Reserve and on into Michigan and Wisconsin, followed by heavy German and Scandinavian immigration after 1848. From the south, families moved up from Kentucky and Virginia into the lower counties of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, leaving an Upland South layer that never went away. Congress settled the Toledo War in 1836 by awarding the disputed Toledo Strip to Ohio and the Upper Peninsula to Michigan. The Great Migration later brought Black Southerners to Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

What the East North Central is known for

Ford started the moving assembly line at Highland Park in 1913 and Detroit became the center of the world's car industry. The Chicago Board of Trade was founded in 1848 and set grain prices for the world. Iron ore from Minnesota's Mesabi Range passes through the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on its way to the steel mills at Gary, Cleveland and Detroit. The Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and gave lake ports direct ocean access. Illinois, Indiana and Ohio grow corn and soybeans at scale, Wisconsin runs on dairy, and seven presidents were born in Ohio.

Where the boundary is argued

The first fight is over Ohio. Its southeastern counties fall inside the Appalachian Regional Commission's territory, so Ohio reads Appalachian in the southeast and Great Lakes in the north, and many people place it in the East rather than the Midwest. The second is the southern tier: the bottom of Illinois, known as Little Egypt, lies farther south than Richmond, Virginia, and the Ohio River counties sound and vote more like Kentucky than like Chicago. The third is the Rust Belt, which is not a Census term and spills into western Pennsylvania and western New York, both Middle Atlantic. Michigan argues with itself, since the Upper Peninsula joins by land to Wisconsin and was only linked to the Lower Peninsula when the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957.

Explore other regions