We’ve already given you pretty much everything you want to know about the Midwest in map and/or chart form. And it bears repeating: the question of exactly which states constitute the Midwest remains a contentious issue.
At Radical Cartography, Yale history professor and cartographer Bill Rankin has put together a map of how others have defined the Midwest. And this isn’t just a survey of random Americans; he looked at how 100 other maps from businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies define the Midwest, overlaid them, and checked out where they overlap. As it turns out, there’s a lot of agreement, surrounded by an even bigger mass of disputed territory that extends over much of Canada (click through to see an enlargeable map):
Source: Radical Cartography
Clearly, everyone seems to agree on the basic, unavoidably, essentially Midwestern states: Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin. And the Dakotas and Ohio seem to have earned a consensus. But search for a few of these organizations’ Midwest maps, and you see exactly who is misguided disagrees and in what way. Verizon thinks Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia are in the Midwest, for example. And even the Midwest Dairy Association breaks with tradition, including Arkansas and part of Oklahoma.
