US Map / Regions / Midwest

Midwest Map

Twelve states between the Great Lakes and the high plains, and the only Census region whose share of US land matches its share of US people.

Which states are in the Midwest?

Twelve: the five East North Central states around the Great Lakes and the seven West North Central states out on the plains. The region covers about 21 percent of the country's land and holds about 21 percent of its people, the only one of the four regions where those two shares match.

Illinois and Ohio are the population heavyweights at roughly 12.7 and 11.9 million in 2024; North Dakota is the smallest at about 797,000. Six of the twelve touch a Great Lake, and Michigan touches four of the five.

Where "Midwest" comes from

The name is a leftover from an older map. In the late nineteenth century the "Middle West" meant Kansas and Nebraska — the middle band of the West, sitting between the Old Northwest around the lakes and the Southwest. As settlement pushed past the plains, the label drifted east and swallowed the lake states with it. The Census Bureau itself avoided the word for decades, calling these twelve states the North Central region until it adopted "Midwest" in 1984. The two division names, East North Central and West North Central, are fossils of that older scheme and are still the labels the Bureau prints.

Informal usage is looser than the official list in both directions. Plenty of people count Kansas and the Dakotas as Great Plains rather than Midwest, and plenty count Kentucky — officially East South Central — as Midwestern because Cincinnati and Louisville sit on the same river. The regions hub has the official grouping side by side with the informal ones.

The Midwest's largest cities

Chicago, about 2.72 million people in 2024, is the third-largest city in the United States and the only Midwestern city above a million. Columbus, about 933,000 in 2024, and Indianapolis, about 901,000, come next, and both are state capitals that are also their state's largest city — a combination the capitals map shows is uncommon. Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Cincinnati carry the lake and river industrial belt. West of the Mississippi the largest are Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, and Wichita.

Geography: lakes, two great rivers, and the plains

Four of the five Great Lakes touch the Midwest, including all of Lake Michigan, the only one entirely inside the United States, and the southern shore of Lake Superior. The Mississippi rises at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and then forms most of the region's internal north–south borders on its way south. The Missouri River crosses or bounds six of the twelve states — the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri — and joins the Mississippi just above St. Louis. The Ohio River makes the southern edge of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Physically the region splits at roughly the 98th meridian. East of it lie the glaciated corn and dairy country and the flat till plains left by the ice sheets; west of it the Great Plains rise and dry out toward the Rockies. Southern Missouri breaks the pattern entirely with the Ozarks, the only substantial uplands in the region.

The Midwest's two Census divisions

• East North Central (5 states)
• West North Central (7 states)

Compare with the other regions

The Northeast is denser and far smaller, the South is the most populous, and the West holds half the country's land. The Midwest map quiz drills these twelve state shapes, several of which are the hardest rectangles on the board.