The Midwestern United States (in the U.S. generally referred to as the Midwest) is one of the four geographic regions within the United States of America that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau.
Despite the name, the Midwest is located primarily in the eastern half of the United States, though culturally and traditionally, it is not seen as a part of the Eastern United States.
The region consists of twelve states in the central and inland northeastern US: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,South Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin.[1] A 2006 Census Bureau estimate put the population at 66,217,736. Both the geographic center of the contiguous U.S. and the population center of the U.S. are in the Midwest. The United States Census Bureau divides this region into the East North Central States (essentially the Great Lakes States) and the West North Central States.
Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit and Indianapolis. Chicagoland is the largest metropolitan statistical area, followed by Metro Detroit, and the Twin Cities.[2] Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is the oldest city in the region, having been founded by French missionaries and explorers in 1668.
The term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years. A variant term, "Middle West", has been in use since the 19th century and remains relatively common.[3] Another term sometimes applied to the same general region is "the heartland".[4] Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from "Northwest Territory") and "Mid-America". Since the book Middletown appeared in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities (and the Midwest generally) as "typical" of the entire nation.[5] The region has a higher employment-to-population ratio (the percentage of employed people at least 16 years old) than the Northeast, the West, the South, or the Sun Belt states.[6]
Four of the states associated with the Midwestern United States (Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota) are traditionally referred to as belonging to the Great Plains region. However, in recent years they are often included in the Midwestern region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States
The "eastern" US is comprised mainly of those states that were original to the colonies. So Ohio, being an undeveloped territory for a long time, is considered to be part of those "western" states. Mid-western simply implies that of the states across the country from the eastern states to the western states, they fall somewhere in the MIDdle, but are western of all the original states of the union.
