Michigan, MI

Michigan is a Midwestern state of the United States of America, located in the east north central portion of the country. It was named after Lake Michigan, whose name was a French adaptation of the Ojibwe term mishigami, meaning "large water" or "large lake".

Bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair, Michigan has the longest freshwater shoreline in the World, and the second longest total shoreline in the United States.

In 2005, Michigan had more registered recreational boats than any state except California and Florida.

A person in Michigan is never more than 85 miles (137 km) from open Great Lakes water and is never more than 6 miles (10 km) from a natural water source. Michigan is the only bi-peninsular state.

The Lower Peninsula of Michigan, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is sometimes dubbed "the mitten," owing to its shape. When asked where in Michigan one comes from, a resident of the Lower Peninsula may often point to the corresponding part of his or her hand.

The Upper Peninsula (usually referred to as The U.P.) is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The Upper Peninsula (whose residents are often called "Yoopers") is economically important for tourism and its natural resources.

The Upper and Lower Peninsulas are connected by the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, which is the third longest suspension bridge between anchorages in the world.

This is the source of the name "trolls" for residents of the Lower Peninsula, for they live "under" (south of) the bridge.

The Great Lakes that border Michigan are Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. Michigan also abuts Lake Saint Clair, which is between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

Geography

Michigan consists of two peninsulas that lie between 82°30' to about 90š30' west longitude, and are separated by the Straits of Mackinac.

The state is bounded on the south by the states of Ohio and Indiana, sharing both land and water boundaries with both. Michigan's western boundaries are almost entirely water boundaries, from south to north, with Illinois and Wisconsin in Lake Michigan; then a land boundary with Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula, that is principally demarcated by the Menominee and Montreal rivers; then water boundaries again, in Lake Superior, with Wisconsin and Minnesota to the west, capped around by the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and east.

The northern boundary then runs completely through Lake Superior, from the western boundary with Minnesota to a point north of and around Isle Royale, (which is Michigan's only National Park), thence traveling southeastward through the lake in a reasonably straight line to the Sault Ste. Marie area. Windsor, Ontario, once the south bank of Detroit, Upper Canada, has the distinction of being the only part of Canada which lies to the due south of a part of the lower 48 contiguous United States.

In Southeastern Michigan there is a water boundary with the Canada along the entire lengths of the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair (including the First Nation reserve of Walpole Island) and the Detroit River. The south-eastern boundary ends in the western end of Lake Erie with a three-way convergence of Michigan, Ohio and Ontario. Michigan encompasses 58,110 square miles (150,504 kmē) of land, 38,575 square miles (99,909 kmē) of Great Lakes waters and 1,305 square miles (3,380 kmē) of inland waters.

Only the state of Alaska has more territorial water. After Michigan is third ranked Florida which has 11,827.77 square miles (30,633.8 kmē).[18] At a total of 97,990 square miles (253,793 kmē), Michigan is the largest state east of the Mississippi River (inclusive of its territorial waters).

It is the 10th largest state in the Union. Michigan claims a land area of 58,110 square miles of land and 97,990 sq mi total, making it the tenth largest state,[19] but the U.S. Census Bureau claims only 56,803.82 sq mi of land and 96,716.11 sq mi total, making it the 11th largest.

The heavily forested Upper Peninsula is relatively mountainous in the west. The Porcupine Mountains, which are the oldest mountains in North America, rise to an altitude of almost 2,000 feet above sea level and form the watershed between the streams flowing into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The surface on either side of this range is rugged. The state's highest point, in the Huron Mountains northwest of Marquette, is Mount Arvon at 1,979 feet (603 m).

The peninsula is as large as Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined, but has fewer than 330,000 inhabitants, who are sometimes called "Yoopers" (from "U.P.'ers") and whose speech (the "Yooper dialect") has been heavily influenced by the large number of Scandinavian and Canadian immigrants who settled the area during the mining boom of the late 1800s.

The Lower Peninsula, shaped like a mitten, is 277 miles (446 km) long from north to south and 195 miles (314 km) from east to west and occupies nearly two-thirds of the state's land area. The surface of the peninsula is generally level, broken by conical hills and glacial moraines usually not more than a few hundred feet tall.

The state has 11,037 inland lakes and 38,575 square miles (62,067 km) of Great Lakes waters and rivers and 1,305 square miles of inland water on top of that. No point in Michigan is more than 6 miles (10 km) from an inland lake or more than 85 miles (137 km) from one of the Great Lakes. Detroit is the only major city in the United States from which one must travel southward to cross the border into Canada. Metropolitan Detroit/Ann Arbor/Flint/Windsor is also the world's largest international metropolitan area.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Michigan".