I was wondering what you guys thought about the Blanket Term Midwest. I find the term Midwest a poor way to describe the region. I myself am from Kansas City which is technically the midwest, but it doesn't seem to have a lot in relation to the rest of it. How do native Ohioans find the center being labeled the midwest. I find that the city Kansas City has the most in common with is Omaha, in that there is a pre car urban core, but it is relatively small comparetively. I also think somewhere like St. Louis would be a mix between something like french mississipi and the great lakes region, whereas minneapolis is middle north. How would you label the different parts of the midwest differently? What specific areas does each city in Ohio relate to? Just wondering what you guys think.

I don't like it because it makes east coast people think that I grew up in cornfields when I say I'm from Ohio. But that's just my midwestern inferiority complex I suppose. Once I met a college kid from Boston in Madrid, Spain. After I told him where I was from he told me that he'd met a few people from Ohio on his trip, and he was surprised because he "didn't know people from the midwest left the midwest." Not even in a nasty way, he was nice otherwise and genuinely surprised, but the comment was ignorant and stuck with me.

 

Maybe "Great Lakes" works better for us in the eastern part of the midwest as we are densely populated and mostly urban/suburban.

 

In addition to this, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest Ohio all take on characteristics of the regions they border. Central Ohio and everything to the North and West are the most "Midwestern" parts of the state. You are also certainly correct about St. Louis.

Really only 1/3Rd of Ohio is boring cornfields considering another 1/3rd is Appalachian and the other third is cities and lake areas. It's kind of silly that we get lumped in with say, Oklahoma.

I've always struggled placing Cincinatti, what region would they fit into?

I've always struggled placing Cincinatti, what region would they fit into?

 

Cincinnati "fits" into Ohio, which started the Midwest.

 

Personally, I never understood why the Midwest just doesn't re-brand itself as "The North."  There's the Northeast (or simply "East Coast"), The South, the West, and...Midwest?  Nah, I prefer "the North."  The North is a large region, extending from the Dakotas to Ohio and much like The South, it has sub-regions such as the Great Lakes and Great Plains.

Really only 1/3Rd of Ohio is boring cornfields considering another 1/3rd is Appalachian and the other third is cities and lake areas. It's kind of silly that we get lumped in with say, Oklahoma.

 

A lot of the agriculture in Ohio was small scale, produce farms until recently, when much of the food production moved south. Now much of it is boring cornfields, but not to the extent as in Iowa or Nebraska. Midwestern Ohio has some of the best soil on the planet.

 

Ohio is in the Eastern Midwest, or the Great Lakes, but only in those areas close to the Lakes themselves. I don't think that anyone living in the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois, thinks of themselves as Great Lakes, only "Midwest", or "Heartland".

Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Milwaukee are all Great Lakes cities. Cleveland's not sure it's in the midwest.

 

I think the Midwest starts at the southernmost point of Lake Erie, along OH 61. The turnpike goes up its first hill for hundreds and hundreds of miles at that point, the farms become smaller, more trees, and fewer boring cornfields.

 

MI, WI, and MN are Great Lakes states, and maybe Midwest. The Great Lakes identity goes about 40 miles south of southern Great Lakes, Michigan and Erie, to about the end of the watershed, including about the northern quarter of Indiana.

 

The glaciated region of the northern half of the Ohio River watershed is Midwest - Columbus, Indianapolis, central Illinois. The unglaciated regions, extending along the Ohio River into Appalachian Ohio, are Blue Dog, with Hills, Knobs, Hoosiers, and Little Egypt to the Ohio River. The Midwest does not extend past the Ohio River or into PA.

 

The Western Midwest is west of the Mississippi to either the start of the plains, or to include all of the Plains states: MN (Great Lake, North, Midwest), IA (Midwest), MO (Heartland/Ambivalent); KS, NE, SD, ND (all Midwest/Plains)

 

Oklahoma sometimes wonders if its in the Midwest, but it's much closer to Texas, the Plains, the South and South West. 

 

To outsiders, it's all the Midwest.

 

 

I've said this before on here and it may have changed since then, but ...

 

When I would watch the weather channel in the morning, while getting ready for work when the meteorologist would cover the Midwest's daily forecast they would always block my region (Cincinnati ... well, the rest of Ohio too) when showing how the fronts were coming in and moving out. I had to wait until they started covering the Northeast to see the radar map. This wasn't one instance, this was a common problem.