The Midwest

The Midwest is the broad agricultural and industrial heartland of the United States - twelve states spanning the north-central interior from Ohio to the Dakotas and Kansas. The Census Bureau divides it into the East North Central states around the Great Lakes and the West North Central states of the upper Great Plains. It is the nation's breadbasket and the historic core of its heavy industry.

Flat to gently rolling, scraped and enriched by Ice Age glaciers, the region holds some of the most fertile farmland on Earth, four of the five Great Lakes, and the upper reaches of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Its cities - Chicago above all - grew as hubs of grain, livestock, steel, and automobiles. Long called the Corn Belt, and for its industrial decline the Rust Belt, the Midwest is associated with a plainspoken, middle-American character.

• The Great Lakes
  The largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth related
• The Great Plains
  The vast grassland that rises to the Rockies related
• The Rust Belt
  The deindustrialized manufacturing belt of the Great Lakes related