Upper Midwest and Lower Midwest

[King of Kensington]

What is the dividing line, based on politics, religion, migration patterns, etc.?

ETA: Though perhaps the Plains states of the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska are a different subregion altogether.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Often times the Upper Midwest is kind of organized around Minnesota to include Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

The heart of the Upper Midwest, however, is the area along the Mississippi River from the Twin Cities southward to the Iowa/Illinois border.

Communities like Rochester, LaCrosse, Galena, Dubuque, and away from the river to Cedar Rapids and Madison and Eau Claire. 

Many of the small towns in this region have the distinctive "Upper Midwest" flavor...



There's a lot of Victorian era architecture since the area boomed during that time.

Galena, Illinois is one of the best examples.

[muon2]

Here's my analysis from this past summer.

The next of the Nine Nations is Breadbasket. I took the national boundary from Garreau's book and made adjustments to keep whole counties and metro areas together. The most significant deviation occurred putting Columbia, MO in Dixie which naturally led to excising all of MO's Little Dixie from Breadbasket. The division into states is designed to keep them between 3.1 and 12.4 million in population with an average of 6.2 million (1/50 of the US).

Breadbasket is between 6 and 7 states in population, but the open unpopulated expanses work better with 7 states. The Dakota-Kansa line follows the state line since that marks the southern end of heavy corn production in the plains. Ojibwe covers the lake region of the upper Midwest. The Sauk-Illini line follows the North-Midland dialect line except for the St Louis Corridor. Wichita links the Metroplex to Austin, and leaves Comanche as a land of cattle and oil.

States (and principal city) with 2010 populations in millions are:

Dakota (Omaha) 4.2
Ojibwe (Minneapolis) 5.5
Sauk (Madison, Des Moines) 5.1
Illini (St Louis) 5.8
Kansa (Kansas City) 4.3
Comanche (Oklahoma City) 5.3
Wichita (Dallas) 9.6

[Torie]

Mike, are the division lines between the colors based on type of crops or what? The line bisecting Iowa appears to be around where cattle become more common.

[muon2]

Mike, are the division lines between the colors based on type of crops or what? The line bisecting Iowa appears to be around where cattle become more common.

There were a number of factors I weighed including agriculture, dialect, religion and media market. The line through western MN and IA is in large part due to agricultural changes due to decreasing annual rainfall as one heads west. The arbitrary factor is that I wanted the colored areas to each be within a factor of two of the average population for a state, that is between 3.1 and 12.4 million people.