Wednesday Filler: Rugged Ohio

When most people think of Ohio they envision yet another dull tract of Midwestern land that is flatter than a pancake and nothing but farm after farm with shelter belts of trees marking the edges of properties.  An occasional city pops up to break the monotony, but it is yet another slightly impressive rust belt city that perhaps has seen better days.  Not so!

US 23 south near Chillicothe, Ohio.

What you see can fairly be called Appalachian.  Much of its flora and fauna are Appalachian species and the land itself is certainly more rugged than a mere pancake plain.  True, northwestern Ohio is among the flattest stretches of land on the planet, having been made so on the bottom of ancient and long passed Lake Maumee, but travel an hour south or east of Columbus and Cleveland and just a short trip east of Cincinnati and one encounters foothills of the great eastern wall.  I mean come on, does that look Midwestern up there to you?  I figured not.

Hamilton: Gateway to the East?

I have posted much on my eternal dispute with others in this part of the world regarding what should properly be considered the Midwest.  In my grand vision of defending the uniqueness of the Great Lakes region, I even went so far as to clearly mark borders for the true Midwest on a map.  Truth be told, regional transitions are a bit more blended than simple lines placed upon a globe slice; some parts of farm-country western Pennsylvania could pass for the Midwest if someone just woke up there one day without knowing where they were, just as parts of nearby Ohio could fool someone in reverse.

For that matter, looks can be deceiving, and they are not everything.  Western New York, especially the more level portions of land near Lake Ontario between Rochester and Buffalo, can look positively Indianan. Southern Ontario, especially the bits west of London, well, is grand farm country set on one of the flattest landscapes in the world.  The stretch between Chatham and Windsor might make one think they are on some farmed over portion of the great tallgrass prairies of Illinois or Iowa.  Only an hour or so of travel in any of these places, however, will make one think twice about such a presumption.  Great escarpments and foothills are often in view, previews of the often overlooked dramatic settings of New York, Washington, and other eastern cities.  Hamilton, Ontario, offers one such preview for the adventurer from western lands heading east:

No matter which angle you approach her from, Hamilton is descended into or framed by the dramatic cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment.  She is sandwiched between Lake Ontario and these ancient cliffs, and her electric blush over the night skies is the first point of departure from and otherwise open and rural skies of southwestern Ontario.  Toronto can easily be seen even on miserable days from her shores, and like the grand cosmopolitan city, she bears a diversity that can lay claim to nearly every nationality on the planet.  She was founded as a haven for loyalists escaping the American Revolution (albeit not really a going concern until after 1812), people who longed for a place of domestic settlement rather than interior expansion.  Hamilton's heritage is very much one of colonial foundations rather than a place of portage or transit to some imagined happiness deeper into the wilderness.

This was to be a great British North American city, one of the many cities founded for English Canadians to begin settling back down and regaining some feeling of what had been lost when they had to leave behind New York, Boston, etc.  London, Kitchener, even Brantford can feel a bit more like a Toledo, Saginaw, or an Ashtabula, but Hamilton tastes, both culturally and geographically, far more like a Syracuse or Albany.  It is in Hamilton that one can start to feel like the interior has been left behind, even as steel mills and freighters on the harbor are tell-tale signs that this is still a city of the Great Lakes rather than the "true east".

Lake Michigan's Southern Shore: North Meets West Meets East

Dramatic stands of Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus) and Jack Pine (Pinus Banksiana) grow among Big Bluestem (Andropogon Gerardii), Eastern Prickly Pear (Opuntia Humifusa), as well as a variety of trees common to the eastern forests, notably oaks, hickories, ashes, willows, and more.  In a low, watery basin sits a spahgnum bog topped with boreal species, mere yards away from an open prairie, in turn yards away from an ash swamp, which sits behind cool depressions in sand dunes which give rise to great pines.  This meeting place is the world of the Indiana dunes, a natural point of junction that has also served as a great crossroads for people traveling between various parts of the continent.

Sand, wind, and glaciers are responsible for bringing together a diverse community of plant life that serves to defy definition for the area.  My first sign that I was in an altogether different place was the presence of so many White Pine that just popped up out of nowhere.

Both shots taken at Indiana Dunes State Park near the end of State Park rd.

Now normally when one comes across such stands so far south it is because park agencies would have planted them to add exotic interest to the environment, an attempt to create something of a "north woods mystique" to state and local campgrounds.  Pines might have existed here naturally at one point, but most that are seen south of the Great Lakes are nostalgic reminders of a timer before the great lumber pillage of the nineteenth century.  Here, however, they remain as relics of the huge stands that once helped to build Chicago.  They rise from the sands in scenes expected hundreds of miles to the north in northern Michigan and Ontario.  Travel only a few miles south, over ancient moraines left at the edge of long vanished ice sheets, and the sand is left behind to be overtaken by rich prairie soils and more temperate forests.  This is, after all, Indiana, a place one would hardly expect the north to thrive in.

Yet thrive it does.

But the north here is not alone.  The dunes are first stabilized by dune grasses...

...and more southerly trees like Eastern Cottonwoods (Populus Deltoides) and Eastern Redcedar (Juniperus Virginiana).

Eventually they are joined by trees found in more mature forests as richer soils are built up in the ever changing world of our eastern plant succession forests.  In some lower places, water stands for a significant portion of the year, and we have moist forests of ash trees, Swamp Cottonwoods (Populus Heterophylla), and other water tolerant trees.

Eventually the lake gets far enough away that its power over the shifting sands declines along with the sand itself.  Departure from the drainage basin of Lake Michigan marks an ecological departure into the Midwest, where a new struggle of plant succession takes place, waged not between sand and plant but fire and plant.  A mosaic of prairie, savanna, and forest stretches in all directions but north from atop the Valparaiso Moraine.  Looking north instead shows us what we have just seen, a meeting of north, east, and west.  These days humans mimic this corridor along our highways 20, 94, and various railroads.  Come by tomorrow for a look at the human presence in Indiana's "southern shores".

Another Savanna Post, or What Did We Have and What Have We Done With It?

And yet again another exciting post from Jim McCormac over at Ohio Birds and Biodiversity.

http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2012/07/pearl-king-savanna.html

His post is a look at the Pearl King Savanna, one of last remaining oak savannas in Ohio.  In all honesty though, some of its grass cover is extensive enough to consider it as something of a prairie; a few of his excellent photographs reveal that the horizon is quite distant.  Perhaps this is because of the surrounding farmland.  Though this adjacent agricultural space is very much a landscape of our creation, it is important to remember that it is there because the settlers who poured into the region found such open and "barren" land an attractive place to start plowing and planting.  What could be more pleasant to an immigrant farmer than land that nature has already cleared, and left rich soils to enjoy as well?  The Ohio Valley and Great Lakes were settled relatively fast not only because they had the one thing those living east of the Appalachians craved the most, space, but also because the open landscape only added to the concept.

This had me wondering just how much of the Nearwest and even parts of the interior eastern seaboard used to have savannas and prairies.  Wildfire regimes, both historical and conjectured modern, seem to indicate that they could have been very widespread.  These days, we still have many pine barrens from Long Island southward into southern Florida which have probably survived or renewed themselves because of undesirable soils and/or changing employment patterns.  If the climate and natural processes could support "barrens" in coastal regions, surely they could do they same where they were not entirely different back in the interior valleys of the Appalachians and the lakeplains of Lake Ontario and Erie.  Buffalo, for instance, once thrived in the valleys of Virginia and, you guessed it, the area around Buffalo, NY.  The early colonists and settlers, both French and English, reported the majestic herds in such areas.  They were less thorough in reporting about the landscapes they were found in, except where they found towering forests.

Perhaps this was because nature provided inspiration when the migrants found roadblocks such as mountains and great rivers and lakes.  The scale of the continent's unspoiled lands inspired whole schools of painting that highlighted such expanses, particularly in the work of the Hudson River School.  Such lands also provided inspiration for the birth of the natural romantics like Thoreau and Emerson, and the conservation movement which they spawned.  In contrast, however, little fuss was made about lands that were either convenient, like prairies and savannas, or roadblocks that did not serve to inspire (at least in that era) such as swamps, dry plains, and deserts.  The most striking historical portraits we have of such desires would be in  our conserved lands.  With the exception of swamps set aside for bird refuges, most of the early saved lands were mountains and dramatic valleys.  The Everglades, again in contrast, were viewed as undesirable (despite being one of the most amazing bird habitats in the entire world), and were even being targeted for drainage and destruction by the same people that were promoting conservation elsewhere!

There we have it.  A mountain or large lake could not be moved out of the way, and served as a reminder of the forces that were greater than humanity that could not be tamed.  A grassland?  Well, that would be something more akin to a field that nature had left wild and was just begging to have cultivated for more "useful purposes".  A swamp?  Yuck!  Why would the settlers make a mention out of something they could instead just transform into a monument of expanding civilization, a monument which would leave a much better record and legacy of who they were and why they came there?  Nature was just starting to become appreciated for its own sake back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and well over a century would go by wherein civilization was still hailed as the primary triumph of man's dominion over creation.

What did we have?  What have we done with it?  Thankfully, we have people like Jim to show us a glimpse of an answer to these questions.  That in mind, let's keep exploring!

On the Concept of Native Gardening, Part One.

One of the great ways to experience some of what one's own backyard has to offer is to brighten up said backyard with some local flora.  This is known in landscaping and gardening circles as working with natives, that is to say flowers, herbaceous plants, shrubs, trees, cacti, and even grasses which are indigenous to the local area.  Ever since I made American Voyages, I wanted to post about the joys and benefits of native gardening, but as I survey my own domain, I find that I happen to like not-so-local things in the yard as much as the next person.  Instead of trying to create an oak-savanna or a beech-maple forest (both are found in remnants within the same few square miles around here), the latter of which might be frowned upon in our suburban fantasy world of golf-course trim lawns, I have some roses, azaleas, morning-glories, and heck, even a Bald Cypress growing.  Last night I even found a hardy cultivar of the lovely evergreen Southern Magnolia (Magnolia Grandiflora) for sale, adapted for outdoor planting in lower Michigan.  At this point, staring at the native elements in the lawn, a slight grimace came over my face as they reminded me how they were surrounded by exotics, and I realized my eco-hypocrisy.  

My horticultural sins put to light then, what types of things can we plant, what do they qualify as, and what are their benefits and/or drawbacks?

Native Plants.

Native plants, as noted, are things that are indigenous to the local ecosystem.  The term indigenous can be difficult to define, especially when we consider time parameters as one criterion.  Something that seems to belong to a place these days might have only found their way there within a few thousand years or so, true.  The global climate does change without human assistance over gradual periods of time, barring a natural disaster of planetary scale (such as a big old space rock hitting us).  Technically speaking, under a vast scale, things like moose and humans are not indigenous to North America because they migrated here over the Bering Land Bridge during the last ice age.  That said, we can pretty much claim that both Bullwinkle and our native peoples are, well, native, as both person and moose naturally found their way here, the moose no doubt being chased by a band of hunters across the dry Bering, neither knowing what they were getting into.  Examples of native plants would be Live Oaks (Quercus Virginiana) in Florida or Black Spruce (Picea Mariana) in Ontario.  Having a native plant in your landscape and garden is almost always a good thing, though this depends on the condition in which the plant is expected to grow.  While a fern might be native to one's area, planting it in full sun requires it to get watered really frequently, which is an inefficient use of water.  This said, here we have two sub-categories of native plants:

Native Plants in and out of Habitat.  

The fern example stands out well, but flowers work even better.  In the yard I have a single Purple Coneflower (Echinacea Purpurea, which has to be one of the most poetic scientific names out there), which is indeed native to Michigan and can be found in savannas and prairies in the state.  Right beside it I have a Wild Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis), which is native to Michigan and grows on the margins of forests and along similar clearings like river banks (and is also the flower on the blog header).  In the foreground is a sprouting Rough Blazing-Star (Liatris Aspera), native to Michigan, and another prairie and savanna species.  They are all planted beneath a charming Northern Pin Oak (trunk pictured, Quercus Ellipsoidalis), which just so happens to have an isolated native population here in Livingston and neighboring counties.  

Yes, I plant flowers directly into the lawn.

Now the coneflower is not extremely out of place here (though it does not have a record of being native to this exact county, but does right next door, which I dispute, which means I need to hunt some down).  The field across from the subdivision actually is reverting to type into a savanna, and remnants can be found across the main roads adjacent to this field.  The columbine is sort of out place, but as the savanna is surrounded by forests, not terribly so either.  The blazing star is about at home as the coneflower, perhaps more so because they definitely occur in the area, and less so because they like a little bit moister of a setting than the local prairie/savanna.  The oak, though planted by developers solely as a pretty landscape thing, is right at home.  All of these being together naturally, however, is improbable.  Sure, the yard could have once been one of the edges of the savanna grading into the forest and a columbine could be next to a coneflower as such, but... well in any event I suppose this is being overly technical.  The point is, some of these are slightly out of habitat, and some might be in habitat, minus being grown in a lawn of non-native grass.  

How is this good?   Well, I have planted things that belong here, more or less.  Insects get a chance to pollinate something that would otherwise not exist in a developed area, and a semblance of the native ecosystem is restored, albeit by introduction, native but introduced.  The butterflies in the yard are plentiful and the whole scene is thus rather idyllic.  How is this bad?  Well, it happens to be a bit fake, but nature will not complain even if a botanical purist might.  On that note, it would be a bit improper if this were not a lawn  but a prairie remnant trying to be rejuvenated.  In any case, this is the best I can do at making a nice little reminder of what was here without getting a citation for growing a prairie instead of a lawn, which in my opinion is sad, but people like their lawns.  

Anyway, in the same vein, another good example of an introduced native, the Eastern Redbud (Cercis Canadensis).  I apologize for the poor lighting quality of the image, but I only recently learned about the magic of light control on cameras.  

Taken at St. John's golf course in Plymouth, MI.

Redbuds are indeed native to southern Michigan and are often a very striking part of our moister forests.  They are so lovely that they tend to get planted a whole heck of a lot.  They serve as an excellent example of "good plants" we see in our landscapes that would not have been here without human intervention, at least not in quantity, but are not entirely foreign elements of the local area, just the particular ecosystem in which they have been introduced.  This means they might not have popped up here by themselves, but they also blend rather well with the local environment.  Many plants reproduce by seed, and often the seed is carried to new places by animals, animals which sometimes also create new ideal conditions for the plant to flourish (browsing, den and nest creation, etc.).  You know what?  A guy finding a nice iris in a nearby marsh then planting it in his garden is sort of doing the same thing, albeit for aesthetics rather than as a matter of survival.  

So why all the fuss about what belongs and what does not?  Find out in two days and four days for parts two and three of this rant, as well as tomorrow when I do a little Q and A.

Scenes of Southeastern Michigan: Rich Diversity

I find myself a bit busy today, so enjoy these pictures I took this morning while hunting down Garlic Mustard.  All pictures were taken at Island Lake State Recreation Area, near Brighton, Michigan.  These were all taken within a few hundred yards of one another, and all are natural habitats in roughly virgin condition, from forest to oak savanna.  This illustrates how diverse this part of the continent is, with multiple ecological zones growing in close proximity to one another as if they were a mosaic.  The last picture is a shot of the Huron River, which drains a significant part of southeastern Michigan.  

The Eastern Prairies

When a cross section of North America is pictured, starting at one ocean and travelling the breadth of the land to another, common imagination usually orders ecosystems into nice compartments of "what belongs here".  Starting, say, in Virginia along the Atlantic coast, we have southern forests of cypress trees and pines, moving into mixed-forests and maybe spruces and pines up on the higher parts of the Appalachians.  These forests continue, almost uninterrupted and dense until they part beyond the Mississippi river and open into vast grasslands, which in turn give way to mountains, deserts, and finally the verdant Pacific shores.  The truth of the matter is, this is a very inaccurate portrait.  Prairies once existed in parts of interior Virginia and western New York, forests once followed the rivers that drained the plains, and the pre-settlement map probably looked more like a mosaic than a well-ordered set of parallel vegetation zones.

Vast grasslands that once covered many parts of interior North America often existed in isolated patches between "solid forest".  They did so for different reasons, most often because the soil was not otherwise suited to certain types of forest, and because fires, both natural and set by native peoples, would clear out saplings often enough to let the grasses maintain a hold on the landscape.  The frontier between forest and grassland was constantly shifting, as two different worlds were locked in competition for dominance.  Most often, the interface between forest and grassland was convoluted and the two habitats engaged in a dance wherein a little grass and a little bit of tree could be found well within each other.  Dependable rains would usually keep things from being too bone dry to spark regular fires the further east one would go, but in the lands surrounding the eastern Great Lakes, a ton of glacial sand deposits meant that some otherwise moist lands would provide for the drier conditions to support grasslands, or partial grasslands.  Moderately high rainfall would still provide for certain trees that could take well-drained conditions to remain among the tallgrass, notably oaks, junipers, and pines.  "Eastern prairies" would thus be better termed savannas.

Much of these grasslands have gone, however.  The Nearwest has been under steady development and cultivation since the end of the War of 1812, and even where the land has not been completely harnessed, land management and fire suppression has turned most "wild" land into some pretty dense woodland.  Fortunately, western Lake Erie has several notable examples of remaining savannas, especially in the areas around Toledo and Windsor.  I intend to document these here, preserve by preserve.  In the meantime, below are three fine examples of what an oak savanna looks like.  As you can see, the trees are still as tall as one would expect them to be in the well-watered east, and while the tallgrass is impressive, this is hardly what one would call the open range.  Still, it is a lovely and unique ecosystem, and a place of significant ecological diversity.

These particular images were captured at the Kitty Todd Nature Preserve just outside of Toledo.  The preserve is often mistaken for an abandoned field, which is understandable, as most of the surrounding land does have active farms on it, rather than contrasting forests which once would have made this sort of grassland stand out.

Wednesday Filler: Maple Saplings!

In the Nearwest, the overnight lows are moving out of the freezing temperatures, which means the forests will soon regenerate and send up new saplings.

Carpets of Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) will soon cover the forest floor, waiting for the canopy to open up when a tree above reaches its end.

Wednesday Filler: The Maumee River

After a few posts of apologetic regionalism, it's time for something more tranquil and focused on nature.  Here we have the Maumee River, just outside of Toledo, Ohio.

The Maumee is quite wide for being such a short river with relatively few tributaries.  Despite its short length, however, the river drains the largest watershed that empties into the Great Lakes.

The Maumee was an important corridor for migration and trade amongst native peoples and early settlers.  The river was one of the routes between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, via a portage around Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to the head of the Wabash River, which was later replaced by the Wabash and Erie Canal.  Until the active frontier focused more on the Chicago portage, the Maumee was greatly desired by everyone seeking to lay a claim to the area, leading to conflicts between the British and Americans in the late 1700's and during the War of 1812.  Later on, Toledo became the great trophy over which Michigan and Ohio came pretty close to spilling blood.  The river today is much quieter, though very developed.  The banks retain some natural scenery in the many parks scattered along them, which include extensive marshlands, ash-cottonwood forests, and even some halfway decent beaches.

Defining the Not-Midwest: Politics and Bias

"It seems that everywhere in the USA is the mid-west or west, and how far west of the Atlantic ocean you actually live determines how much of the eastern side of the country you consider to be posers and liars. For example, a poet in Nevada made fun of me for living in Texas, because it isn't the real west. We in Texas make fun of Ohio and Indiana for saying they're in the west." -A friend from Wichita Falls.

Back in 1995 when Oklahoma City endured a domestic terrorist attack, many different media outlets paraded around a lot of different words.  One of these words was "heartland", a term used to describe what politicians and others have long felt to be the core of American society.  The heartland, in this sense, is a place of a strong moral compass, hard-working communities, and simple people that go to church, watch their neighbor's homes while they are away, and never ask for more than they are willing to give, that sort of thing.  While New York and Los Angeles have lost their ways, the right proclaims, the heartland is a place where you can still find all that is good and true of America.  Well, so they say, and yes, career politicians like to talk, don't they?  So where is the heartland?  Pretty much anywhere outside of the east and west coast, oh, and the Mexican part of Texas, oh, and the larger industrial cities, oh, and... you get the picture, and you can probably see where I am going, but first, read on.

Now, is there anything wrong with being a Caucasian, Republican-voting, evangelical Protestant, country-music listening farmer from Davenport, Iowa?  Not at all, no more so than being a Hispanic, Democrat-voting, Catholic, pop-music listening factory worker from Rochester, NY.  The "heartland", in fact, is a pretty nice place.  Attitudes are a bit more relaxed, the pace is hectic only when it needs to be, and yes, you can pretty much see one of the many cores of traditional American culture.  Sadly, most people who bring up the term heartland want to use this sort of atmosphere and concept as a weapon, missing the point that the heartland truly consists of many great elements in the mosaic that is the United States.  Let's take a tour of the United States, leading out to the heartland, wherever that really is.  Let's start in the melting pot of New York City.  It's a great place!  It's full of life, and a rich depository of so many different cultures that actually do manage to not only assimilate, but add into the essence of "America".  At the same time, it can also be extremely insular.  Being from New Jersey, New England, or even the rest of New York state can seem backwards to New Yorkers, even in childish ways (e.g. why are your freeway exits miles apart, why is there no Starbucks in your town, how come you don't drive a hybrid, and why is that car a Ford?!).

Let's move up and down the coast, from say Boston down to northern Virginia, and take in the Hudson river valley as well.  You are the real east, and anything past the first line of hills in the Appalachians is the frontier (and here I figured Daniel Boone opened up the Cumberland Gap back in 1775).  I know people from Albany who think that Buffalo is in the Midwest, and that Rochester is, at most, the front door of the great eastern manor house.  So we see a trend developing thus far, and it is mainly based on skewed notions of cultural superiority.  You see, "east" means life, development, class.  Ah... now look at those terms.  Development, you say?  Surely that means the presence of advanced commercial and civil infrastructure?  That's part of it.  The other part is, well, consideration of the presence of what those on the left consider to be progressive social institutions, meaning everything from support-groups, safety nets for the impoverished, embracing of cultural diversity rather than simple tolerance, etc.

Now this next part might be a bit controversial and dangerous to admit, and don't worry, leftists, I will get to the rightists as well.  Those lands west of, well, the east coast, those are mainly red states, and where they are not, they are apparently economic and social embarrassments in comparison to the shining capitals of prosperity and progress of the land of the sunrise.  Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and so on?  Rural, lower-income, and tending towards conservatism.  The places that seem to vote blue?  Detroit, Cleveland, Gary, Buffalo, Flint, Toledo?  Who would want to live there, those places are wastelands created by the mistaken concept that "buy and produce American" can get you anywhere, because everyone knows foreign trade is where vitality is best sustained.  Ah, things are looking a bit more ugly now, no?  The bias against the interior looks a bit less political, and a bit more based on class and economic discrimination, the very thing the left claims to loath.  The shining cities of glowing lights and international trendiness looks down on the interior which helps to support foreign trade.  Now remember this statement, I will call upon it soon.

Let's go further inland, to the heartland, and say to Michigan itself.  Now yes, Michigan is a blue state, but its record for voting Democrat mostly stems from the concerns of the working class rather than liberal social agendas about cultural freedom or even, surprisingly, a desire to promote welfare and safety nets.  Here, the raw issues are about employment, affordability of health care and housing, and the living wage movement.  Conservative social agendas are an election year issue here as well, though.  As such, the people here disdain any sort of link to the northeast, and the more conservative types like to be associated with the Midwest.  Quite frankly, the people in the northeast like to stuff them off in that category too, including the Federal Census Bureau.  So here we start to see that the concept of "Midwest" is one of social and political weaponry.   Being a part of the Midwest is either really good if you are rightist, or really bad if you are leftist.    Entire parts of the country get left out of their ideal vision of America just because they don't agree eye to eye on some issues (and yes, by no means do I mean to the trivialize the issues, even while I advocate for some semblance of democracy to fight back against extreme partisan interest groups).  The funny thing is, the people further west feel the same way about the Nearwest that the Easterners do; "you are not a real part of us", unless of course, it is an election year.  So, enough of this anti-political political rant, you are probably requesting.  How does this have anything to do specifically with Michigan, northern Ohio, etc. not being a part of the Midwest?

Well, aside from all the historical details of cultural makeup I have given already in various posts (look for the label Midwest in the right hand column menu if you need to catch up), the Nearwest is just wired differently from other regions in the country.  For one, we are impacted a great deal by Canadian economic movements as much as we are from the rest of the country.  Autos, industrial materials, food, and even energy are traded back and forth across the Niagara, Detroit, and St. Clair rivers, far more so than most people know.  Simply put, it's where our transportation corridors have always linked to strongly.  From there, Detroit connects to Chicago and Buffalo to New York, and thus the traffic between the United States and its largest trading partner (China is still second, look it up in various sources) still goes through the Nearwest.  This, of course, means that the region has a unique role as an economic corridor that both heavily depends on domestic and foreign economic vitality at the same time.  Cities like Los Angeles and New York and their environs are great gateways between the United States and the world.  Cities like Chicago and Denver and their environs are great gateways between different parts of the United States.  Cities like Detroit and Buffalo and their environs are BOTH.  As such, the political concerns of these areas tend to focus on this concept.  They have to.  That said, no state is an island.

The Nearwest is thus considered to be the Midwest by so many people because of political desire, even while the political mindset of the region is "Rustbelt bi-national" rather than interior or coastal.  The region either gets absorbed or cast aside by those interests, and in doing so, it tends to mostly just get ignored, forgotten, or treated as an embarrassment by everywhere except itself and optimistic neighbor southern Ontario.  One day, perhaps, the region will rise again and be noticed not as a place that serves as a chip on the table in the poker game between the shores and the interior, but as a legitimate player in its own right, every bit as impressive as Mr. East Coast, Mr. Midwest, or any of the other Mr. regions out there.  The Nearwest has its own history, its own climate, its own environment, and definitely its own political voice, just like the other great parts of this nation and continent.  Come and discover it, for the Nearwest is a region of its own, not a tool in political jargon.

Defining the Not-Midwest: Geography

Look at the United States.

As you can see, the Midwest is aptly named because it is halfway out there to the western part of the continent.  It sits roughly in the middle of things, even sitting in a time zone (the eastern limit of which is marked by the pale blue line) that is aptly called the central time zone.  The rivers (purple) which flow through it nearly all drain to the Gulf of Mexico, in one spectacular point of land known as the Mississippi delta.  The landscape looks slightly less green than stretches further east do, and in the western edge of the region, things brown out quite a bit as the trees get far and few between.

Now, look at our friends Michigan, northern Ohio, northwest Pennsylvania, western New York, and yes, even southern Ontario.  These areas fall into the eastern timezone, albeit at the middle and western end.  The rivers (pale blue spray on the Lakes and St. Lawrence river) of these areas drain to the Atlantic Ocean through the wonderful inland seas that are the Great Lakes. Things look much greener (though parts of Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario do look a bit more farmed over, to be honest).  And for crying out loud, Detroit is at the same longitude as western South Carolina.  Even the western parts of the state are still due north of the Florida panhandle.  To envision Cleveland being much more western than Erie is simply mind-boggling in the regards of sheer proximity.  Old divisions between north and south at least acknowledged the existence of "border states" both culturally and physically.  Hence, again, the term "Nearwest" is best applied to these areas.

Justification for such a term here is certainly given both in terms of actual location and cultural/commercial links between east and Midwest.  Those rivers do more than just drain water; they have been determining the market for cities such as Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and even distant Gary and Milwaukee for over two centuries now (Chicago is a different animal, more of a bridge between, well, everything).  They have sent their goods either to Canada or down the St. Lawrence seaway (and formerly the Erie Canal) to foreign markets.  In contrast, goods from the Midwest have made their way to the port of New Orleans and destinations beyond.  The barges of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers also carry different cargo from their Lake freighter counterparts; grains and produce float down towards the Gulf, while everything from autos to iron ore load up the Lakers destined for the Atlantic.  If the map is not evidence enough of the distinct region that the Nearwest forms, the markets that exist because of the conditions of the map are there to support the theory that we have a separate region on our hands.  Anyway, enough of the bare bones of physical geography, let's take a look at environmental geography.

Much of the Midwest is characterized by its dominance of farmland, grid-patterned cities and orderly plots of land, and in general its heavy development.  Much of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, and parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and of course the neighboring plains states used to be quite open.  While a settler standing in the middle of Indiana or Illinois would probably still be able to see trees around, there was a lot more sky and grass than had been encountered down in Kentucky and points eastward.  Things would also seem very flat.  This is not to say hills do not exist in these states, but for the most part, the terrain is a rather level affair.  Much of the original landscape is now gone, replaced by nearly endless agricultural development that took advantage of the rich, deep soils of these areas.  Still, the notable absence of extensive forests is because the farms were simply developing land that was rather open to begin with.

A section of restored tallgrass prairie along I-55, and a scene typical of central Illinois.  There are trees here, but there is also natural open space.

Now, this is not to say that Michigan, northern Ohio, and southern Ontario have no farms.  Indeed, there is a lot of corn grown here.  Here and there, though, instead of patches of woodland, are remnants of some truly amazing forests.  While there are definitely tall trees in Illinois and Indiana, the difference between these regions lies in the elements of the forests.  For one, unless they have been planted, pines and spruce are going to be far and few between in the former tallgrass regions.  There are exceptions to this rule, even as there are patches of prairie in Michigan and Ontario, but by and large a notable contrast will be seen by even the most casual of observers.  Illinois and Indiana have lots of oaks, hickories, elms, and shrubs.  Michigan, Ohio, and points east have maples, beeches, pines, and towering trees of all sorts.

Joy road, near the western limits of Canton, Michigan, a rare instance of a natural landscape in Wayne county.  Here we have a typical maple-beech forest.

As you can see, the dominant landscapes of the two different regions are substantially different.  Again, there are exceptions to the rule in these places, but by and large, the Nearwest has a different flavor from the true Midwest, and this is without bringing the Great Lakes themselves into the debate.  Still need convincing?  Well, come by for the last post in this series of defining the Not-Midwest as we explore the wonderful world of politics, where we find the concept of "Midwest" was probably born.

Defining the Not-Midwest: Climate

The interior lowlands of the United States are characterized by a largely humid continental climate.  This means that the vast landmass of North America produces winters in the region that are cold, sometimes downright frigid, and a bit on the drier side.  At the same time, the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps the most powerful humidity factory in the world, aside from the South China Sea, sends north a lot of hot, extremely humid air.  This produces not only the sweltering summers of the region, but also a conflicting air mass, that, when colliding with the continental air masses, spawns some of the most violent non-oceanic storms in the world.  While these two contenders are normally the main event in weather showdowns in everything east of the Rockies, there are alternative influences that sit on the sidelines ready for the tag to get into the action.  The greatest of these, at least in the northeastern United States and parts of Ontario and Quebec, would be the Great Lakes.

The lakes are huge, hundreds of feet deep, and as such rarely freeze over in the winter.  Lake Superior and Lake Michigan have never reported total ice coverage, though Michigan came close in the late seventies.  Open water has a tendency to moderate air masses that pass over them, even if the water is on the colder side.  For Michigan, northern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania, southern Ontario, and western New York (see a theme here yet?), this gives such places air conditioning in the summer, and longer growing seasons as well as moderation of arctic air masses in the winter.  Also of note in the winter, the areas within sixty miles or so of open water can see massive amounts of snow thrown upon them, called lake effect snow.  Rainfall totals are higher here than in other parts of the interior, often by as much as 10 inches per annum.  In terms of normal interior weather, these areas largely see quite different effects than much of the rest of the land does.  Tornadoes are possible in Michigan, Ontario, and northern Ohio, but they are often much smaller in raw power than the terrors that can strike places like Joplin and St. Louis.  Storms, waves of extreme temperature, even relative sunshine, they all get muted by the Lakes.  Sometimes it even seems as if air masses tend to stick within state lines.  Just look at Wisconsin and Michigan here!

Or for those curious about how this works in the winter, take a look at this map:

Obviously Ohio is behind an arcing front, and is thus colder than Indiana, but Michigan?  Not so much.  Yes, Lake Michigan is quite the attractive piece of water.  The Lakes influence the temperatures of these lands enough to give places like the Grand Traverse area of Michigan and the Niagara frontier of New York and Ontario a growing season comparable to what can be found in Kentucky or New Jersey.  If this sounds like a stretch, one need merely venture out among the extensive orchards and vines of these otherwise northerly latitudes.  Niagara-on-the-Lake, in fact, actually has a climate that supports several species of cold-hardy palms.  The peak fall foliage times is often late October and early November.  Best of all, spring blossoms last much longer.

So, what does this mean for the Midwest and Not-Midwest besides what will fall from the sky and how warm things will be?  Come by next post to see what defines the differences between these regions in terms of geography.

Defining the Not-Midwest: Settlement Patterns

"You know, I like Buffalo.  It's not quite northeast, not quite midwest, but its own sort of thing."
-Anonymous friend from Albany.

In recent years, the citizens of West Virginia have been getting uppity.  No longer content to be labeled anything along the lines of "Appalachian" or "borderline southern", the residents have desired to be counted in the census as, wait for this, midwesterners and southerners.  In the north, particularly in the panhandle, the cultural essence of the state shares much in common with the neighboring parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland, right down to local accents and dialects, and even restaurants and common retail outlets.  For whatever reason, and the next few posts will be about theorizing why this is the case, they have instead opted to be considered midwestern, which they think Ohio pretty much is.  Now, Ohio at least has been called this before.  So?  What's the problem?

Well, West Virginia is, uh, due north of the Carolinas, and south of Pennsylvania and New York.  It lies roughly half way into the eastern timezone.  It was a part of Virginia until the Civil War.  Need I go on?  Apparently I do, because it seems that inclusion in the midwest is one of the most desirable things out at the current time; heartland affiliation is passionately sought after by conservatives claiming to be American traditionalists.  That's right.  I brought politics into this.  Why?  Because they are screwing with geography and don't need to!  For the next few days, I am going to go in depth as to what I think the Midwest consists of, and to be up front and honest, I am excluding Michigan, a good third of Ohio, and most assuredly, I am excluding anything to their east.  Now, why?  Well, I am not trying to do this because I dislike the right, the left, or anything called the heartland.  I am trying to do this because I think there is more regional diversity to this country than often gets recognized.  I am doing this because history and geography deserve to be more than just political wands and magic spells.  I am doing this because I LOVE Michigan, northern Ohio, southern Ontario (and look, I just attacked a boundary), and western New York.  I think these places are unique areas that deserve more than being ignored by greater political camps who only use them to their advantage.  East coasters, midwesterners, you have great lands!  East coasters, midwesterners, don't pass these ones off as more of what you are, and come visit us!  Well, with that out of the way...

Let's start off the series with (and note, I am not using the word "lesson" here) a look into Euro-American settlement of the lands beyond the Appalachian crest.

I realize that this is a mess of map, and that some of the colors look alike.  Let's code it down, then, starting with teal.  Teal, in the valleys west of the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia, is essentially where the cradle of western expansion lies.  It was from these valleys that the already rustic pioneer population made tracks towards Kentucky, following men such as Daniel Boone through Cumberland Gap, which is the red dot between the two states.  Following, and often with the initial Virginians, would be immigrants from Pennsylvania, including many Germans and other European immigrants who had already been settling there for about 70 years.  The expansion from Cumberland Gap started in 1775, and took off almost overnight.  By 1792, enough people had settled in Kentucky for it to become the first state west of the eastern seaboard.  By 1812, as you can see from the lighter blue on the map, the Kentuckians had spread out along the waterways of the Ohio, Tennessee, Scioto, Miami, Wabash, and finally Mississippi-Missouri rivers.  Today, the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois bear a culture and attitude that was handed down to them by these pioneers.  They are in many ways the first midwesterners, and together with later immigrants who arrived in Chicago and from the National Road, mingled with them, and are the modern midwesterners.

As you can see, however, they did not make it all the way north.  From the upper Potomac and historic core of Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, a great immigrant port, we have those brown arrows and lines, which consisted of migrants of what have since been referred to as the "midlanders".  With the exception of the Mormons and some religious groups from New England, most of the minority Christian religious groups settled this region, and often started here as well.  Their accents and dialects of American English are markedly different from the Virginians and Kentuckians, without much of a drawl of the south, or the nasal characteristics of the north.  The people of this region that did end up constantly pressing west took the valley road down to Virginia and mixed in with the groups in the south that moved past the Cumberland Gap.  Those that stayed often slowly moved into the interior of the Appalachians and Allegheny Plateau.  They followed the valleys and ridges, often along rivers such as the Delaware and Susquehanna.  Others cut further west on the Potomac and raced ahead of the National Road that began construction in 1811.  They settled in places like Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Cumberland, Altoona, and into Ohio.  From around Columbus and eastward, they mingled with the Kentucky crowd, and founded cities like Indianapolis and Vandalia.  In the parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and a tiny bit of the southern tier of New York, they remained a more distinct culture and maintained their dialect and accents.  These regions are also dominated by a staid adherence to colonial architecture, almost as if Philadelphia extended out with the migrants.

Further north still was another great gateway of American expansion, New York City.  From here we see a dark blue stream emerge, with migration that began during the American revolution, and that really got underway after the construction of the Erie Canal.  Unlike the wilderness pioneers of the Cumberland route, or the small town and farm mentality of the National Road expansion, these settlers would be largely urban, extremely diverse, and continue as a stream of immigration well into the 1890s.  Here the American and German majorities would be joined by large groups of Irish, Italian, and Polish settlers.  In the first half of their colonization, and this is key now, they would settle in the areas around Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, and would pretty much settle most of interior New York, lakeshore Pennsylvania and Ohio, and nearly all of the lower peninsula of Michigan.  Starting with waves of Irish immigrants who started coming to the United States (instead of formerly to just Canada) in the 1840's, the second half of this migration found European immigrants, notably those listed above, also coming to these areas.  More and more, however, the great destination became the interior gateway of Chicago, wherein they settled and spread out across the west to help form part of the modern midwestern culture.  Again, however, such a mixing did not largely happen in Michigan, northern Ohio, and so on.  These areas are to this day largely devoid of Kentuckian influence.

Of particular note are two sub-groups that took part in the early stages of this migration.  The bright yellow stands out a bit, in more ways than one.  As you can see, it starts in Connecticut and joins the Erie Canal route, but then promptly leaves the lakeside migrant routes in northeastern Ohio.  You see, back when the 13 colonies were chartered, they tended to have no western boundary and theoretically shot all the way to the Pacific.  The shore colonies from Delaware northwards were hemmed in by their western neighbors in this regard, but a few of them claimed land beyond the Appalachian frontier anyway.  Connecticut claimed the north shore of Ohio, and until 1800, when it gave up its claim, sent its emigrants to the area.  The "northwestern reserve", to this day, feels like a little bit of New England, with much of the architecture and city plans a spot on match for those back home in the "Constitution state".  The salmon arrows (sorry, I realize salmon looks almost like pink, I have a limited color selection to choose from) that extend from Albany and Buffalo towards Canada are the routes taken by the loyalists of the northeast as part of their exodus from the United States.  Much of southern and eastern Ontario, and a good portion of the land around Montreal, contains the descendants of these people.  Of course, they were not fortunate in having a canal to escape on.  By 1812, they had been joined by Americans taking the water level route through New York, and they with other immigrant groups, mainly from the British Isles and some from Germany, formed the cultural area that has since become southern Ontario.  The region, of course, has many similarities with Michigan and many more with western New York, with the key difference being obvious.

Finally, we have the pink lines representing French colonization.  The French were very compact in their colonization process, probably because they were largely frontiersmen looking to trade and hunt with the native peoples.  Their path of settlement is quite linear compared to the other migrant pathways, and they usually stuck quite densely to the waterways, especially along the St. Lawrence and Detroit rivers.  Much of their presence in the interior of the continent outside of Canada is now largely in names of cities,counties, and rivers, with the exception of places such as northern Maine, the eastern upper peninsula of Michigan, the metro-Detroit area (where many family names are still French), and scattered locales such as Vincennes, Indiana.  Though largely an evaporated influence, the French-Canadian-American presence still adds something unique to parts of the interior, notably southeastern Michigan.

So how do we know how much this has impacted the land, aside from romanticizing the effect immigration has had on this country largely considered to be a melting-pot in which immigrants are absorbed into the American cultural machine?  Well, we could stop to remember that absorb is perhaps a less effective word in describing the evolution of a nation that was essentially added to by all these peoples.  We drink far more coffee than tea, spaghetti is a common place dinner, more perogis are consumed here than anywhere else on earth outside of Poland, and Lutherans and Catholics far out populate Episcopalians.  That said, Lutherans are going to be a lot more common west of Lake Michigan than east of it, perogis are common menu items in Detroit and Buffalo, and you will be hard pressed to find a Tim Horton's in the United States outside of western New York, northern Ohio, or Michigan.  Interesting cultural coincidences, no?  Still skeptical?  Well, come back for the next few days as we delve into this a bit deeper.  You can also check out this interesting linguistic map in the meantime.

Now, I am sure my cultural familiarity with the places and peoples mentioned will be contested, but I can at least be counted on to be an authority on things Michigan, western New York, and Ontario, having lived most of my life in one of these three places.  Come by tomorrow to read more of why I think the Lakes/Nearwest region is unique, and of course, check out this earlier post that explains what I think is unique and special about the actual Midwest.  As always, feel free to leave comments, even and especially if you want to tear me apart on this.  My blog is not a place for totalitarian academic speeches, it is a place where perspectives are shared.

Memories of a Michigan Fall

Nothing too elaborate today, just a little reminiscing of a more accurate and pleasant season.  This winter has been quite unimpressive.  Yes, I know, commutes are easier without weather problems related to snow and such, but the effect on the spirit is somewhat mean.  40-50 degrees in January in south-east Michigan?  No thanks.  Snow is lovely, and lukewarm temperatures with mud and dull skies are only lovely as a promise of flowers and frog mating calls around the corner.

Anyway, these are scenes around Green Oak township, Michigan, in the "Midwest".  Nearly everything you see belongs there naturally; Michigan remains rather unspoiled for a state of its population.

What is the Midwest?

Growing up in Canada, certain designations given to regions, cities, and peoples seemed inappropriate to me when I moved down to the States and was suddenly inundated with a new world view regarding the way things are to be properly labelled.  Southern Ontario and the corridor from Windsor to Quebec had always felt like an equivalent to the eastern United States, even the corridor paralleled it geographically more than 300 miles inland.  Needless to say, I was a bit puzzled when people referred to Detroit and even Cleveland as "Midwest".  For one, despite what people may wish, Michigan on the whole shares more of a political affinity to interior New York and Pennsylvania than it does with Iowa or Illinois.  We largely have the same regional dialect of American English here as they do in Buffalo or Altoona, and even our quintessentially "Midwestern" German immigrant population out in the countryside came to us around the same time as it did for western New York and much of southern Ontario.  Our cities, in contrast, are islands of Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants, and a deeper heritage remains of our French beginnings.

Geographically, we are due north of Florida and Georgia, and the vast majority of our state lies within the Eastern timezone.  (And yes, so do Indiana and Ohio).  Finally, our landscape and climate is far more a child of the Great Lakes and the legacy of the Laurentide Ice Sheet than it is that of the Midwestern prairies.  Back during the 1790's, Michigan was called the Northwest.  The frontier has long since moved on, however, and with it all the good land values that have been packed off to places like Washington and California.  The beaver migrations undoubtedly had much to do with this, the small aquatic rodent ever on its quest for virgin stands of birch trees in which to build moderately priced condos.  

Now, I am likely to generate some controversy with this map, but have patience, I can explain it.

The red line indicates my proposed definition of the American Midwest.  The blue line offers a new region altogether, which is international in scope.  I call this the Nearwest or Lakes region.  As you can see, I straddled Chicago on both areas, but Chicago is, much like New York and Toronto, an Alpha World City.  The area above both regions is something different, something northern, and a bit harder to define and broadly include into one region.  To the east we have the Appalachians and the Maritime lands of New England and the Atlantic Provinces.  To the south we have the upper South.  To the west we have the Great Plains and the beginning of Western America.  The notable gap in the upper center is the Wisconsin Dells and the Mississippi valley around La Crosse and Winona.  The area, which I have been to many times, just has a different feel to it than the rest of the country.  The glaciers never even came here during the last glaciation, and the area is thus known as the driftless area.

So how is it that we can have towns like Independence, Missouri, and Davenport, Iowa considered Midwestern but not Toledo, Ohio or even Gary, Indiana?  Well, take a walk down the old downtown sections of each place and tell me if they are really the same.  Let's start in Independence, once the furthest western bastion of the United States.  On the map above, it is where that I-35 shield is on the Kansas/Missouri border.

That town center is quintessentially Midwestern.  The places of prominence are the civic buildings and large social gathering spots like the theater.  The layout is quite open and focuses on two features: space for congregation and space for the sheer enjoyment of space.  Space is something that defines the Midwest.  There are forests everywhere, of course, but they are not nearly as intact as they are in the Lakes region, even after intensive logging and farming there.  Savanna and prairie have a lot to do with this, but so does resource management and agricultural practice.  Mentality is the biggest driving factor; the Midwest is the land of initial expansion and Manifest Destiny, lands that Americans had to fight for even after they secured them in the Treaty of Paris.  George Rogers Clark National Historic Park is the place to go if you want to see what this entailed, the battlefield where this part of North America was first truly defined.  I admit that I have yet to go to it myself, and count it as a big gap in my firsthand experience of our continent.  Needless to say, those who fought here under the flag of a young nation were the first in a line of Mid-westerners who burned with a convert's zeal for a land they not only secured for that nation, but in many ways for themselves in a friendlier declaration of independence from the eastern lands across the mountains that they left behind.  Their descendants and those of the immigrants and freed men that joined them share their values, their love for open spaces, even their unique barbecue cuisines, vocal inflections, and particular styles of blues music.  Take a look at Springfield, Illinois.

This is a city of wide avenues and spaced buildings.  The state capitol takes the most dominant place, and the other prominent features are libraries, churches, and theaters.  Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines, and even St. Louis have such streetscapes.  What about the rest of town?

The last home is Abraham Lincoln's house.  As you can see, space is a dominant element, both in the yards and streets.  These are scenes from the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and the entire neighborhood where Abraham Lincoln lived much of his adult life in Illinois is preserved intact.  Similar spaces can be seen at Truman Home National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri.  The homes are those of the middle class and wealthier residents, but even the poorer sections of both towns have the same design elements in terms of urban planning.

  

In contrast, towns in Michigan, southern Ontario, and western New York have centers that maybe feature a small green space with a gazebo in it, and closely packed buildings that are largely commercial in nature.  Social gathering spaces are smaller in scale, and while you may still have a theater or two downtown, it will be surrounded by quaint cafes and small restaurants, bookstores and other shops.  The civic buildings are off to the side, as if government is relegated to its own space.  Does that mean one region is better than the other, or Independence is more authoritarian than Saline?  Not at all.  What it means is that both towns are monuments to the variants of American (meaning North American) democracy.  In one case, democracy means participation.  In the other, it means delegation and separation from daily life.  The Midwest is a land of broad community, inter-dependence, and the freedom of homesteading and frontier.  The Lakes region is a land of industry, individualism, and the making of cities into truly habitable and enjoyable spaces.  I actually do not have any pictures of nearby down-towns!  I suppose that is because I see them all the time.  Examples are everywhere, from Ypsilanti to Port Huron, Milton and Orillia, Ontario to Batavia and Williamsville, NY.  The region is very much a bi-product of the United States and Canada, a claim that Tim Horton's has latched on to (the region I closed in with blue is actually where most of their franchises are located).  

In terms of landscape, if you want to see the contrast, just drive along I-94 in Michigan, and then I-80 or I-55 in Illinois.  There are exceptions of course, such as parts of I-75 in Michigan being very open, the westernmost parts of the 401 looking more like parts of Iowa, or I-70 in Missouri being forested.

Take a look at I-70 in central Missouri just before the Missouri river crossing.

Or, far more typical, restored tallgrass prairie on I-55 near Bloomington, Illinois.

Prairies, you see, once covered far more land in the center of our continent than most people realize.  Today they can often be derided as "fly-over areas" or something to race through to get to the more interesting mountains, deserts, and forests which border them.  In truth, the first settlers of Indiana and Illinois ran into these large expanses of grass, flowers, and shrubs and absolutely fell in love.  Many towns in the Midwest were actually founded in the middle of them or atop hills, rather than near rivers or woods, because the allure of the open lands was such a contrast to the woods that had to be cleared and the stumps that had to be removed further east.  There were still trees around, and most towns, as seen above in Springfield, were planted thick with them.  In the Midwest, settlers could have the best of both worlds.  The endless flat grasslands most people think of when they hear "prairie" existed farther west, in central Kansas and Nebraska.  Here there were fields, forests, good soil and easy topography for farming.  There were and are also challenges.  There were blizzards, scorching summers, tornadoes, all things that made some people want to move back across the mountains or head further west to the new frontiers that opened up there.  For those that stayed, and those who later came to fill the plentiful room, this would be their American paradise they had dreamed of.  

Others stayed further north, in larger industrial cities or in smaller farms surrounded to this day by extensive woodlands.  Their story and land is cause of another post, however.  They are the people and lands of the doorway between east and west, of the Erie Canal, the Detroit River, of Toronto, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Rochester.  I suppose, if you needed a better label, you could use the "Nearwest".  I, of course, still prefer Upper Canada.  For a parting shot, you can see that it is not too hard to imagine the straits between Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair as a highway, rather than a border.