Michigan is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. It is almost entirely surrounded by the Great Lakes and borders Ontario in Canada, as well as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Michigan has a population of about 10.14 million and an area of 96,716 square miles (250,490 km²), making it the 10th most populous U.S. state, the 11th largest by area, and the largest state by total area east of the Mississippi River.
The state consists of two peninsulas: the forested Upper Peninsula, or “U.P.,” and the more populous Lower Peninsula, connected by the five-mile Mackinac Bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. Its shoreline touches four of the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair, giving Michigan the longest freshwater coastline of any U.S. political subdivision. The state also contains tens of thousands of inland lakes and ponds.
For thousands of years, the region was inhabited by Indigenous peoples including the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot. French explorers claimed the area for New France in the 17th century, and it later passed to British and then U.S. control. The Michigan Territory was organized in 1805, and Michigan was admitted to the Union as the 26th state on January 26, 1837.
Michigan’s capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit, the center of the Metro Detroit region. Once known chiefly for logging and mining, the state became a major industrial center in the 20th century, especially through the Automotive industry in the United States. Today its economy is diversified, with manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, services, and high-tech industry all important.