The Buckeye State isn't in the Midwest

I'm sure you've seen or heard all the back-to-school ads lately. And in a few districts school has already started.

Well I don't care. They can push all the spiral notebooks and colored pencils and protractors they want, but I ain't going. I've been to school, and I'm not going back, and they can't make me. So there.

(Boys and girls: Uncle Clay isn't saying you shouldn't go to school. He just wants you to keep an open mind, OK?)

Now let's get down to business.

Why do we persist in calling Ohio part of the Midwest?

This goes way back to 1789 when our fledgling country enacted the Northwest Ordinance to govern the areas bounded by the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This made sense at the time because that pretty much was the country's northwest.

Later the West came to mean the area west of the Mississippi and the Midwest was the part between the Appalachians and the Mississippi.

Since 1984 the U.S Census Bureau has included Ohio in its East Central Division along with Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. The West Central Division covers Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

So is Ohio part of the Midwest? I'd say no. after all, it's in the Eastern Time Zone and part of it includes Appalachia.

Of course here in Arizona we tend to think of anything east of the Rockies as "back East." And people on the East Coast probably think the Midwest starts west of Pennsylvania.