Michigan is a give access in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an Place of nearly 97,000 sq mi (250,000 km), Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the largest by area east of the Mississippi River. Its capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit. Metro Detroit is along with the nation’s most populous and largest metropolitan economies. Its name derives from a gallicized variant of the original Ojibwe word ᒥᓯᑲᒥ (mishigami), meaning “large water” or “large lake”.

Michigan consists of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula resembles the concern of a mitten, and comprises a majority of the state’s estate area. The Upper Peninsula (often called “the U.P.”) is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile (8 km) channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The Mackinac Bridge connects the peninsulas. Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline of any diplomatic subdivision in the United States, being bordered by four of the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair. It next has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. Michigan has the second-most water of any state, behind unaided Alaska.

The area was first occupied by a accord of Native American tribes beyond thousands of years. In the 17th century, French explorers claimed it as share of the New France colony, when it was largely inhabited by original peoples. French and Canadian traders and settlers, Métis, and others migrated to the area, settling largely along the waterways. After France’s crush in the French and Indian War in 1762, the region came under British rule. Britain ceded the territory to the newly independent United States after Britain’s rout in the American Revolutionary War.

The area was share of the larger Northwest Territory until 1800, when western Michigan became portion of the Indiana Territory. Michigan Territory was formed in 1805, but some of the northern affix with Canada was not agreed upon until after the War of 1812. Michigan was admitted into the Union in 1837 as the 26th state, a forgive one. It soon became an important center of industry and trade in the Great Lakes region, attracting immigrants in the late 19th and beforehand 20th centuries from many European countries. Immigrants from Finland, Macedonia, and the Netherlands were especially numerous. Migration from Appalachia and of Black Southerners as part of the Great Migration increased in the 1930s, with many settling in Metro Detroit.