"Midwest" can mean anything from Pennsylvania to Kansas. It can mean the Old Northwest (the original "the West") [0], or it can mean "just west of the Mississippi River". As Humpty-Dumpty says, it's just a question of who is to be master.
Pennsylvania is a Mid-Atlantic state, but Pittsburgh is where the Ohio River starts.
If you look at a map, it's clearly not. Not "mid", which would be from Chicago to Denver, and even more not "west", which would be west of Denver.
But "midwest" is a term for a region, and terms last longer than the reason for the term. When the term was coined, the US essentially ended at Chicago, and Ohio was midwest.
Hmm. I must be in a mellow mood today. I've made the exact same complaint you did when others said Pittsburgh was "midwest".
You are the first person I have heard define Midwest that way. Midwest includes Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri too [1]. Although many people view the Northwest Territory [2] after the revolutionary war as the "Midwest": Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Culturally, the second definition makes more sense to me as someone who has lived in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and spent significant time in several of the other states in the first definition.
As far as I can determine, there isn't a single state in the Union that's considered the Midwest by everyone in the country.
As I mentioned, Kansas is in the West if you're in Michigan, which definitely considers itself Midwestern.
But if you're a Southerner, Michigan is in the North. The North doesn't even exist, outside of the former Confederacy, where it refers to states which were in the Union during the Civil War.
Historically "the west" referred to west of the Mississippi river. "Midwest" was the Territories mid way between the eastern colonies and the western plains west of the Mississippi
The jump from Northwest Territory to Louisiana purchase basically defined the Midwest. Everything northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Colorado River has a fair claim at “Midwest.”
Pennsylvania is a Mid-Atlantic state, but Pittsburgh is where the Ohio River starts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
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