About Michigan

Michigan takes its name from the Ojibwe word "mishigamaa," meaning "large water" or "large lake," referring to Lake Michigan, the vast body of fresh water that defines the state's western boundary. French explorers and missionaries who arrived in the Great Lakes region in the 1600s adopted the indigenous name for the lake and applied it to the surrounding territory. The name "Michigane" appeared in French records as early as 1672. Michigan's connection to the Great Lakes is fundamental to its identity and economy: the state is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes and has more than 11,000 inland lakes, giving it more freshwater coastline than any other state in the nation.

Michigan is the only state in the contiguous United States made up of two separate peninsulas. Hold up your right hand, palm out, that is the Lower Peninsula, the shape every Michigan resident uses to show where they are from. The Upper Peninsula, connected since 1957 by the Mackinac Bridge, is wilder and more remote, a land of dense forest, copper mines, and people who call themselves Yoopers. Together these two peninsulas contain more Great Lakes shoreline than any other state except Alaska, and more inland lakes than any state in the nation.

Michigan's modern identity is inseparable from the automobile. Henry Ford built his first Model T here. General Motors was born here. The moving assembly line , arguably the most consequential manufacturing innovation in history, was perfected here. The auto industry created one of the most prosperous working-class communities in American history during the mid-20th century, filling Detroit and Flint and Pontiac and Saginaw with factory workers earning wages that built the American middle class. And when that industry declined, struck by oil shocks, foreign competition, and structural change, Michigan bore the brunt more acutely than almost any other state.

Michigan is now navigating a transition as consequential as any in its history: the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles. The state that built the old automotive economy is betting billions that it can build the new one, with EV battery plants, autonomous vehicle research, and a workforce that has been making precision machines for over a century.