Michigan is a peninsular state in the Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota  to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, Indiana and Illinois to the southwest, Ohio to the southeast, and the Canadian province of Ontario to the east, northeast and north. With a population of 10.13 million and an area of 96,716 sq mi (250,490 km²), Michigan is the tenth largest state by population, the 11th largest by area, and the largest by total area east of the Mississippi Rive. The state capital is Lansing, while its most populous city is Detroit. The Metro Detroit region in Southeast Michigan is among the nation’s most populous and largest metropolitan economies. Other important metropolitan areas include Grand Rapids, Flint, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, the Tri Cities, and Muskegon.

Michigan consists of two peninsulas: the heavily forested Upper Peninsula (commonly called “the U.P.”), which juts eastward from northern Wisconsin, and the more populated Lower Peninsula, stretching north from Ohio and Indiana. The peninsulas are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and are linked by the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge along Interstate 75. Bordering four of the five Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair, Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline of any U.S. political subdivision, measuring 3,288 miles. The state ranks second behind Alaska in water coverage by square miles and first in percentage, with approximately 42%, and it also contains 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. 

The Great Lakes region has largely been inhabited for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples such as the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandor. Some people contend that the region’s name is derived from the Ojibwe word ᒥᓯᑲᒥ (mishigami), meaning “large water” or “large lake”. Others say that it comes from the Mishiiken Tribe of Mackinac Island, also called Michinemackinawgo by Ottawa historian Andrew Blackbird,^[9] whose surrounding lands were referred to as Mishiiken-imakinakom, later shortened to Michilimackinac.