Michigan

Two peninsulas joined by a bridge, which fought a war with Ohio over a city and lost, and got the better half of the deal. Michigan was French fur country, then British, then American after 1796, and its territorial government fought the Toledo War of 1835 and 1836 with Ohio over a strip at the bottom of Lake Erie - a bloodless confrontation settled by Congress giving Toledo to Ohio and the Upper Peninsula to Michigan as compensation, which Michiganders considered an insult until copper and iron were found there. Statehood came in 1837. The Upper Peninsula's iron ranges fed the steel industry for a century. The state's transformation came from cars: Ford's moving assembly line at Highland Park in 1913 and the five-dollar day the following year changed industrial work everywhere, and Detroit became the fourth largest American city. The Flint sit-down strike of 1936 and 1937 forced General Motors to recognise the United Auto Workers and made industrial unionism national. The 1967 uprising and decades of disinvestment reduced Detroit's population by two-thirds, and the city went bankrupt in 2013. Flint's water crisis began in 2014. Lansing is the capital and Michigan touches four Great Lakes. The state has more freshwater coastline than any other. The Mackinac Bridge, opened in 1957, joins the two peninsulas. Upper Peninsula residents are called Yoopers and are closer to four other states than to Detroit. Michigan's shape gives it the nickname the Mitten. Kellogg's and Post both began at Battle Creek. Michigan has more registered boats than any other state.

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