Great Lakes/Corn Belt
The Great Lakes and Corn Belt region has often been called the “heartland” of North
America. Car tags issued by the state of Ohio, whose shape is vaguely reminiscent of a heart,
proclaim the Buckeye State to be “the heart of it all.” Why is the term “heartland” often used to
refer to the Great Lakes and the Corn Belt? How did the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region
emerge as the American heartland?
The Heartland label is appropriate for the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region for several
reasons. Most obviously, the area is located near the geographic center of North America. The
population centroid of the United States has crossed the region over the past two hundred years,
although it continues to move southward and westward away from the region—a metaphor
perhaps for the increasing importance of the Sunbelt relative to the Heartland. The region’s
central status is reinforced by excellent transportation. The Great Lakes and the Mississippi
River and its tributaries form a natural transportation network that was very early reinforced by
the construction of canals, railroads and highways. These transportation advantages helped the
region develop a highly integrated economy, with agriculture and industry complementing one
another and between them providing vast quantities of raw materials and finished products for
export to other parts of North America and the rest of the world.
Finally, many associate the Heartland with truly “American” values in contrast to the
“foreign” influences prevalent in the East and West Coasts. The region is seen as a repository of
stable, conservative, enduring ideas about the nature of life and society. Communities within the
region such as Columbus, Ohio and Peoria, Illinois have often been chosen by marketers and
advertisers as test markets, because their demographic, economic, and ethnic mixes are very
similar to those of the U.S. as a whole. Thus they reason that products that are successful in
these communities are likely to be successful nationwide.
The “Heartland” designation may be even more appropriate when applied to Canada.
The Canadian portion of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region includes southern Ontario, the
most populous and wealthy province in the country. Toronto is Canada’s major industrial center
and the Canadian portion of the Heartland is clearly the region’s political and economic core.
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How did the Heartland achieve this central status? Much of the region was
inhabited prior to the 1600s by Native Americans who, like those in Megalopolis, belonged to
the Eastern Woodland cultural complex. The French, with the help of Algonkian and Huron
allies, originally explored and claimed much of this region. In 1763, however, Britain obtained
sovereignty over that portion of the region east of the Mississippi River. The Treaty of Paris,
which was signed in 1783 to end the American Revolution, clarified the boundary between
British and American territory. The British agreed to give up control of the territory bounded on
the north by the Great Lakes, the west by the Mississippi, and the south by the Ohio. This area
became known as the “Old Northwest.” Once the United States obtained sovereignty over the
Old Northwest, many Loyalists who had opposed the Revolution decided to move northward.
The British established the colony of Upper Canada , and more than 10,000 Loyalists settled in
the new colony. There they established many of Ontario’s major cities including Toronto,
Hamilton, London, and Windsor.
To the south, U.S. control over the Old Northwest was in a state of chaos and confusion.
Many of the Thirteen Colonies claimed land directly west of their existing boundaries. For
example, Connecticut claimed the “Western Reserve” of present-day northeastern Ohio and
thousands of Connecticut-born farmers settled the region. (The term “Western Reserve” is still
used to describe this region today, as is evident from the name of Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland.) In response to this confusion, two important developments took place
in the 1780s. During most of that decade, the United States was governed under the Articles of
Confederation. While the Federal government under the Articles was largely ineffectual,
Congress under the Articles did produce one enduring piece of legislation—the Northwest
Ordinance of 1785. The Northwest Ordinance provided for a system by which land in the Old
Northwest would be settled. The township and range system of land survey was created and put
into effect. Under this system, land in the Old Northwest was surveyed into square townships of
36 square miles, with each divided into 36 square-mile sections. This procedure allowed land to
be bought, sold, and transferred sight unseen, and also encouraged the development of roads and
other thoroughfares on a grid system oriented to the cardinal directions. The impacts of the
township and range system are evident on the landscape of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region
today. Airline passengers crossing over rural portions of the Corn Belt can see the impacts of the
township and range system by observing the rectangular pattern of highways and secondary
roads. Grid systems were also used to develop the street networks of Chicago, Detroit,
Milwaukee, and most other cities and towns in the region.
During the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, each of the original Thirteen
Colonies agreed to give up any claims to their territories to the west of the Appalachians. These
territories, including the Old Northwest, would instead be administered by the federal
government. Perhaps even more significantly, it was agreed that new territories could, once
settled and sufficiently developed, qualify for admission to the United States on an equal legal
and political basis as the existing states. After the Constitution was ratified, the Northwest
Ordinance was revised and the revision specified that a state could be admitted once it had a
population of at least 60,000 Euro-American settlers. Under this provision, Kentucky and
Tennessee were admitted prior to 1800; Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois became states in 1803, 1816,
and 1818 respectively with Michigan and Wisconsin added before the Civil War.
That portion of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region west of the Mississippi River, was
obtained as a result of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Once title to these territories was
obtained, the government extended the township and range system of land survey to these newly
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acquired lands. On both sides of the river, the U.S. government gradually pushed Native
Americans westward. Most of the lands east of the Mississippi were ceded to the U.S.
government by the tribes between 1812 and 1832. Today, only northern Wisconsin and
Minnesota within the U.S. portion of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt have significant populations
of Native Americans.
Once the Old Northwest was opened up for settlement, thousands of settlers moved into
the area every year. Many came to farm; others kept stores, provided services for farmers and
their communities, practiced law or medicine, preached the Gospel, or started manufacturing
operations. The rapid population growth of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt was enhanced by
easy transportation access. The Great Lakes, the Ohio, and the Mississippi were themselves
natural transportation corridors. During the nineteenth century, water transportation along the
rivers and in the Great Lakes was enhanced by a series of improvements, including the
construction of locks and dams on the rivers, the building of the Erie Canal in 1825, and later the
dredging of the Chicago River, providing a navigable connection between the Mississippi
drainage basin and the Great Lakes. Later in the nineteenth century, railroads were built and
these too provided for easy movement of people and goods.
The millions of persons who settled the Great Lakes and Corn Belt region came from
many different origins. Natives of the Appalachians, such as Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln,
moved north and west across the Ohio River. These “Butternut” settlers were soon outnumbered
by natives of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania who crossed the Alleghanies in search
of cheap, fertile farmland. They were joined by immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland,
Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Many Canadians who a generation or two
earlier had moved to Upper Canada returned to the United States, and were especially prevalent
in Michigan.
By the end of the Civil War, however, most of the arable land in the region had been
claimed and settled. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many migrants from
southern and eastern Europe moved to the region’s cities, where they provided the labor force for
the region’s large numbers of growing factories. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities
south of the Great Lakes featured large numbers of Poles, Greeks, Italians, Hungarians, and
Czechs. At the same time, many eastern and southern Europeans moved to Canada. These
immigrants to Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa established Little Italy and Chinatown
neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves of almost every nationality, many of which still exist today.
Other immigrants such as the Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, and Danes joined everincreasing numbers of Germans in farm and fishing communities in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota and southern Ontario.
Most of the residents of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt in 1910 were of European
ancestry. However, diversity in the region soon increased as African-Americans began to move
to the region in large numbers after World War I. The movement of African-Americans from the
South became a critical part of a new migration stream that dramatically changed the
demographics and cultures of cities throughout the region. Between 1916 and 1920, some
500,000 African-Americans left the rural South for the industrial centers of Chicago, New York,
Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Kansas City in what was known as the “Great
Migration.” Thousands more moved northward between the 1920s and the 1950s. These
migrants were driven by both push factors and pull factors. Push factors are issues
encouraging people to migrate away from their areas of origin. For Southern AfricanAmericans, these push factors included institutionalized racism and segregation, lynchings,
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beatings, crop failures, and limited educational and economic opportunities. Pull factors are
issues encouraging migrants to select particular destinations. Pull factors in the industrial cities
of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt included jobs at much higher wages than were prevalent in the
South, along with a call to freedom and a much sought after opportunity for equality.
The impacts of the Great Migration were massive and long-lasting on AfricanAmericans and on the cities where they made their new homes. Whole families or communities
often made the trip together. Dreams of renting a big house for family and friends to share and a
better lifestyle pushed them on despite reports by relatives of bad weather, hard work, and racist
treatment by new neighbors. Despite these challenges, however, the populations in these
industrial cities north of the Mason-Dixon Line and in the Midwest were expanded significantly
from this mass migration. The cities of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt, notably Detroit, Chicago,
St. Louis and Kansas City, soon became well-known as African-American cultural centers.
Southern Ontario also has a lasting legacy of African-American migration although from an
earlier time period. Fascinating evidence of Canada’s assistance to hiding and sustaining
runaway slaves in the pre-Civil War era remains in unlikely places just north of the Great Lakes.
Today, some parts of the Great Lakes and Cornbelt region continue to attract large numbers of
immigrants. Chicago and Toronto in particular have attracted large numbers of migrants from
Latin America, Asia, and elsewhere in recent years. Other metropolitan areas have also attracted
substantial immigrant populations. For example, the Detroit area has North America’s largest
concentration of Arab-Americans, especially around the city of Dearborn where many businesses
place signs in both English and Arabic. In part because of the transition from an industrial to a
post-industrial economy, however, most of the region’s smaller metropolitan areas have seen
little immigration relative to cities of comparable size in the Sunbelt.
From the air, perhaps no other region in North America looks as homogeneous as the
Corn Belt and Great Lakes. Except for scattered rolling hills north of the lakes, and a few places
where streams have cut into the land leaving small canyons in their wake, the physical landscape
here looks much the same wherever you travel. Small lakes, rivers, and meandering streams are
common as are croplands alternating with forested stands of leafy oaks, maples and other
hardwoods.
In the United States portion of this region, land patterns appear regular as well as the
patterns of its physical geography. The regularity and rhythm of rectangular fields planted in row
crops, and seemingly endless linear highway and rail connections make this region look like a
gigantic checkerboard from the air. Houses and an extensive series of outbuildings dot the
landscape. Small towns appear at fairly regular intervals throughout the region as service centers
serving local populations and places for agricultural processing. Larger cities appear less
regularly, but appear to have consistent internal patterns featuring tall buildings located in the
center of town and in nearby suburbs and more horizontal sprawling residential and commercial
districts in rings located farther and farther out from the inner city.
The appearance of homogeneity, however, belies the substantial cultural, economic,
religious, and ethnic diversity characteristic of this important and dynamic portion of North
America. Historically, the mindset of much of the region was rural, with perceptions centered
on quiet townscapes surrounded by the rustle of cornfields. Since the population of the rural
parts of this region have been in decline for the past century and few new immigrants have
moved in to replace earlier settlers, the original German- Scandinavian-eastern European cultural
foundation persists. Ethnic identity here is often low key and down to earth, as are other cultural
and political traits. As National Public Radio’s show “Prairie Home Companion” is fond of
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pointing out in its Saturday night broadcasts, Norwegian, Swedes, and others hold onto their
identities and resist change or glorification of their ethnic heritage.
Places throughout the Great Lakes and Corn Belt are dealing with continued transition
from an agricultural/industrial to a post-industrial economy. Here, we examine places in the
region, dividing them into three groups: places in Canada, American places on and near the
Great Lakes region, and places in the Corn Belt itself.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have been a period marked by steady transition
from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, with more than four-fifths of North America’s
employment base now concentrated in the tertiary and quaternary sectors. How is this
fundamental economic transition impacting the Great Lakes and Corn Belt? To be sure,
individual communities in the Great Lakes and Corn Belt have experienced ongoing economic
difficulties. As the numbers of farmers dwindled, for example, the market for farm implements
weakened and communities such as Moline and Peoria, Illinois and Waterloo, Iowa, with their
large farm implement manufacturing plants, experienced economic distress. Small farm service
communities also declined—especially those that lack easy access to interstate highways or are
off the beaten path for tourists. More diverse communities and cities such as Chicago and
Toronto have been more successful in dealing with short-run economic stresses. Those initially
more oriented to the tertiary and quaternary sectors—for example state capitals such as
Columbus, Indianapolis, and Des Moines and university communities such as ChampaignUrbana, Iowa City, and Bloomington—are also continuing to prosper.
Overall, however, the future of the Great Lakes and Corn Belt is bright. The same
advantages that have made the Heartland prosperous for the past two centuries will continue to
operate to the Great Lakes and Corn Belt’s advantage today. The region’s central location,
buttressed by easy air, land, and water connections to places throughout the world, represents a
significant economic advantage for many types of businesses. The region’s population is large,
well-educated, and diverse. Concentrations of capital in the area will no doubt continue to work
to the region’s advantage. Individual communities within the Great Lakes and Corn Belt will no
doubt continue to be impacted by transition to a post-industrial economy. However, the status of
the Great Lakes and Corn Belt as a significant core region is unlikely to change in the near
future, and it will likely play a major role in the life of North America for many decades to come.
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