The Little Known Reason Southern Michigan Is So Much More Populated than Northern Michigan

It's not news that the southern tier of Michigan is much more populated than the northern two-thirds of the state by magnitudes of scale. But why exactly did Michigan get settled so unevenly?

The answer, surprisingly, is more than mere geography. It's New York. Here's why.

The question came up on the Geography subreddit of Reddit, asking about the discrepancy. 

Why is this area of Michigan so populated?
byu/king_semicolon ingeography

The question is a good one, specifically:

There is most of eight metro areas in this three layer county thick area in the southern part of the state, including all of the largest cities. How did this come to be? A lot of the area is still quite rural.

The Westward Flow: Paths of Early Michigan Settlement

At a glance, it's easy to consider the westward expansion across the state. If Detroit is the embarkation point, then it's a path due west along today's I-94 to populate cities like Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo.

Or it's the path that runs northwest, paralleling the route of the Grand River. That's the route of modern Interstate 96 and the metro areas of Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Muskegon.

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This strip was aided in settlement by being much easier to farm than the heavily wooded north.

As to who was doing the settling of Michigan, that's where the New York part of the equation comes into play.

The population of the country as a whole, which in the early 1800s, as Michigan was being settled, consisted primarily of the Eastern seaboard to the Appalachian Mountains, was looking west.

New York, being a state with a very large population, saw its citizenry who were looking for land and opportunity head due west, which puts them squarely in Michigan.

New York's Footprint: City Names Across the Mitten State

It's the reason today's map of Michigan is dotted with names of cities from New York. Rochester and Utica in the Detroit area. Flint's Genesee County is named for a river of the same name that runs through Rochester.

Smaller settlements clear across the state to Lake Michigan, like Watervliet, Sodus, and New Buffalo, all in Berrien County, are named for places in New York.

Even Michigan's capital of Lansing is named for Lansing, New York, a suburb of Ithaca (which is another New York-Michigan name pairing).

See how many there are?

A glance at the Wikipedia pages for many of the cities, villages, and townships around Michigan will reveal that the first settlers were often from New York.

👇🏼BELOW: These Tiny Michigan Counties Have Less than 10,000 Residents👇🏼

While the rest of the state was, of course, eventually settled, the easiest path was the southern tier of counties, and that's why today they remain the most populated.