The East North Central States form one of the nine geographic divisions within the United States which are officially recognized by that country's census bureau.
The division contains five states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. It is one of the two divisions within the larger region the United States Census Bureau (and for that matter, the U.S. population at large) calls the Midwest; the other such division is the West North Central States.
The East North Central division is strongly identified with the Rust Belt, although the latter also encompasses upstate New York and western Pennsylvania, along with the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. Other alternate names for the division include the Great Lakes Region (again, shared with upstate New York and western Pennsylvania, and also part of Minnesota) and the "North Coast," the latter offered up as a non-pejorative substitute for "Rust Belt" and alluding to the fact that the Great Lakes provide access to the Atlantic Ocean via either the St. Lawrence Seaway or a combination of the New York State Barge Canal and the Hudson River (indeed, Chicago, the division's largest city, is by far the largest fresh-water port in the United States).
