I won’t make a lame size matters joke here, it’s too dated and we Michiganders are mostly aware of just how large our state is. At 96,716 square miles Michigan is the 11th largest state in the country. While we’re no Alaska or even Texas in terms of land mass, we’re nothing to sneeze at. I never paid too much attention to where Michigan ranks until some recent travel opened my eyes and led me to doing some research on some other areas around the globe that Michigan is larger than and some of my findings might surprise you.
Utah
As a kid learning geography I always looked at the western states as if they were these expansive areas with squared corners that dwarfed my little homeland of Michigan. While these states are very large, it turns out I underestimated just how big Michigan truly is. In fact, Michigan is nearly 12,000 square miles larger than Utah.
Syria
On a more serious note, the news out of Syria is usually pretty heartbreaking with the ongoing civil war there. What was more amazing was that as I read about the situation there I realized the war that’s been in the International headlines for the past several years is taking place on a plot of land smaller than the footprint of Michigan as Syria is only 71,500 square miles.
Greece
I haven’t yet visited Greece, and I knew it wasn’t the biggest country by any stretch, but how could the country that gave us gyros and so much other delicious cuisine only be half the size of Michigan? At only 50,960 square miles I can’t help but feel that Michigan should have some more notable cuisine to our name beyond pasties and Faygo.
Ireland
As I drove around Ireland with my wife (hey, that’s us!) I realized it wasn’t taking me very long to get from one end of the country to the other. As we got to the pub I couldn’t help but look up the size of Ireland compared to Michigan and I was surprised to see that the Emerald Isle is less than a third of the square mileage of Michigan.
United Kingdom
Yep, Ireland’s larger neighbor also is smaller than Michigan, though not by as much. The UK measures in at 93,628 square miles making it 97% the size of the mitten state. Statistics like these make me wonder why our country isn’t better at soccer considering that England is ranked 10th and the United States as a whole is only 29th. C’mon America!
