Minnesota

Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwest of the United States. It shares land borders with the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east along with the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the south, and North Dakota and South Dakota to the west. It shares a maritime border with Michigan to the northeast. It is the 12th-largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd-most populous, with about 5.8 million residents. It has 14,420 bodies of fresh water covering at least ten acres each, earning it the nickname "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Roughly a third of the state is forested. Much of the remainder is prairie and farmland. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", which serves as Minnesota's main political, economic, and cultural hub along with being the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. The Twin Cities area is also the third-largest metropolitan area in the Midwest by population, only behind Chicago and Detroit. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.