how comes it's called the mid-west and not the mid-east?
If you're at all familiar with American history you'll know that the country and its preceding colonies were located on the east coast, so when the Northwest Ordinance and Louisiana Purchase came along, that land (pretty much anything west of the Appalachians) became the "west". When we started moving further west than that (California became a state before some of the Plains states did), the term "mid-west" arrived, generally describing territory west of the original states but east of the Mississippi, but gradually growing to include the Plains. I'm not sure why Oklahoma and Texas aren't included but it might have to do with the Mexican-American and Civil wars.
