Yesterday I came across a tweet that made me go WHAAAA? And then immediately look it up to see if it were true.

The tweet in question comes from Taylor DesOrmeau, @TDesOrmeau, a Michigan economy reporter for MLive, who tweeted:

A fun fact I learned during an interview today:

Ironwood, Michigan is closer in distance to five state capitals than it is to its own state capital in Lansing.

Blows my mind.

Now, of course, he is a reporter, and their job is to fact check, so the odds of him being wrong about that info is almost none, but I still had to open Google maps and figure out just how this worked out.

First Ironwood, Michigan is RIGHT on the Michigan Wisconsin state line, as you can see below

Google Maps
Google Maps
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Now let's break it down a bit.  To verify this statement, I went onto Google Maps and searched driving distance, and actual straight line distance to all the state capitals in question.  Obviously, if you do as the crow flies, it's only three states that are closer than Lansing at 376 miles. They are  St. Paul, MN, at 174 Miles, Madison, WI, at 234 miles, and Des Moines, IA, just barely squeaking in at 375 miles.

So he obviously meant driving to them, and by mileage, not time.  Also, it should be noted that you could go to Milwaukee and take the ferry to Muskegon which cuts out about 39 miles from your trip, but the ferry is seasonal and somewhat expensive, as well as adding another hour+ when you could just drive the entire distance.  I also think that since Taylor is the Michigan economy writer, he would want you to take the trip all the way through our great state, if you were headed to the capital city.

Here's how the mileage broke down from Ironwood, Michigan to each of the 5 closest capital cities and Lansing.

First off Lansing is 540 miles from Ironwood, Michigan driving through the U.P., which if you're going to the state capital or the State Capitol, why wouldn't you enjoy the state, right?

Here are the other states, who's capital cities are closer:

Ironwood, Michigan to:

St. Paul, MN - 212 miles

Madison, WI - 264 miles

Des Moines, IA - 457 miles

Springfield, IL - 521 miles

Bismarck, ND - 543 or if you reverse the trip from Bismarck to Ironwood it's 541 miles (I don't know why) - which makes this one a questionable until you actually Google the distance from Ironwood, MI to the Capitol building in both Lansing and Bismarck, which is exactly 540 miles.

That's crazy to think that Ironwood Michigan is so much closer to so many other state capitals than ours.  Also goes to show you just how big the state of Michigan really is.

 

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