Michigan

In 1896, a 32-year-old engineer named Henry Ford built his first car in a tiny shed behind his house in Detroit. When he finished, he realized it was too wide to fit through the door. So he grabbed an axe and smashed through the brick wall to get it out.

That car, called the Quadricycle, ran on four bicycle wheels and topped out at 20 miles per hour. Within a few decades, Ford's assembly line and his affordable Model T turned Detroit into the car capital of the world.

The Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples had lived across Michigan for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Detroit in 1701 as a fur trading post on the river between Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes and has more freshwater shoreline than any state except Alaska. The state is split into two pieces, the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, connected by the five-mile Mackinac Bridge.

Before the Civil War, Detroit became the last major stop on the Underground Railroad in the United States. Enslaved people who reached the city could cross the Detroit River into Canada and finally be free.

In 1959, a former auto worker named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and started Motown Records in a small Detroit house he called "Hitsville U.S.A." Artists like Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, and the Jackson 5 changed the sound of American music.

But Detroit also faced serious struggles. During the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of Black Americans moved north for factory jobs, only to face unfair housing rules and mistreatment by police. In 1967, five days of unrest left 43 people dead and more than 1,000 buildings burned.

Visit the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn to see the actual Quadricycle. Tour the Motown Museum on West Grand Boulevard, where so many hit records were made.

Take a ferry to Mackinac Island, where cars have been banned since 1898. Everything still moves by horse, carriage, and bicycle.

Drive across the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula, where Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore stretches along Lake Superior with cliffs, waterfalls, and some of the most striking scenery in the Midwest.