What you’re seeing is an outline of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Detroit and Ann Arbor are on the fleshy bulge of the thumb; Lansing is in the valley of your palm; Grand Rapids is on the left ...

Surveyors marked a north-south meridian line that runs from Defiance, Ohio, at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, due north through Michigan ... to further outline the vast store ...