These Michigan Counties Are Larger than the Entire State of Rhode Island

Rhode Island is a quirky little state. Most elementary school students learn early on that it's the smallest state in the Union. It conversely once had the longest official name - "The State of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations." However, the state officially dropped the suffix and is now officially just Rhode Island.

Name truncation aside, Rhode Island claims just 1034 square miles of land, roughly 48 miles north-to-south and 37 miles east-to-west.

Someone did the math and discovered that about 20 percent of the nation's counties are larger than Rhode Island. Many, perhaps unsurprisingly are in the western half of the country, but there are a fair number of counties east of the Mississippi that top Little Rhody. Seven of them are in Michigan.

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Thanks to the Northwest Ordinance, perhaps, there are no Ohio nor Indiana counties larger than Rhode Island and just 4 counties in Illinois that can claim the distinction.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for Michigan, each of the state's counties that outweighs Rhode Island are all in the Upper Peninsula. Here they are ranked by how much larger than RI they are. And a note, these rankings are based on land area rather than total area which includes both land and water.

The first county out that's smaller than Rhode Island? That would be Mackinac County, the county that includes St. Ignace and Mackinac Island is 12 square miles smaller than Rhode Island.