Michigan State Motto: Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice

Michigan's state motto is Si Quaeris Peninsulam Amoenam Circumspice, a Latin phrase meaning If You Seek a Pleasant Peninsula, Look About You. Delegates at Michigan's Constitutional Convention adopted it on June 2, 1835, as part of the Great Seal.

Michigan borders four of the five Great Lakes and has 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, more than any other U.S. state. The Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula together make the state's geography unique, and the motto addresses that directly.

Si means if. Quaeris means you seek. Peninsulam amoenam means a pleasant peninsula. Circumspice means look about you or look around you.

The full phrase: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. The command is addressed to the reader, who is assumed to already be standing on the peninsula.

Lewis Cass served as Michigan's Territorial Governor from 1813 to 1831. When he proposed the state seal design, he adapted the epitaph inscribed above Sir Christopher Wren's tomb at St. Paul's Cathedral in London: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice, meaning If you seek his monument, look around you. Cass replaced monumentum (monument) with peninsulam amoenam (pleasant peninsula), keeping the same conditional structure.

Michigan's Constitutional Convention met in Detroit in May 1835 and adopted the Great Seal, including the motto, on June 2, 1835. Michigan had already met the population requirement for statehood, but Congress delayed admission because of a border dispute with Ohio.

Both states claimed a narrow strip of land near Toledo. The standoff became known as the Toledo War. Congress resolved it by having Michigan give up the Toledo Strip and receive the western Upper Peninsula in exchange. Michigan accepted the deal at a second convention in December 1836, and President Jackson signed the statehood act on January 26, 1837, making Michigan the 26th state. The Upper Peninsula later proved far more valuable: copper was discovered in the Keweenaw Peninsula in the 1840s, and iron ore from the Marquette Range fueled American steel production for decades.