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Every American state has a nickname. Here are some more of them. Idaho is known as the Gem State. This is not because it has diamonds but because it believes it is the jewel of the western Rocky Mountains. Illinois is the Land of Lincoln. It is named for Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president who led the nation through the Civil War in the eighteen sixties. The Midwestern state of Indiana is called the Hoosier State, but nobody is quite sure why. One story is that the word was used to mean poor farmers or uneducated people. No wonder the state legislature instead calls Indiana the Crossroads of America. Iowa's nickname, the Hawkeye State, is in honor of Black Hawk, an Indian chief who spent most of his life in neighboring Illinois! Kansas also has a "hawkish" nickname: the Jayhawk State. Jayhawkers were free-state guerrilla fighters opposed to the pro-slavery fighters in the years before the Civil War. Kentucky is the Bluegrass State. Bluegrass is really bright green but looks bluish from a distance. Louisiana is the Bayou State. A bayou is a slow-moving stream. Hundreds of them flow through this southern state, and many are full of alligators! Maine, in the nation's northeast, is the Pine Tree State because it is covered in evergreen woods. And directly across the country, on the Pacific Coast, is the state of Washington. It also has lots of evergreen trees so, not surprisingly, it is the Evergreen State. | 
