The Upper Peninsula of Michigan - Northern Magazine

By John D. Voelker, 1924 | written in 1958

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—simply U.P. to its inhabitants—is a wild, harsh and broken land lying on the southernmost rim of the great Canadian pre-Cambrian shield of North America. Some of the oldest rocks in the world lie exposed here, like stained and ancient molars rubbed and ground on the relentless hone of an age-old procession of glaciers, the last in its slow convulsive retreat leaving the region a vast jumble of hills and swamps and forests and endless waterways. Two of the greatest of the Great Lakes pound and lap the Peninsula’s rugged shores, Michigan and Superior, the latter the world’s largest and surely the coldest inland sea. T By John D. Voelker, 1924 | written in 1958 world lie exposed here, like stained and ancient molars rubbed and ground on the relentless hone of an age-old procession of glaciers, the last in its slow convulsive retreat leaving the region a vast jumble of hills and swamps and forests and endless waterways. Two of the greatest of the Great Lakes pound and lap the Peninsula’s rugged shores, Michigan and Superior, the latter the world’s largest and surely the coldest inland sea.

It was along the coastlines of these vast mid-continental lakes that the Indians of pre-history first ventured into the isolated Peninsula, ultimately followed by the intruding early French and English, and lastly the immigrant Americans, all of these thrusting God and pestilence alike upon the reluctant heathen, thoughtfully felling their forests, digging their ore, pursuing and catching their fi sh and women-folk, trapping and slaying their game, and fi nally herding the battered remnants of these stricken people into unwanted marginal areas whimsically called Indian reservations—where their descendants today gravely purvey genuine 100-year-old tomahawks made the winter before to that restless new American gypsy, the summer tourist. Every school child knows that for years nobody wanted to adopt the remote and raffi sh U.P., and Michigan was at last reluctantly persuaded to do so, coveting instead, almost to the brink of civil war, a modest parcel of real estate along the Ohio border known as the “Toledo strip.” (For a while things got so bad that even Congress had fi nally to get into the act.) This reluctant parenthood turned swiftly to self-congratulatory glee when shortly thereafter large copper and iron deposits were discovered on the U.P. P. rivaling in richness any then known on the hemisphere. The shunned ugly duckling had turned into a fabulous golden-haired princess. The downstate politicians strutted and preened themselves for their astuteness as the rugged U.P. thereafter became a vast horn of plenty, pouring mineral and forest riches out upon the receptive and beaming adoptive parent “down below.”

Fewer people know, however, that in the long glance of history the U.P. was explored, fought over and settled long before lower Michigan ever came into its own. The curious and intrepid French were already exploring the U.P. about the time the Pilgrims were landing at Plymouth. They were mostly prospectors, fur traders and men of God. Before the Revolution the practical British were also prowling the area, being somewhat more concerned with enriching Britannia than extolling the glory of God. One of their early exploring parties spent a winter trying to abduct the famous solid copper boulder at Ontonagon. Failing that they tried to cut it up. Again they failed, but only for lack of tools rather than zeal, and the historic boulder now reposes in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, safe from marauding British and tourists alike. Detroit was not established until 1701, after Cadillac and his party had coasted down in war canoes from the U.P. fort at St. Ignace, already established for many years. (Of course every school child knows that while founding Detroit the intrepid Cadillac stole his name off a parked motor car. Before that it was Kilroy.) It is also not generally known that today more people dwell in greater Flint than in the entire Upper Peninsula, a vast area comprising roughly one-third of the state. Nor that many points in the Peninsula are farther from Detroit than the latter is from points on the Atlantic seaboard. Nor that still other points in the Peninsula are almost as close to Hudson’s Bay as they are to the state capitol. Nor that prior to the admission of Alaska, Michigan claimed the hotly disputed distinction of being the longest state and possessing the longest coastline in the Union. But Alaska has changed all that, and may, who knows, finally bring humility even to Texas.

Mining and lumbering has long been and still is the heartblood of the U.P., without which the area would doubtless revert to the Indians. Commercial fishing once also played a modest supporting role, until along came the blood-sucking lampreys and killed the fish. Now searching for and destroying the lamprey has itself become a minor industry. But in recent years, and especially since the advent of the new Mackinac Bridge, the U.P. is rapidly becoming widely known as a winter and summer vacation resort area of a kind unique in the nation. Its very remoteness and rugged individuality has become part of its growing attraction. One can really get away from it all. Consequently more and more the droll applied science of parting the tourist rapidly from his buck is being studied by the resourceful descendants of the sturdy pioneers who first permanently settled the Peninsula. Tonnages are finally bowing to tourists; board feet to beaches and boardwalks. The sale of tomahawks is better than ever. Since any U.P. chamber of commerce would promptly banish for treason any native who dared speak about the place without extolling its tourist glories, one hastens to list some of them, fearfully mindful that still other chambers of commerce will doubtless also want to banish him for any glories that are omitted.

One sighs and bravely takes the plunge….

There is, of course, the mighty Mackinac Bridge itself and venerable St. Ignace and its surrounding historydrenched islands, including bejewelled and auto-less Mackinac; then the teeming Soo locks, accounting for more tonnage (and exposed fi lm) than any other lock in the world, not excepting Panama and Suez; then the colorful Tahquamenon river and falls near Newberry, thoughtfully provided by Nature as a place into which itching tourists may ecstatically hurl their tin cans and empty bottles; then the fabulous sandstone cliffs known as the Pictured Rocks near Munising, from the top of which monotonous processions of legendary Indian maidens are reputed to have fl ung themselves for love and love alone; the sprawling Seney wild-life refuge, a monument to the idea of conservation; then the mighty iron-ore loading docks near Escanaba and at Marquette, dwarfi ng even an ocean liner; the smoky and brooding—and as of this writing yet unspoiled—Porcupine Mountains lying beyond historic Ontonagon; the colorful and breathtaking Copper Country along with the equally breathtaking water-hemmed Keweenaw Peninsula, running straight into the restless sea; the lonely forested pine-scented jewel of Isle Royale, lying far out in Lake Superior, where long before the time of Christ a mysterious tribe of Indians had mined the copper; the beautiful waterflecked Gogebic range, adjoined by colorful and much-advertised Hurley; the impressive iron and copper mining areas, including some of the deepest workings in the world; the many parks and forest preserves; the various historic sites and ancient burial grounds; the Indian arrowheads and many other native gems and artifacts; and of course, for every taste, all the many blossoming mystery spots and assorted catch-penny tourist traps. 

And always there are the scores and hundreds of beautiful wooded hills and vast plains and spring-fed lakes and rivers and ponds and streams and misty beaver dams which everywhere abound, along with tall whispering forests and splashing waterfalls and crystal springs, hovered over by the soaring bald eagle, the cackling loon, the shirring ducks, the haunting whip-poor-will, and other birds and waterfowl galore. And everywhere there is the endlessly enchanting scenery, all wondrously beautiful, and far beyond the reach of the mere invented words of man. One has to see it to believe it. 

Last of all the Peninsula possesses three of nature’s noblest creations: the whitetailed deer, the ruffed grouse (partridge to the natives), and the elusive brook trout. (Alas, blind pursuit of the latter has kept this U.P. native from himself observing some of the other attractions here recounted.) Bears and coyotes and smaller game also abound, besides many species of game and pan fi sh, but tales of man-eating timber wolves are greatly exaggerated. One knows this is so because one’s old trapper friend Danny McGinnis recently attended a U. P. seminar on the subject at the Mather Inn in Ishpeming. After listening to the learned assemblage interminably deliver itself, pro and con, parched Danny fi nally arose and tersely concluded the conclave as follows: “Any man in this room what says he was et by a wolf is a damned liar! Where in hell is the bar?”

The early settlers of the polyglot U. P. were mostly French Canadians, English (particularly the sturdy Cornish) and the ubiquitous Irish, followed beginning shortly after the Civil War by the Finns, Scandinavians and Italians, along with a fairish dash of Scots, Germans and miscellaneous “mittel” Europeans to leaven the yeasty dough. This dough is now pretty much well kneaded and baked into a strange and wonderful mixture resulting in the friendly, prickly, hard-working, hard-playing individual who presently lives in the beloved U. P. (One today regularly reads of U. P. highschool athletes named Reginald Michael Millimaki, for example, without ever batting an eye.) Nor is the phrase “beloved U. P.” an idle extravagance, as the average dweller there wouldn’t trade forty acres of mortgaged cut-over jackpine for a warranty deed to the Fisher Building. The U. P. may be distant and lonely and harsh of climate, its mosquitos may be ravenous as condors, and its economies chancy and haywire—but the born and bred U. P. dweller simply wouldn’t live anywhere else. Those who have left yearn only to return. 

Old trapper Dan may have put his fi nger on the spell of the U. P. He was declaiming one day last summer at the forks of the Connors and Big Dead rivers, waiting for the evening rise of trout. “As the fella said, this here U. P. country is kinda like our moonshine—once it hits you, once it gits in your blood, you’re fl oored, man, you jest can’t move!” 

U. P. people are funny that way: they may revile the snow and cold in winter, the bugs and heat in summer, and their fate all the time—but they just can’t move.