How the U.P. became the U.P.
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
In 1923 Henry Ford bought Pequaming and 40,000 acres from the Hebard family. He ran the mill for car parts, raised wages, built schools and summered in the bungalow until...
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On August 25, 1896, a swamp fire driven by a gale reached the Diamond Match Company's lumber yards and burned 344 buildings in Ontonagon,...
Granite Island Light, ten miles off Marquette, was built of stone quarried on the Huron Islands in 1868, cost three keepers their lives, and...
On May 20, 1887 a fire that started on one roof burned most of Lake Linden because the village owned no fire equipment. The...
John and Mary Longyear's 64-room sandstone mansion stood on the Marquette bluff from 1892 until 1903, when they dismantled it and rebuilt it in...
Robert Stuart led the first recorded crossing of South Pass in 1812. From 1820 he ran John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company on Mackinac...
Fort Brady guarded the Soo from 1822 to 1944. Within a year of the Army leaving, Michigan Tech had classes running in its barracks....
The state bought a 1901 Chicago lawyer's cottage on Mackinac Island's West Bluff for $15,000 in 1944, fixed it up with prison labor, and...
Keweenaw County has about 2,000 residents and its seat is Eagle River, population 65. The courthouse there was built in 1866 for $6,578, dressed...
The Huron Islands sit three miles off the Marquette County shore. After the steamer Arctic ran onto them in 1860, Congress paid $17,000 for...
The Ironwood Theatre opened in June 1928 with a Barton pipe organ to accompany silent films. Of roughly 250 Bartons built, it is one...
When the Bay de Noquet Lumber Company cut its last log in July 1951, it advertised the whole town of Nahma for sale. Life...
The Houghton County Traction Company ran electric streetcars through the Copper Country from 1900 until 1932. Its 1909 Ahmeek station is still in business,...
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