Tower of History, Sault Ste. Marie: Hours, Cost, History
Sault Ste. Marie's Tower of History was built in 1968 as a shrine to the missionaries, one piece of a church complex that never...
How the U.P. became the U.P.
History & Culture
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Eastern U.P.
14 stories from this part of the U.P.
Grand Hotel Porch: 660 Feet Claimed, 627 Measured
Grand Hotel says 660 feet. The National Park Service says 628. The Historical Society of Michigan says 680. And Guinness has no such category...
Fort Drummond: The British Post That Stayed on Michigan Soil to 1828
A British Army post operated on Drummond Island for thirteen years after the War of 1812. The Treaty of Ghent put it there, a...
Robert Stuart House: Astor's Fur Post on Mackinac Island
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: The Sault Army Post That Became a College
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 Governor's Summer Residence on Mackinac Island
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...
John Johnston House: The Sault Home Behind Hiawatha
An Irish fur trader married the daughter of an Ojibwe war chief in 1792 and built a house at the Sault. Their daughter Jane...
Mission Church: Michigan's Oldest Surviving Church Building
Mission Church on Mackinac Island was finished in 1829 and is Michigan's oldest surviving church building. The island has an older congregation, Ste. Anne's,...
Round Island Light: The Straits' Rescued Lighthouse
If you have ridden a ferry to Mackinac Island, you have seen it: a square red and white lighthouse standing on a stone point...
Point Iroquois Lighthouse: History and Visiting
Nadouenigoning — the place of Iroquois bones — got its name from a battle in 1662. The lighthouse came two centuries later, and the...
Banished Words List: The U.P. Joke That Ran 50 Years
The LSSU Banished Words List has run every January 1 since 1976. A PR man who used to work in newspapers knew exactly why...
Soo Locks: The One Gate Holding Up the U.S. Economy
Lake Superior sits 21 feet above the rest of the Great Lakes, and one 1,200-foot chamber in Sault Ste. Marie carries almost all of...
Hemingway's Two Hearted River Was Really the Fox
Hemingway named his famous story for the Two Hearted River, but his 1919 U.P. fishing trip was on the Fox near Seney. Here is...
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