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.

11 stories from this part of the U.P.

Aug 23, 20264 min read

The Man Who Found the Gap in the Rockies That the Oregon Trail Ran Through Spent the Next 14 Years Counting Furs 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...

Aug 22, 20264 min read

The Army Left a Fort in Sault Ste. Marie in 1945. Ten Months Later 260 Students Were Sleeping in the Barracks.

Fort Brady guarded the Soo from 1822 to 1944. Within a year of the Army leaving, Michigan Tech had classes running in its barracks....

Aug 22, 20263 min read

Michigan Bought Its Governor a Summer House on Mackinac Island in 1944 for $15,000. He Needed Somewhere to Put the Other Governors.

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...

Aug 20, 20263 min read

The Song of Hiawatha Came Out of a Small House in Sault Ste. Marie. The Woman Who Supplied It Is Only Now Getting the Credit.

An Irish fur trader married the daughter of an Ojibwe war chief in 1792 and built a house at the Sault. Their daughter Jane...

Aug 19, 20263 min read

The Oldest Church Building Still Standing in Michigan Went Up on Mackinac Island in 1829. One Word in That Claim Is Doing a Lot of Work.

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,...

Aug 15, 20263 min read

Every Mackinac Ferry Passes a Lighthouse That Was Left to Fall Into the Straits. A 1972 Storm Nearly Finished It.

If you have ridden a ferry to Mackinac Island, you have seen it: a square red and white lighthouse standing on a stone point...

Aug 4, 20264 min read

The Ojibwe Name for This Point Means “Place of Iroquois Bones.” You Can Climb the Lighthouse Standing on It.

Nadouenigoning — the place of Iroquois bones — got its name from a battle in 1662. The lighthouse came two centuries later, and the...

Jul 27, 20264 min read

Every New Year’s Day, a U.P. University Tells the World Which Words to Stop Using. It Started as a Party Joke in 1975.

The LSSU Banished Words List has run every January 1 since 1976. A PR man who used to work in newspapers knew exactly why...

Jul 26, 20264 min read

Nearly 90% of the Cargo at the Soo Locks Fits Through Exactly One Gate. Homeland Security Calls It America’s Achilles Heel.

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...

Jul 16, 20264 min read

Hemingway Made the U.P.’s Two-Hearted River Famous. He Was Actually Fishing a Different River.

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...

Jul 3, 20263 min read

Lake Superior Nearly Swallowed This Lighthouse. A Retired Couple Refused to Let It.

Crisp Point Lighthouse sits 18 miles down a dirt road on the Shipwreck Coast. It nearly fell into Lake Superior until a retired couple...

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