The Barton Company Built About 250 Theatre Organs. Six Are Still Playable. One of Them Is in Ironwood.
The Ironwood Theatre opened in June 1928 with a Barton pipe organ to accompany silent films. Of roughly 250 Bartons built, it is one...
How the U.P. became the U.P.
History & Culture
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Western U.P.
14 stories from this part of the U.P.
He Named the Furnace After His Daughter and Wrote SUCCESS Across the Photograph. Two Years Later He Had Lost His House.
In 1908 John T. Jones patented a way to pull nearly pure iron out of low-grade ore without ever melting it, and built a...
A Car Dealer Put a 52-Foot Statue Over Ironwood in 1964 to Drag Tourists Downtown. The Plaque’s Boast Is Half Wrong.
There is a fifty-two-foot man standing on a hill in Ironwood, and he has been there since June of 1964, looking out over a...
Iron Mountain’s Mine Would Not Stop Flooding. So They Built the Biggest Steam Engine in America, and It Never Left Town.
The Chapin Mine sat under a cedar swamp and flooded relentlessly, so Iron Mountain got a 725-ton answer: the largest steam-driven pumping engine ever...
Sailors Have Been Reporting a Serpent in Lake Superior Since 1894. Meet Pressie.
Lake Superior has its own monster legend. Sailors have reported a serpent off the U.P. shore since 1894, the Anishinaabe told of Mishipeshu long...
Kingsford Charcoal Began With Scrap Wood From a U.P. Sawmill
Ford Motor Company turned scrap wood from its U.P. lumber operations into charcoal briquettes and sold them through auto dealerships. After Ford sold the...
Iron Mountain Almost Buried This Mine in 1993. One Caver Saved a Quarter-Million Bats.
A rumored-bottomless mine shaft in Iron Mountain turned out to hold a quarter-million bats. How one caver kept the city from burying them alive.
The Last Stagecoach Robbery East of the Mississippi Happened in the U.P.
The last stagecoach robbery east of the Mississippi happened near Lake Gogebic in 1889, when Reimund Holzhey, Michigan's Black Bart, killed a vacationing banker.
The Only Ski Flying Hill in the Western Hemisphere Is Hidden Outside Ironwood
Copper Peak outside Ironwood is the only ski flying hill in the Western Hemisphere, a steel tower where skiers flew 518 feet. And a...
The Most Yooper Hat on Earth Was Actually Invented in Wisconsin
The Stormy Kromer is the most Yooper hat there is, but it was born in Wisconsin in 1903. How the iconic cap ended up...
Part of the U.P. Has Been an Hour Behind the Rest of Michigan for 50 Years
Most of Michigan runs on Eastern Time. But four counties in the western U.P. have quietly stayed an hour behind on Central Time for...
A Single Living Thing as Heavy as Three Blue Whales Is Hiding Under the U.P.
In the woods near Crystal Falls lives the Humongous Fungus, one of the oldest and largest living things on Earth In the woods near...
Two Best Friends From Tiny Iron Mountain Grew Up to Conquer College Hoops and the NFL, and They Never Stopped Being Buddies
Tom Izzo and Steve Mariucci were teammates in three sports at Iron Mountain High, roommates at Northern Michigan, and they are still each other's...
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