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...
How the U.P. became the U.P.
History & Culture
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Central U.P.
23 stories from this part of the U.P.
The Great Lakes’ Most Hunted Shipwreck Has Been Missing Since 1679
In 1679 a French ship loaded with furs sailed east into Lake Michigan and vanished. Le Griffon is still the most hunted shipwreck on...
The Christmas Tree Ship Left the U.P. in 1912 and Never Arrived. Her Trees Are Still Aboard.
The Rouse Simmons, the Christmas Tree Ship, left Thompson near Manistique in 1912 with 5,500 trees and never reached Chicago. Her trees are still...
An Entire U.P. Town Emptied Out in 1891. The Furnaces Are Still Loaded.
Fayette is the U.P.'s preserved ghost town, an iron company town abandoned in 1891 with charcoal still loaded in its furnaces. Why it died...
Escanaba Had an Actual Pirate. The Feds Chased Him Down With a Gunboat in 1908.
Roaring Dan Seavey, widely called the only man ever arrested for piracy on the Great Lakes, ran his schooner out of Escanaba. The true...
This Toast Is So Hard You Have to Dunk It. Yoopers Have Loved It Since 1928.
Trenary Toast is the U.P.'s rock-hard cinnamon korppu, baked in the tiny town of Trenary since 1928 and dunked in coffee across the peninsula...
There’s a Ghost Forest in the U.P. Where the Trees Never Grew Back
The Kingston Plains near Grand Marais is a U.P. ghost forest: a haunting plain of century-old stumps where logging and fire left a forest...
People Keep Smelling Cigar Smoke in This U.P. Lighthouse. The Keeper Died in 1910.
At Seul Choix Point Lighthouse near Gulliver, visitors and staff keep smelling cigar smoke from a keeper who died in 1910. Inside the U.P.'s...
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...
Thousands Drive Past This Tiny U.P. Town Every Day — Almost Nobody Knows Its Story
If you've ever driven US-41 between Escanaba and Iron Mountain, you've passed right through it. A bend in the highway, a railroad crossing, a...
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