The U.S. Built Only Three Steel Dams. One Is in the Keweenaw — and the Wooden Dam It Replaced Outlasted It.
The Redridge Steel Dam is one of only three steel dams ever built in the United States. In 1979 crews cut holes in it,...
How the U.P. became the U.P.
History & Culture
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Keweenaw & Copper Country
40 stories from this part of the U.P.
The Army Built a Fort at the Top of the Keweenaw and Waited for a War That Never Came. That’s Why It Survived.
Fort Wilkins was garrisoned about five years out of twenty-six and never saw a shot fired. It is now the most complete surviving 1840s...
The Man Who Said “Go West” Put His Money North. The Keweenaw Mine He Backed Never Made a Dime.
Horace Greeley was a stockholder and agent of the Delaware Mine in Keweenaw County. It ran forty years, sank five shafts, and never turned...
A Paine Webber Founder Named This Copper Town After Himself. Its Last Shaft House Still Has the Machinery Inside.
William A. Paine of Paine Webber financed the Copper Range Company, which named Painesdale after him and Freda after his daughter. The Champion No....
This Log Village Never Moved. It May Be One of the Oldest Left Standing Anywhere in America.
Old Victoria’s hand-hewn cabins went up in 1899 for copper miners and still sit where they were built. Nothing is behind glass, and the...
The World’s Largest Steam Hoist Is Parked Above Hancock. It Never Got to Do Its Job.
The Nordberg hoist at the Quincy Mine is the largest steam hoisting engine in the world. Quincy built it for a shaft that was...
Two Men From Detroit Bought a Roadside Burger Shack in 1983 and Wintered In It. It’s Now One of the Most Beloved Bakeries in the U.P.
The Jampot monks arrived on the Keweenaw in 1983, moved into an abandoned hamburger stand with no heat or plumbing, and started picking wild...
Locals Call It Copper Island. One Bridge Is the Only Way On — and It’s the Heaviest of Its Kind on Earth.
A ship canal finished in 1874 cut the northern Keweenaw off from the rest of Michigan, and the Portage Lake Lift Bridge is the...
There’s a 30-Foot Ruler Standing Beside US-41 in the Keweenaw. One Winter, the Snow Nearly Topped It.
The Keweenaw snow thermometer north of Mohawk marks a 390.4-inch winter. The stranger part is how that number is measured, and why the real...
Michigan’s Highest Point Keeps Getting Dethroned by Inches. The Latest Culprit May Be Hikers’ Boots.
Mount Arvon took the crown from Mount Curwood by 11 inches in 1982. A modern resurvey just handed it back by about five, and...
Michigan’s First Rocket to Reach Space Didn’t Launch From Florida. It Launched From the End of a Dirt Road Past Copper Harbor.
From 1964 to 1971, NASA and the University of Michigan fired research rockets off the very tip of the Keweenaw, mostly in winter, over...
This U.P. Ghost Town Comes Back to Life One Sunday Every July, and Has Since 1907
Central Mine grew into a Cornish copper town of more than 1,200 people, then emptied as mining ended. Its annual church reunion began in...
How Big Annie Became the Flag-Carrying Face of Calumet’s 1913 Copper Strike
Anna "Big Annie" Clemenc marched daily with an American flag during the nine-month Copper Country strike. Her courage made her one of Michigan labor...
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