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...
How the U.P. became the U.P.
History & Culture
People, places, traditions, industries, and turning points that shaped Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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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,...
The Douglass House: Houghton's Hotel and Its Chicago Pedigree
Houghton's Douglass House doubled to 100 rooms in 1899, designed by an Adler and Sullivan draftsman and built by Paul Mueller, who later built...
Gwinn: The U.P. Town an Iron Company Designed on Purpose
In 1906 Cleveland-Cliffs president William Gwinn Mather hired Boston landscape architect Warren H. Manning to lay out a company town in Marquette County. He...
Old Main: The Finnish College That Outlasted All the Others
Suomi College opened Old Main in Hancock in 1900, one sandstone building holding dormitory, chapel, library and classrooms. It became the longest-surviving Finnish-founded school...
Hanka Homestead: A Finnish Farm Still Set in the 1920s
A Finnish immigrant family homesteaded 40 acres in Baraga County in 1896 and stayed until 1966. The hewn log buildings, sauna included, still stand...
White City: The U.P. Resort You Reached by Steamboat
In 1908 promoters built a dance pavilion, hotel, and roller coaster at Portage Entry near Jacobsville. Visitors came by steamboat for about fifty cents...
Ardis Furnace: Iron Mountain's Expensive Failure
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...
Quincy Smelter: The Thief Who Wrote Back
In 1923 a former Quincy Smelter worker wrote from Finland confessing he had stolen 16 pounds of copper in 1907. He paid the $2...
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...
Pickle Barrel House: Grand Marais' Strangest Museum
The Teenie Weenies were two inches tall. William Donahey drew them for the newspapers for decades, a civilization of tiny people improvising a life...
Gay Stamp Sands: The Black Beach Threatening Buffalo Reef
There is a beach on the east side of the Keweenaw Peninsula that is the wrong color. It runs black-grey for miles south of...
Au Sable Light Station: The Lighthouse You Walk To
The danger at Au Sable Point is that you cannot see it. A ridge of sandstone runs off the point and continues nearly a...
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