A Copper Town of Miners Built a 1,200-Seat Opera House in 1900, and Sarah Bernhardt Came to Play It
The town put a clock tower on it. That is the detail that gives away what Calumet thought it was building in 1900, because...
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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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...
Michigan Cut Both Its State Fairs Loose in 2010. Only the One in Escanaba Is Still Standing.
Michigan has one state fair. It is not in Detroit, it has not been in Detroit since 2009, and the reason it still exists...
A Michigan College Has Been Carving Giant Snow Statues Since 1936, and the Best Ones Go Up Overnight
Somewhere around two in the morning in early February, in a town where the snow gets measured in feet, a few hundred college students...
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,...
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...
Marquette’s Most Photographed Landmark Hasn’t Worked Since 1971. The City Made It the Logo Anyway.
Marquette engineers invented the pocket ore dock. The 1931 Lower Harbor dock loaded 10,103 tons in 92 minutes on its first run, shut down...
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...
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...
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...
Her Husband Died Before the Light Was Finished. She Kept It Alone for 18 Years, Until the Fire.
Mary Terry lit the Sand Point Lighthouse for the first time in 1868, two weeks after her husband died, and kept it alone until...
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...
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