Michigan's Highest Point: Mount Arvon at 1,979 Feet
Mount Arvon took the crown from Mount Curwood by 11 inches in 1982. A modern resurvey just handed it back by about five, and...
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
43 stories from this part of the U.P.
Keweenaw Rocket Range: Michigan's Space Launch Site
From 1964 to 1971, NASA and the University of Michigan fired research rockets off the very tip of the Keweenaw, mostly in winter, over...
Big Annie Clemenc: The Flag-Carrying Heroine of Calumet
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...
The U.P.’s Ancient Copper Miners: 7,000 Years of Old Copper
Native peoples mined the U.P.’s copper as far back as 7,000 years ago, some of the oldest metalworking in the Americas. When the 1840s...
U.P. Rum-Running: Prohibition Bootlegging on the Border
During Prohibition, whiskey poured across the U.P.’s Canadian border, sometimes with the Coast Guard’s help. It starts with a tug called the Arbutus and...
The U.P. Sauna: How Finnish Heritage Built the Sauna Belt
Finnish immigrants in the U.P. often built the sauna before the house and lived in it while they built everything else. Inside the Copper...
Tommyknockers: The Copper Country’s Mine Ghosts
A knock in the rock a mile underground meant something to Copper Country miners. It was the tommyknockers, and the Cornish custom of feeding...
SS Bannockburn: Lake Superior’s Ghost Ship
The SS Bannockburn sailed into a Lake Superior snowstorm in 1902 and vanished with 20 men. The only trace ever found washed up at...
Douglass Houghton: The Man Who Started the Copper Rush
The U.P.’s entire copper boom traces back to one man and one report in 1841. What gets left out is that Douglass Houghton spent...
Ontonagon Boulder: The U.P. Copper the Feds Took
The Ontonagon Boulder, a 3,708-pound sacred copper mass that launched the U.P.'s copper boom, was seized in 1843 and hasn't been displayed since 1996.
Mount Bohemia: The Midwest's Most Extreme Ski Resort
Mount Bohemia on the tip of the Keweenaw is the Midwest's most extreme ski resort: no grooming, no snowmaking, no beginner runs, and the...
Heikki Lunta: The U.P.'s Homemade Snow God
Heikki Lunta is the Upper Peninsula's own snow god, invented in 1970 by a radio DJ to save a snowmobile race. The story behind...
Copper Country: The Boom That Built the U.P.
Years before the forty-niners headed west, a rush for copper built the Keweenaw, and the Quincy Mine still towers over it Everybody knows the...
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