Land, water, weather, and the road there

Outdoors & Travel

Upper Peninsula wild places, practical travel context, outdoor traditions, and the stories behind the view.

Everything in this lane

Newest first. Narrow it to the part of the U.P. you care about.

Jul 26, 20264 min read

A Retired Firefighter Near Newberry Has Bottle-Fed 48 of His 50 Bears Himself. It Started With One Orphaned Cub.

Dean Oswald dreamed of having a bear since childhood. Forty years, 240 acres, and one 880-pound legend later, Oswald’s Bear Ranch near Newberry is...

Jul 25, 20263 min read

Manistique Built a Road Four Feet Below the River It Crosses. Ripley’s Put It in “Believe It or Not.”

A paper mill needed water power, a dam would have flooded the town, so Manistique raised the river instead. The Siphon Bridge carried Main...

Jul 25, 20263 min read

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...

Jul 25, 20263 min read

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...

Jul 24, 20264 min read

Iron Mountain’s Mine Would Not Stop Flooding. So They Built the Biggest Steam Engine in America, and It Never Left Town.

The Chapin Mine sat under a cedar swamp and flooded relentlessly, so Iron Mountain got a 725-ton answer: the largest steam-driven pumping engine ever...

Jul 24, 20263 min read

Michigan’s Official Gem Is Found Nowhere on Earth but the U.P., and Its Namesake Island Is Off-Limits

Chlorastrolite, the Isle Royale greenstone, exists only on Isle Royale and the Keweenaw. Collecting on the island is illegal, a senator compared it to...

Jul 18, 20263 min read

Copper Harbor’s Giant Pines Were Sold to Loggers. The Neighbors Bought Them Back.

Copper Harbor’s giant white pines were sold to loggers, until a 1970 newspaper column sparked a Save the Pines campaign. Neighbors and even schoolkids...

Jul 5, 20263 min read

Drivers Cross 147 Feet of Thin Air on US-2. Under the Bridge, a Door Says T. Troll.

The Cut River Bridge carries US-2 across 147 feet of thin air, one of only two like it in Michigan, with a troll door...

Jul 5, 20263 min read

Michigan’s Prettiest Waterfall Never Runs Dry. A Power Company Keeps the Tap On.

Bond Falls near Paulding may be Michigan's prettiest waterfall, and its famously steady flow has a secret: a power company dam keeps the tap...

Jul 4, 20263 min read

The Tree on Michigan’s Quarter Is Alive Because Its Roots Refuse to Let Go

The lone pine on Chapel Rock at Pictured Rocks lives on a bare sandstone pillar, fed by roots stretched across open air since its...

Jul 3, 20263 min read

The Rocks Yoopers Hunt on Lake Superior Beaches Are a Billion Years Old

Lake Superior agates are the U.P.'s favorite beach treasure, banded stones about a billion years old. How they formed, and how to spot one...

Jul 3, 20264 min read

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...

Jun 27, 20264 min read

The World’s Largest Log Cabin Is Hidden on the Lake Superior Shore

The largest log cabin in the world sits on Lake Superior near Marquette. The man who built Granot Loma also helped finance the Empire...

Load more stories

Stories appear newest first and keep their original dates, corrections, and source records. Open the outdoors collection Corrections policy