The Deadliest Fire in American History Reached Into the U.P. the Same Night Chicago Burned
On October 8, 1871, while Chicago burned, the deadliest wildfire in American history jumped the Menominee River into the U.P. and took...
Read storyTopic
U.P. history - Page 2
Every Yooper Hub story tagged U.P. history, newest first, with its sources and corrections intact.
43 stories with this topic
Explore by place, subject and season13 stories on this page. Page 2 of 4.
Continue browsing
U.P. history stories, newest first
The U.P.’s Grand Island Was Once a Private Game Preserve Stocked With Caribou and Antelope
Around 1900 the president of Cleveland-Cliffs turned Grand Island into a private ark, stocking elk, caribou, and antelope behind armed guards. Lake...
Read story
Kingsford Charcoal Began With Scrap Wood From a U.P. Sawmill
Ford Motor Company turned scrap wood from its U.P. lumber operations into charcoal briquettes and sold them through auto dealerships. After Ford...
Read story
Hemingway Made the U.P.’s Two-Hearted River Famous. He Was Actually Fishing a Different River.
Hemingway named his famous story for the Two Hearted River, but his 1919 U.P. fishing trip was on the Fox near Seney....
Read story
People Were Mining the U.P.’s Copper 7,000 Years Ago, and the 1840s Prospectors Found Their Pits
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...
Read story
A Whiskey Smuggler Got Caught in the U.P. After the Crew Drank Too Much of Their Own Cargo
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...
Read story
The Great Lakes’ Most Hunted Shipwreck Has Been Missing Since 1679
In 1679 a French ship loaded with furs sailed east into Lake Michigan and vanished. Le Griffon is still the most hunted...
Read story
He Started the U.P.’s Copper Rush. Then He Warned Everyone to Stay Away.
The U.P.’s entire copper boom traces back to one man and one report in 1841. What gets left out is that Douglass...
Read story
Iron Mountain Almost Buried This Mine in 1993. One Caver Saved a Quarter-Million Bats.
A rumored-bottomless mine shaft in Iron Mountain turned out to hold a quarter-million bats. How one caver kept the city from burying...
Read story
Everyone Thinks the U.P. Is Copper and Iron. In 1880 a Druggist Found Gold.
Everyone remembers U.P. copper and iron. Almost nobody remembers the druggist who struck gold near Ishpeming in 1880 and built Michigan’s only...
Read story
The Christmas Tree Ship Left the U.P. in 1912 and Never Arrived. Her Trees Are Still Aboard.
The Rouse Simmons, the Christmas Tree Ship, left Thompson near Manistique in 1912 with 5,500 trees and never reached Chicago. Her trees...
Read story
He Greeted Marquette’s Founders in 1849. The City Buried Him Like a King in 1902.
Chief Charles Kawbawgam welcomed Marquette's founders ashore in 1849, presided as the last local Ojibwe chief, and rests at Presque Isle under...
Read story
An Entire U.P. Town Emptied Out in 1891. The Furnaces Are Still Loaded.
Fayette is the U.P.'s preserved ghost town, an iron company town abandoned in 1891 with charcoal still loaded in its furnaces. Why...
Read story