The Superior State? 50 years ago, the UP tried to break from Michigan

After years of statehood talks, Marquette and Iron Mountain voters rejected a 1975 proposal to create the ‘State of Superior.’
The push was fueled by Upper Peninsula concerns over Michigan government support after mining industry collapse
The idea of UP statehood resurfaced briefly in 2012 amid education funding frustrations.

Fifty years ago, residents in the Upper Peninsula faced a choice that could have rewritten the map: Whether to break away from Michigan and form the nation’s 51st state.

In a region where some root for the Green Bay Packers over the Detroit Lions, Wisconsin has often felt a little closer than Lansing, fostering a centuries-old idea that the UP might be better off forming its own state.

The question of Michigan secession went before Marquette and Iron Mountain voters in November of 1975, when they ultimately rejected a ballot proposal, ending the latest and last serious attempt at creating the “State of Superior.”

About 29% of Marquette voters had backed the split, and about 32% in Iron Mountain, according to a New York Times article from the time.

While many yoopers continue to take pride in the region’s independent streak, tensions between the peninsulas came to a head five decades ago due to unique circumstances, said Dan Truckey, director of the Beaumier UP Heritage Center at Northern Michigan University.

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The UP is rich in minerals such as iron ore, copper and nickel — resources that helped fuel Michigan’s industrial growth during the mid-19th century. But after World War II, mining operations slowly declined in the region as competition grew and prices for minerals decreased.

“Almost all of the mining operations in the UP had closed down,” Truckey told Bridge Michigan. “By 1975, there were only two operational mines in the UP. Financially, it was a strapped area and a lot of people in the UP felt that the state wasn’t supporting them enough.”

During that time, miners who were struggling supported secession efforts to combat environmental laws they felt were unjust, historian Camden Burd wrote in “The Liberal Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest.”

“Supporters of the new ‘State of Superior’ explicitly denounced the Clean Air Act, the National Wilderness Preservation System, and the anti-economic development rhetoric of the more radical wings of the environmental movement,” he wrote.

UP secession map — The idea of Upper Peninsula statehood dates back to the 1800s. Residents in the UP and northern Wisconsin both felt an economic and cultural divide from their state capitols. (Courtesy of the U.P Heritage Center)

Another reason people called for secession in the 1960s and 1970s was the Mackinac Bridge. When it opened in 1957, it linked Michigan’s two peninsulas, and some residents saw that connection as a threat to their culture.

“There were a lot of people in the UP that were really concerned that that would really change the culture here, that we would be overrun by the people in the lower peninsula and that we could become just like the lower peninsula,” Truckey said.

Michigan had been awarded the UP by Congress after the Toledo War ended in 1836. While gaining the mineral-rich region was considered a win for Michigan, residents in the UP argued that the capitals of Michigan and neighboring state, Wisconsin, were too far from the remote regions.

At the time, the most reliable form of transportation between the two peninsulas was the Michigan State Ferry System. But once the Mackinac Bridge opened, it became a symbol of unity.

A few years after the failed secession vote in Iron and Marquette County, the term ‘yoopers’ – derived from ‘UP-ers’ — was coined, with the earliest known publication coming in the Escanaba Daily Press in 1979.

“We have a much stronger identity now as ‘yoopers’ than we did in 1957 when they opened the bridge,” Turkey said. “So I think it had the opposite effect.”

A long push

The idea of creating a “Superior” — or separate — UP state was not new in 1975. Proposals to separate from the rest of Michigan had surfaced multiple times, some dating back to the 1800s.

“At times it has been a serious movement, and at other times a novelty. But whatever has prompted sporadic efforts at statehood, the issue always has been a popular one,” James Carter wrote in his 2011 book “Superior, a state for the North Country.”“There is probably no other proposal which has been discussed as long or as earnestly throughout the North Country.”

51st state up flyer — In 1975, some Yoopers wanted to break away from Michigan to form a 51st state (Courtesy of the U.P Heritage Center)

In 1827, Austin Wing, Michigan’s territorial delegate to Congress, wrote a bill for statehood that passed the US House but died in the Senate. It was supported by Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass, who wanted to govern the potential state.

The effort continued the following decade, when another bill for statehood was introduced in 1830 but didn’t include the eastern part of the UP — an attempt to gain support from the Lower Peninsula. Then, in 1835, there was another attempt for the region to gain statehood, which included the original boundaries but also failed.

More than a century later, state Rep. Dominic Jacobetti helped lead the push for UP statehood, introducing legislation and asking then-Attorney General Frank Kelley for a legal opinion on the viability.

“He printed t-shirts and posters and all of this stuff … but essentially it wasn’t going to happen, he knew it wasn’t going to happen,” Truckey said of Jacobetti, who became the longest serving member of the state Legislature and was committed to funding projects in the UP until his death in 1994.

“It was more about drawing attention to the needs of the UP and for the state to support it economically and help its infrastructure and that’s exactly what happened.”

The 51st state?

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to admit a state into the union, but a new state can’t be formed within another state, nor can two states become one.

Over the past 50 years, the idea of UP statehood has surfaced only sporadically and rarely seriously.

In 2012, the Marquette County Board of Commissioners briefly discussed statehood again amid frustration over state aid for schools. In 2023, the Libertarian Party of Michigan published a “case for secession” essay.

A long-shot gubernatorial hopeful, meanwhile, has proposed appointing a separate lieutenant governor for the UP to treat it independently.

The 1975 push failed, in part, due to concerns over the financial impact and the UP’s ability to fund its own services.

“I fear that statehood… would place a tremendous tax burden on Northern Michigan citizens,” U.S. Rep. Philip E. Ruppe of Houghton said in 1975, according to Carter’s book. Ruppe noted the UP “benefitted from a number of state programs and services funded by a large amount of revenue raised from downstate areas,” Ruppe wrote.

While it wouldn’t have been the smallest state in terms of square miles, the U.P would have been the least populated. At about 16,500 square miles, it’s larger than nine states, including New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut. But only about 301,600 residents live in the UP, accounting for about 3% of the state’s population, according to the 2020 census.

“The reality that people understood is that the UP on its own could not support the infrastructure that the state was providing the UP,” Truckey said.