Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been a mining-oriented place ever since the 18th century, when explorers were astonished to discover enormous chunks of pure copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula, north of Houghton. The iron ore deposits uncovered west of Marquette in the 19th century were so rich that unprocessed ore was shipped directly to blast furnaces […]
Upper Peninsula
Posted inPhil's Column
Teddy Roosevelt knew what Up North is worth
My family and I are observing a time-honored state tradition this week: Like thousands and thousands of Michiganders, I’m Up North with my family … in my case, way up north. Our cabin is on the south shore of Lake Superior, about an hour north of Marquette. When I got up at 6 a.m. the […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Sorry, baby: Delivery docs in short supply Up North
Kristin and Warren Scaife fishtailed along the gravel road that winds south out of Grand Marais, on the rocky shores of Lake Superior. Kristin was in labor, but she couldn’t go to the closest hospital. Helen Newberry Joy Hospital didn’t have a birthing unit. A decade earlier, Kristin’s mother-in-law had found that out when she […]
Posted inQuality of Life
CMU eyes locals to relieve doctor shortage for rural Michigan
Northern Michigan needs to take a gardening approach to solve its shortage of medical services, and grow its own doctors. That’s the advice of Ernie Yoder, dean of the yet-to-open Central Michigan University College of Medicine. The shortage of physicians in the northern half of the Lower Peninsula and in the U.P. causes some rural […]
Posted inSuccess
Michigan firm has bright idea to make camping a sunny experience
Dustin Denkins has fueled his interest in renewable energy into a successful company that makes portable generators. Except he doesn’t use fuel. In 2010, Denkins created Suburb Solar, Inc., which he operates out of his solar-powered, off-the-grid home in Cooks, a small town near Manistique. “Really, it kind of formed because of a lifelong passion […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links
“We do not need to be shoemakers to know if our shoes fit, and just as little have we any need to be professionals to acquire knowledge of matters of universal interest” — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 19th century German philosopher. * Fascinating essay that weaves through the motivations of a young Henry Ford to […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
There's gold – $10, anyway – in them rodents
A mini-boom in one of the oldest businesses in Michigan is offering at least a few Upper Peninsula entrepreneurs a windfall — if you can define a fur trapper as an entrepreneur. (Tramp for hours through freezing swamps to maintain a trapline? Works for me.) The Wall Street Journal visited Calumet in the U.P. to […]
Posted inQuality of Life
Mining boom roils Upper Peninsula
Ron and Carol Henriksen retired to the kind of place most people can only imagine — a riverfront house in an area of the Western Upper Peninsula that is so serene, the dominant sound is often the whisk of trees rustling in the wind. After living in suburband Chicago for three decades, in the path […]
Posted inBusiness Watch
U.P. escapes property value fall
The Upper Peninsula stands above the rest of Michigan on the map — and above the rest of the state when it comes to property value trends. From 2007-11, nine of the top 10 counties seeing a percentage increase in property value (residential, commercial and industrial) came from the part of Michigan north of the […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Beach closures hit record; stormwater runoff blamed
Diana Farris took her family to Young State Park in Charlevoix in late July to try to escape a brutal heat wave that was baking much of the Midwest. Her plan was to spend the hottest part of the day swimming in the lake with her husband and two daughters. Things changed a couple of […]
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