Things to do / Travel Guide
For an initial introduction to northern Michigan history, take a quick perusal of the region's various locations and their names. Keweenaw and Gogebic are names given by Native American tribes, the first inhabitants of northern Michigan. The names Copper Harbor and Iron Mountain reveal the region's mining history, and the towns of Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace reflect the influence of French missionaries. In fact the word “Michigan” itself encapsulates the rich cultural blend that characterizes the region's history. Michigan is a French pronunciation of the Ojibwe Indian word “misshikama,” which means “big lake.”
Around 30,000 Algonquins inhabited northern Michigan in the early 1600s; Traverse City on the northwestern coast of the Lower Peninsula was considered the land of the Ottawas and Chippewas before the Europeans arrived and settled in the 17th century. In the mid-1800s those industrialists who had depleted forests on the East Coast headed for northern Michigan. Within several years Michigan became the largest lumber-producing state in the country and remained so for nearly six decades. So great was the devastation to northern Michigan's woodlands during this time that by the early 20th century nature preserves were established to protect Michigan's natural beauty.
French Jesuits were the first Europeans to arrive on Mackinac Island, Father Jacques Marquette and missionary Claude Dablon establishing the first mission at St. Ignace in 1668. Soon after, fur trading began to take hold. The British challenged French control of Mackinac Island and received nearly all French land east of the Mississippi with the 1763 Treaty of Paris. The island finally passed into the hands of the Americans in 1814 with the Treaty of Ghent.
Unlike Mackinac Island, the Upper Peninsula was not always coveted land. When Michigan applied for statehood in 1833, Michiganders argued that the Toledo area, now part of northern Ohio, belonged to them. Two years later, when Michigan's plea for Toledo was not granted, Michigan reluctantly received the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize. Michiganders did not initially realize that the acquisition would become a pot of gold. Michigan officially became a state in 1837.
The history of the Upper Peninsula was quickly transformed by the discovery of iron and copper. The western side of the Peninsula began mining iron in the 1870s, when the railroad first reached the region. Production lasted nearly a century and produced literally billions of tons of ore. In 1840, geologist and Detroit Mayor Douglas Houghton found rich copper just beneath the topsoil on the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula, and the Copper Rush began right away. For the subsequent 50 years the Peninsula produced about 75% of U.S. copper used during that time. The mines were abandoned in the 20th century, but large copper deposits exist to this day.
While in northern Michigan major copper and lumber industries no longer predominate the economy as they once did, the region's revenues are primarily derived from potato and dry bean farming; cement-mixing; and mining for natural gas, limestone and gypsum. In the past forty to fifty years, local chambers of commerce have heavily promoted tourism as a way to bolster northern Michigan's economy. The fruits of their labor are yours for the picking - the outdoors has never been so accessible, and there is no region in all the northern states whose nature is so pristine and untouched.
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