Hello Everyone and greetings from Copper Country. I’m coming to you this week from the Keweenaw Peninsula – the northern peninsula of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This area is known historically for its incredibly rich copper loads which were mined from the 1840s right up until World War II. The towns up here certainly have traces of their former glory, though when the copper industry left, so did most of their economy. Today they depend more heavily on tourism as people come here for mining history and beautiful Lake Superior beaches in the summer and hunting in the fall. It’s a fascinating region and one that I’ve really been enjoying. I actually came up here once or twice as a kid with my dad, so there is some vague familiarity to it, but it’s definitely all new ground for me as an adult. When most of y’all are reading this, I’ll be out on Isle Royale where I’ll be spending three nights in America’s least visited National Park. I’ve been looking forward to going to Isle Royale for a very long time, and I hope to come back with some great photos and stories to tell. Since I’ll be catching the ferry bright and early Wednesday morning, I’m going to finish up with this week’s This Week post a little earlier than usual. That being said, even with a short week, I’ve certainly seen and done a lot so let me tell you what I’ve been up to.
When I left you all last week I was on my way out of Munising after two wonderful days in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I headed south from there to Manistique, a pretty little town on the northern shores of Lake Michigan. I got there just before it started to rain and it rained through the night. I spent the night at the casino just outside of town and won about $50 playing quarter keno.
Thursday morning was gloomy so I was in no big rush to get up and moving. When I did I went down to the beach to eat my breakfast and then wandered out on the breakwater to see the Manistique Lighthouse, which is still active. Dark red in color, the lighthouse really stood out against the grey background of the sky. I took a quick dip in the lake which woke me up more than my coffee did and then headed out of town. I ventured up to Palms Book State Park, home of Kitch-iti-kipi Spring, the largest of Michigan’s freshwater springs. Big Spring, as it is also called, pumps out 10,000 gallons of water every minute at a constant 45 degrees Fahrenheit and is about 40’ deep in the center. The water is a beautiful greenish turquoise and was really quite something to see. The park loads passengers onto a huge raft with a glass floor in the middle so people can look down into the spring, but there were so many people there in line that I decided to pass. I enjoyed the view from the shore and will wait for the raft adventure for another time.
From there I headed out onto the Garden Peninsula which juts out into Lake Michigan and protects Big Bay de Noc on its western side. About 20 miles down on the bay side is Fayette State Historic Park which I thought was really cool. During the second half of the 19th century, Fayette was an iron smelting town, turning raw iron ore into pig iron in its giant furnace. The town attracted immigrants to work at the furnace and in its heyday had a population of around 500. When the furnace shut down in the 1890s, the town was all but abandoned except for the hotel which operated until World War II and the post office which served the area until the 1950s. The town was eventually acquired by the state of Michigan and now serves as an historic site interpreting life in a 19th century company town. Some of the old buildings are still standing, some have been restored or rebuilt altogether while some are nothing but ruins. By the time I reached Fayette, the weather had cleared and it turned into a beautiful day – perfect to explore this old town site. I thought it was a really interesting place and definitely worth a visit.
I left there late in the afternoon and continued on to Escanaba on the shores of Little Bay de Noc. Escanaba is a neat little city that has probably seen better days, but it was clean and pleasant and I enjoyed wandering down by the lighthouse and marina for a while. The wind had really picked up through the day and was sending whitecaps across the bay. I stopped for a look at the old Queen Anne Revival style House of Ludington Hotel, which has definitely seen better days but is still a beautiful old hotel, and then called it an early night as I had big plans for Friday.
Friday morning I was up and off to the Alger County Fair. Alger County is a small, rural county on the northern side of the Upper Peninsula and I was excited to see what their county fair had to offer. I love fairs, but I usually go in the evening for food and music with rides twisting and turning in the background – more the nighttime experience. I got to this fair right as it was opening in the morning and the ladies at the gate seemed a little surprised to see me. I went and watched the livestock competitions – pigs, sheep and goats were on display while I was there. I really enjoyed watching the young people, some probably only 4-5 years old, displaying their animals in the ring. Depending on the category, sometimes it was the animal being judged while sometimes it was the person handling the animal. The lady doing the judging was very knowledgeable about these animals and I enjoyed listening to her comments. I also went into the building where there were prize-winning pies and quilts and handicrafts which were also very cool to see. I’m glad there are still places where people can share the things they are passionate about and get some recognition for it. I had an Italian sausage and some hot mini-donuts and then hit the road.
After a quick stop at the beautiful Laughing Whitefish Falls, I headed on to Marquette for their annual Blueberry Festival. There were street vendors and live music and quite a few ways to enjoy the local blueberries – from blueberry pie to blueberry beer to blueberry soap. I enjoyed wandering around the festival for a while and then headed out to check out the lighthouse which sat high up on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior. There are also two old ore docks in Marquette – massive structures which dramatically sped up the process of loading ore onto cargo ships and are really quite something to see. Later on I decided to give Lagniappe, the little New Orleans style restaurant in town, a try. I was hesitant, being so far from New Orleans, but good reviews and curiosity said that I should give it a go. I was really glad that I did. They had Abita beer, an excellent shrimp creole and a delicious bread pudding for dessert. I left feeling pretty satisfied with my decision and drifted off contentedly to sleep.
On Saturday morning I went out to the little Presque Island Park just north of Marquette and enjoyed their quiet scenic drive around the island with views out over Lake Superior. I had my breakfast on the shore of the lake while I read more about the loss of the ship Edmund Fitzgerald. Then I went for a dip in the lake and headed on out of town. I made my way north and west and into the Keweenaw Peninsula and all the way to Houghton on the Keweenaw River. Houghton is a cool little city with some beautiful old buildings and a wonderful lift bridge connecting it to the city of Hancock right across the river. I wandered for a while and took some photos and then stopped into the Keweenaw Brewery for a couple of beers. Then I went down to the river to enjoy a delicious Cornish Pasty (a meat and potato pie in crust – similar to an empanada or a crawfish pie) while watching the lift bridge go up and down. It was a pleasant way to end the day.
First thing Sunday morning I headed across the river to Hancock and up to the old Quincy Mine. This mine has been closed to copper mining since 1945, but has operated as a tourist facility for many years – providing a look at the history of mining in the area and at that site in particular. I found the 2 hour tour to be fascinating as we got a look at the world’s largest mining hoist, traveled by cog-rail down to a mining tunnel and then into the mine itself. The Quincy Mine once went to a depth of over 9,200 feet and employed 2,100 people to keep it running 24/7. The mining company employed mostly immigrants, and would even pay the travel costs for highly skilled Cornish miners and their families to come to Michigan (hence the introduction of the Cornish pasty). The real cost though, was in the toll it took on these young men. This particular mine had a 33% casualty rate meaning one in three miners who went into the mine either never came out at all or sustained career-ending injuries while underground. The miners staged a major strike in 1913, but gained very little ground as there were plenty of new immigrants in that era who would gladly take these well-paying jobs regardless of the danger involved. The site also told of the substandard education the mining company provided for the children there, helping create the next generation of miners. This hit all too close to home for me as I saw too many big corporations sponsoring schools in my time as a teacher which weren’t at all interested in giving kids a great education but rather about teaching them to wear a uniform, stand in line and say “yes sir” and “yes ma’am”. In these schools, children were learning menial skills they could use to pass tests instead of how to think for themselves and develop into well rounded and educated adults. My time at this mine definitely got me thinking.
After a few hours at the mine, I headed out to Calamut a little further north. I stopped on the way and picked up some smoked whitefish and Finnish crisp-bread (plenty of Finns in those mines back in the day) and had a wonderful lunch in the park. Then I wandered around town, taking in the mining history there and some of the grand old buildings still standing around town. From there I headed out to McCain State Park for a dip in Lake Superior and a little time reading on the beach before returning to Houghton for the night.
I took off Monday morning and headed further north into the Keweenaw Peninsula. I made a few stops to take some photos of the lighthouses as I went and one for a quick swim at Eagle River, but mostly I made tracks to get up to Copper Harbor. Copper Harbor is the end of the road here in Michigan, surrounded on three sides by Lake Superior. It will be my jumping off point for Isle Royale and I wanted to get there early enough to sort some things out and get my backpack packed better than I have before since I will be covering a lot more distance on these hikes. I got a campsite at Fort Wilkens State Park which turned out to be a very nice campsite and a very cool fort. Built in peacetime during the copper rush, it was there to mediate between the miners and the native Ojibwe. After two years, the soldiers were needed to fight in the Mexican-American War and the fort was all but abandoned. Many of the original buildings remain and it was one of the better restored and outfitted interpretive forts I’ve been to.
Today I slept in a bit and enjoyed a few cups of coffee with the campground hosts whose daughter is applying to go teach in Japan next year. Then I finished my packing for tomorrow and took a stroll around town to check it out. I have been here before, but it’s been over 30 years and I don’t remember much from my last visit. I do remember that it was the first place I ever saw a bear in the “wild” as my dad took us to see them at the town dump. There were dozens of cars there as this was a normal thing to do back then (they used to do the same thing in Yellowstone and Yosemite). From what I do remember of town, it looks about the same which is actually really cool. Sadly there’s a tremendous amount of haze in the area from the fires burning out west. The air quality isn’t great and it’s definitely frustrating trying to take photos. I was chatting with a man in a shop today about it and I said I know that those out west have it worse so I’m not complaining. He used a great phrase: “I used to complain that I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet”. There’s a lot of truth in that. I spent the afternoon cruising around the area and ended up in the little old ghost town of Central which grew up around Central Mine in the early days of copper mining in the region. At one time there were 1250 people in Central, but now it’s a shell of its former self. The county has done a good job of restoring and opening the buildings that are left to the public and even though I was the only one there, I appreciate it. And believe it or not, it’s got the best phone service I’ve had in weeks, so I’m finishing this post up right here in the ghost town.
As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m off for a few days on Isle Royale this week to round out my time in Michigan. When I return on Saturday evening, it will be time for me to start making my way towards Wisconsin. I hope to stop in Iron River on my way, a town my paternal grandfather spent some of his childhood in. From there, I’ve got a little less than a week to get down to Milwaukee to catch the end of the Wisconsin State Fair – a fair I went to often as a child (my dad is from Milwaukee) and am quite looking forward to. I’ll be zipping down the Lake Michigan side of the state to get there and then turning back north again to see the rest of the state. I have family in West Bend, just north of Milwaukee, who I’m looking forward to seeing while I’m in the area. I don’t know where exactly I’ll be at this point next week, but it will almost certainly be across the border and into the Dairy State. I’ve had a great time in Michigan, but it’s definitely time for me to be moving on. I hope you’ll come back next week to read about what I’ve been up to. Until then, have fun out there and I hope you all enjoy this last month of summer as much as I plan to. Take care and thanks for reading.
-Mike
The Lift Bridge over the Keweenaw River