The Edmund Fitzgerald was christened on June 8, 1958 where more than 15,000 people attended its launch. The ship made regular routes between Duluth, Detroit, Toledo and other ports carrying up to 24,000 tons of taconite.
On Sunday, November 9, 1975 the Edmund Fitzgerald left from Superior, Wisconsin heading for Zug Island, near Detroit. The following day across Lake Superior there were reported winds of 60mph and waves of 35 feet. The Soo Locks had already closed. The Arthur M. Anderson had been trailing the Fitzgerald across Lake Superior and would eventually lose radio contact with the Fitzgerald.
Outside of the Midwest, The Upper Peninsula seems to a mystery to much of the U.S. population, and surprisingly, even to some of those in the Midwest. It’s quite common to think that the Upper Peninsula is part of Canada and sometimes textbooks don’t know what state the Upper Peninsula is in. More than anything, most people assume that the Upper Peninsula is part of Wisconsin.
Since 1979, there have been 174 hockey games played between Michigan Tech University and Northern Michigan University, making it one of the most storied rivalries in college hockey.
For much of their history, Tech and Northern were in different conferences. Tech has long been in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). Northern on the other hand has predominantly played in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA).
Today is International Women’s Day, which is always a good opportunity to thank your mom (love you, Mom!), but, as she and many others have taught me, women do more than mother – and we should all be grateful to the scientists, athletes, writers, and all around-game changers who haven’t been given their props, but who have helped keep the world running nonetheless.
What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than offer a list of amazing Upper Peninsula women? Here’s a few you may know and a few you may be surprised to see.
Today is Michigan’s 186th birthday! To celebrate we’re giving a bit of history lesson. We hope you’ll learn as much we did putting this together.
We’ve compiled highlights from every year since Michigan’s admittance into statehood in 1837. But as we know, this just a small piece of Michigan’s rich history. Please share your additions in the comments below.
Things to do in Michigan today…
Eat a pasty, or a coney dog
Visit Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, or Lake Erie
Visit Presque Isle, or Belle Isle
Drive across the International Bridge, or the Ambassador Bridge, or the Mackinac Bridge, or the Portage Lift Bridge
Cheer for the Huskies, or the Wolverines, or the Wildcats, or the Spartans
Watch Escanaba In Da Moonlight, or 8 Mile.
Stay awesome, keep exploring, and do all the fun things in Michigan.
Throughout the history of Major League Baseball, there haven’t been many players who grew up in the Upper Peninsula. However, there have been fourteen MLB players born or raised in the Upper Peninsula, and that’s pretty impressive! Especially considering how short summers can be. As you can see four of them were born in before 1900. The most recent player to see MLB action is Mike Bordick who played 102 games with the Toronto Blue Jays as recently as the 2003 season. And to much acclaim, Kevin Tapani is the only member of the list to win a World Series.
There is a new show on Adult Swim titled, Joe Pera Talks With You. It came to my attention that the show is set in the Upper Peninsula. In the first episode, Joe Pera Shows Your Iron, Joe dutifully talks the viewers through the history of iron mining in the Upper Peninsula and shows the impact it has on the economy. There is a montage of Joe holding copper in one hand, iron in the other, in which he visits the black rocks at Presque Isle, the Superior Dome, the old ore dock, and downtown Marquette. You can even see the UPSCo. building in one shot before we opened its doors.
Without doubt, across the Upper Peninsula today there are people talking about the legend of the St. Patrick’s Day snowstorm. Though sometimes a couple weeks early or late, many Yoopers insist that the St. Patrick’s Day snowstorm is an annual occurrence.
We looked to local weather expert, the Upper Peninsula’s favorite meteorologist, the one, the only, Karl Bohnak.
According to Karl Bohnak’s book, So Cold a Sky, the myth of a March 17th storm goes back to at least 1870. Unfortunately, National Weather Service records only go back to 1949. From So Cold a Sky …
What do grasshoppers, grapes, and Finns have to do with one another?
Many decades ago a Finnish-American in Minnesota, named Richard Mattson, was working at Ketola’s Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota. It was here that a piece of Finnish-American folklore found its beginnings.
Richard’s coworker, Gene McCavic had a lot of questions. He began to badger Richard, asking “Why do the Finnish not have a an equivalent to the Irish Saint Patrick?”
A couple weekends ago, my friend Sara and I, fellow nostalgia addicts and antique aficionados, spent hours at Lambs’ Gate, an antique store in Old Town, Lansing. We spent more than an hour hunched over a large crate propped up to waist-level that was full of old postcards. We marveled over the dates and handwriting and content on them and read the most interesting/funny/illegible ones out loud to each other. The postcards were conveniently sorted by region, with Michigan having its own section. Naturally, that was where I concentrated my search efforts.
Whether you’re reading up on the history of the Upper Peninsula or looking for some new places to explore this year, it’s always a good idea to have a few Upper Peninsula books lying around. We’ve been pouring over our copy of the Upper Peninsula Almanac by Ron Jolly and Karl Bohnak. It is a must-have book for anyone with a love for the Upper Peninsula. We keeping a copy in our office where we pick it up for a few pages of time to learn some new Upper Peninsula trivia and history.
Two wrongs may make a right, but two meteor_wrongs_ certainly don’t make a meteo_rite_.
And here’s why.
Well, first — let’s rewind.
To one day in 1889 when a six-year old boy named Peter Peterson (yes, this was actually his name) was helping his father clear rocks from a field near Iron River.
Things were proceeding as usual (I’m assuming) when little Peter noticed that one rock was much heavier than others of the same size. He showed the 3.13-pound whopper to his father who told him to toss it like the others.
Each day we check the web stats of U.P. Supply Co and what people have been Googling to bring traffic to the site. We thought we could make good use of this information by answering all of the “how” questions that have landed people on U.P. Supply Co. All of the questions below are verbatim searches people used on Google to land on U.P. Supply Co.
For those of you from outside of the Upper Peninsula, here’s a map of Christmas. Christmas is located northwest of Munising, about a 5-minute drive along M-28.
The town of Christmas has booming population of about 400. Ok, perhaps it’s not “booming”, but on a business night at the Kewadin Casino (by far the largest building in town that looks kind of strange and out of place in such a small town) the population probably grows by some pretty significant percentage points.
The Mackinac Bridge has become a sort of personal symbol for me in recent years, representing how my heart is divided between my homeland of the U.P. and my current home in Grand Rapids. It seems I still have the same excitement crossing the bridge today as I did when I was a child. I grew up crossing the Mackinac Bridge for the occasional trip to lower Michigan or Indiana, but I also grew up watching Full House, a now guilty-pleasure TV show set in San Francisco, with an opening sequence that often made me wonder how great the Golden Gate really was when compared with the Mighty Mac.
Recently, while pondering possible material for the Yooper Steez blog, I found myself wondering what the oldest building in Michigan might be. I was pleased to discover through Google search that I had already stood inside the building holding this title during my latest trip to Mackinac Island. Built in 1780, the Officers’ Stone Quarters in Fort Mackinac is the oldest surviving building in Michigan.
Officials at Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary have spoken, the word Yooper will now appear in the dictionary. The news was announced on Monday, March 24, 2014. We owe a big thanks and about 67 pasties (call us Steve!) to Steve Parks of Gladstone. For ten years he has been campaigning to have Yooper added to the dictionary after a discussion that ensued while playing Yooper during a friendly game of Scrabble. Success! Steve will join a cast of people who have contributed to the history of the word Yooper.
Recently, we were fortunate to catch up with Weldy Olson, a Marquette native who was a member of the USA gold medal winning team at the 1960 Winter Olympics. Before we share a little more about Weldy (gotta love that nickname!), let’s take a brief look at some hockey history in the Upper Peninsula.
Hockey is a long standing tradition in the Upper Peninsula. A tradition rich in history, and the birthplace of professional hockey in the United States, that started in 1903 with the Portage Lakers. Just weeks ago Calumet celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Calumet Colosseum, with a rivalry that dates back before indoor hockey even existed.
There are few rivalries in sports that date back as far as the Calumet Wolverines and Portage Lake Pioneers. The claim has been made that it’s the oldest rivalry in hockey, and we’re sticking to that belief. That rivalry is so old that it existed before there was a place to play hockey indoors. Local hockey legends have made their mark. Countless teeth have been lost. And there have likely been as many Gordie Howe hat tricks as scoring hatt ricks.
This post was contributed by Lucy Hough, a freelance writer from Marquette. She’s also a master’s student at NMU. You can follow her on Twitter at @yes_lucy. Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech archives.
From an early age, we learn that to needlessly yell “Fire!” in a public space is dangerous, and, more, against the law. This law has groundings in the tragic incident that happened in Calumet in 1913, 100 years ago this December. The Italian Hall was having a children’s party on Christmas Eve when someone came in the front door and shouted “fire!” Predictably, people ran to the doors but the chaos made it difficult for people to escape the building. Seventy-three people died, many of them children. There are some accounts of the event that the doors opened inward and people were crushed as others tried to exit, but some historians have refuted that idea.
“The ill-fated Henry B Smith that was sunk in the Big Storm of November 1913. She is shown in Ashtabula Harbor in this 1910 postcard,” Boat Nerd. The Henry B Smith took all 25 lives on board, sinking off shore near Marquette, MI. The ship has never been found, and is estimated to be 20-30 miles north of Marquette in deep waters.
It’s been over 100 years since this epic storm blew across the Great Lakes. Between November 6 and November 11, 1913 marked the deadliest storm in the history of the Great Lakes. This natural disaster known as the “Big Blow, “Freshwater Fury”, or “White Hurricane” took the lives of more than 250 people between Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie.
Since 2002 Northern Michigan University and Michigan Tech University have battled for the Miner’s Cup Trophy, awarded to the annual winner of the historic Upper Peninsula football rivalry.
Michigan Tech won the inaugural Miner’s Cup in 2002 and currently holds an 9-3 record over Northern Michigan. The traveling trophy has stayed at MTU since 2009 when NMU last won it, the longest winning streak for the annual trophy.
Though the Miner’s Cup has only been awarded since 2002, the rivalry dates back 1920. The two teams have met a total of 87 times since. As of Michigan Tech’s 2013 victory, the series is split even, 41-41-5 record.
The State of Michigan has seen 47 governors since 1837 when Michigan was admitted as the 26th state of the union. Of those 47 governors only one has been a Yooper.
Chase Osborn became the 27th Governor of Michigan in 1911 and to this day remains the only Michigan Governor from the Upper Peninsula.
Governor Osborn was born January 22, 1860 in Huntington County, Indiana. While in his 20s Osborn moved to Sault Ste Marie where he operated The Sault News and in 1889 became the postmaster of Sault Ste Marie.
Though not as prolific as Ancient Greece or Rome, the Upper Peninsula does boast its own mythology. Maybe we don’t have a slew of gods and goddesses, but we do have Heikki Lunta, the Finnish snow god.
The name is now often associated with an annual winter festival in Negaunee, but it’s creation is linked to an annual snowmobile race held in Atlantic Mine. In 1970, the U.P. was having one of those winters where it doesn’t snow as much as we might like, which was threatening the success of the race. To increase support, radio salesman David Riutta wrote the “Heikki Lunta Snow Dance Song.” This song created the fictional Heikki Lunta as a creature that lived in the backwoods of Tapiola, twenty miles south of Houghton, and would perform a dance to make it snow. The song went on U.P. airwaves and was a success, and incidentally it did snow that year, causing the snowmobile race to be postponed on account of too much snow.
It’s widely known in the area that the U.P. has the largest Finnish population outside of Finland, with 16 percent of Yoopers having Finnish heritage. For this reason, it makes sense for FinnFest 2013 to be held in the Copper Country.
The Keweenaw wasn’t the first place Finnish Americans called home. Finns came to the U.S. long before coming to Michigan with the founding of Delaware in 1683. In a more modern wave of immigration, the first Finns came to the Keweenaw Peninsula in 1864, and then spread to Marquette County and the Gogebic Range within the next ten years.
There are a lot of reasons why the FinnFest USA 2013 organizing committee started planning three years ago. The 5-day event which takes place in the Copper Country from June 19-23 is more than just a fun celebration. It’s a cultural phenomenon, it’s a lifeline and it’s coming home, for some. That’s why the event spans a myriad topics and an entire region of the Upper Peninsula.
History
This region has an incredible amount of Finnish-American history that celebrates an important anniversary this year. A hundred years ago, labor disputes in the mining towns changed how immigrants, including Finnish-Americans, were treated. Also 100 years ago, 73 people died in the Italian Hall Disaster, 55 of whom were Finnish-American. These historic events, which took place here in the Keweenaw Peninsula, are a part of what make Finnish-American events, where these people come together and celebrate their culture, especially meaningful. Finnish-Americans share this common history and, with the 100th anniversary, it makes sense that FinnFest 2013 would take place in this region.
Today, Google is featuring a Google Doodle paying tribute to the legendary graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass. What does Saul Bass have to do with the Upper Peninsula? One of his most famous title sequences (above) was for the film Anatomy of a Murder.
In addition to Anatomy of a Murder director Otto Preminger, Saul Bass also worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese, just to name a few. In addition to his famous title sequences he created several iconic logos for Continental Airlines, United Way, Quaker Oats and AT&T.
Over two years ago I posted a blog about the origin and first use of the word Yooper. My source for the blog was Professor Richard W. Bailey from the University of Michigan who did a more extensive write-up on the history of Yooper. It cites a contest that was held August 5, 1979 by the Escanaba Daily Press. Brett Crawford of Bark River was credited with submitting Yooper.
Recently an article titled “Michigan’s Upper Peninsula struggles to survive” seemed to make headlines in every news source in the Upper Peninsula, many across the state, and a few national sources. In each case the reporters failed to mention that, Finnish or not, Yoopers have sisu.
Sisu embodies all of the characteristics mentioned above and is an ability to overcome adversity. However, sisu is not defined by a moment of courage. Sisu is continuous, the ability to sustain pressure and adversity over long periods of time.
During Nickelodeon’s golden years – the fantastic ’90s – I became engrossed in their weird neon world of slime, obstacle courses, the Rugrats and Nick at Nite.
And of course, Guts – an “extreme sport” show where kids and adults, clad in awkward knee pads and helmets, did “extreme” things like go down slides and scramble up big foam blocks painted like rocks with the ultimate goal of earning…the Guts gold medal.
The Portage Canal is somewhere I’ve driven past hundreds of times in my life, but never have I seen it like this. This snow falling in the photo gives it a second effect of it being a grainy photo, adding that to the tone gives it a fantastic vintage look as if this photo was taken in the early 1900s. However, it was snapped just two weeks prior on May 3rd, 2008.
Recently we came across this poem by Samuel Griswold Goodrich (August 19, 1793 – May 9, 1860). Goodrich was born in Connecticut and became a bookseller and publisher in Hartford. He would later move to the Boston area where he began publishing The Token for fourteen years. He was eventually elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1836 and a member of the Massachusetts State Senate in 1837. He was better known by his pseudonym, Peter Parley. Under this name he wrote Peter Parley’s Story of the Trapper (1829) where he wrote the following about Lake Superior.
Twenty-nine years ago today on August 5th, 1979 the Upper Peninsula’s identity changed forever. That date marks the earliest known publication of the word “Yooper”.
Contrary to popular belief, the term Yooper isn’t very old. Many people who recall going to college in the Upper Peninsula during the ’70s do not recall use of the word. However, there are others that argue the word was still in use earlier than 1979, but there is a lack of evidence to support this. By all means, if you know of additional evidence to support the first uses of the term Yooper, we would like to know.
I figure we could all be a little better off if we all knew Michigan’s state symbols a little better. Though most of us have read them or seen them elsewhere, not many people can run through them all off the top of the head. So for today, a brief Michigan education on something we could all probably brush up on.
Bird: American Robin
Fish: Brook Trout
Flower: Apple Blossom
Fossil: Mastodon
Mammal: White-tailed Deer
Gem: Isle Royale Greenstone or Chlorastrolite
Nicknames: Wolverine State, Great Lakes State
Reptile: Western Painted Turtle
Soil: Kalkaska Sand
Song: My Michigan
“My Michigan” is not the song of Michigan, it is merely considered a song of Michigan. You can read more about the history at Michigan.gov.
This week WKAR reported that this spring a 9000-year-old tool was found by Dale Kennedy while he was in his garden in Hermansville. The tool, pictured above, is not housed at the Michigan State University Museum. Bill Love, the museum’s anthropology curator, spoke with WKAR about the rare find.
Love mentions that the tool is distintive among the early time periods of the Great Lakes Region, known as the Paleo-Indian time period. He says it is one of the earliest pieces found, but very few pieces have been found in the Upper Peninsula. Love goes on to say…
The history of Life magazine has proved overtime to be one of the greatest archives of the United States history and arguably the most popular periodical of all time. Generally there are three large eras of Life. From 1883 to 1936 it was a general interest and humor magazine published weekly.
During 1936 Heny Luce (founder of Time magazine) purchased Life for $92,000. It’s focused changed to photojournalism and would remain a weekly publication through 1978. At that time it would become a general interest monthly publication.
An old 35MM scan of one of the old miners houses at the ghost town, taken probably 10 years ago, don’t think it is still standing. [cminer52 on Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/cminerspics/3009044244/ "Mandan MI")
About 12 miles southwest of Copper Harbor is the old ghost town of Mandan, a tiny mining town that was vacated in 1909. It was the site of the Mandan Mine and the Medora Mine.
At the turn of the century Mandan had a few hundred residents with a few dozen houses. Today, only a few of the buildings remain. Over the years there was a post office and a general store and Mandan marked the end of the line for the Keweenaw Central Railroad.
A few weeks ago we posted a blog entry about Jeff Finger, and our knowledge of him being the only Yooper to play in the NHL. We stand corrected! Since the NHL season is coming to a close soon we wanted to give you another Upper Peninsula hockey update. Here are six more Yooper NHL players, old-timers from the 1920-60s. And please if you know of more, let us know. Thanks Paul, for the tip on these NHL Yooper alums.
Louis “Big Louie” Moilanen is a legend in the Upper Peninsula, a legend that transcends much more than just the Upper Peninsula.
Louis Moilanen was born at the turn of the century in 1900 and grew up in the ghost town of Boston, which is about five miles north of Hancock.
Though he was born to a 4-foot tall mother and a 5′ 9″ father, Louis Moilanen would grow to be 8′ 4″ and approximately 450 pounds. During his lifetime it was said that he was the tallest man in the world and become known as “Big Louie”.
Our friend Kevin, having spent time in Marquette years ago and being a generation older than me, has done a great job of informing us of what Marquette used to be. He’s mentioned a few things that have gone missing over the years and what he educated me about this afternoon was Bunny Bread.
Kevin told me about a sign that was once famous in Marquette… a sign for Bunny Bread. And apparently the sign was taken down several years ago (it outdates my young memory, I’m only 25). Kevin inspired me to do a little research and find out where the sign went to.
Since I was recently taking a look at Michigan historical film clips, you’ll definitely want to take a look at this one.
MUNISING, MICHIGAN, early part of 1960’s
Munising Michigan, Elm Avenue, Weiland’s Grill, the original Alger County Courthouse….all of it is here in this exciting compilation of Wally Ahlborn’s 8mm home movies taken in a blinding blizzard!
Rabe started one of the greatest public relations campaigns in history. And it is right here in the Upper Peninsula, at Lake Superior State University.**
During 1971 many people still believed that Lake Superior State University (LSSU) was a branch of Michigan Tech University (and is was, just a year earlier). In the world of advertising and public relations this is a major identity crisis.
One of Rabe’s first answers to this problem was the Unicorn Hunters. Along with a small group of other LSSU faculty they set out to achieve various things to garner up some publicity for the university such as, yes, snowman burning. And of course, to this day you can still buy a Unicorn Hunter’s License, and it’s available online.
