Seney and the Seney Stretch

Today is the last Wednesday of June, and on Absolute Michigan, that means it’s a Weird Wednesday. Today Weird Michigan author Linda Godfrey has a piece on Shocking but Scenic Seney that features Hemingway and the Ogre of Seney and the seedy history of this town that you’ll want to check out.

Hunt’s UP Guide says that while Seney was once the Upper Peninsula’s most raucous lumber town with a population of 3000 – now just 300 – today Seney is best known as the start of The Seney Stretch:

…that mind-numbingly monotonous 30 miles of M-28 between Seney and Shingleton that’s the most direct route from the Mackinac Bridge to Pictured Rocks and Marquette. Here the highway is almost straight as an arrow and flat as a pancake because it’s crossing a swamp. The scraggly, flat, boring landscape can get burned into a motorist’s brain and mistakenly become representative of the entire U.P. interior.

Wikipedia’s entry for Michigan Highway M-28 adds that the Seney Stretch is the longest curveless section of highway in the state, and one of the longest straight stretches of curveless highway east of the Mississippi.

This post was originally posted on Michigan in Pictures. They were kind enough to let us repost it on Yooper Steez. Michigan in Pictures posts a photo a day, every day, from the great state of Michigan. Check out their blog and subscribe, it’s a good one.