Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

The far western Upper Peninsula has some of the Midwest's most dramatic scenery — some famous, like the waterfalls on the Black River and Presque Isle River, and some completely surprising, like this knob just north of Bessemer.

Today the mining scars are mostly covered by vegetation. Again the rural landscape is beguilingly, undramatically scenic. The expansive sky adds to the region's allure. Often it is remarkably beautiful, with wonderful cloud and light effects enhanced by nearby Lake Superior.

The string of old mining towns form what's basically a single population center, joined where two major mining centers, Ironwood, Michigan, and Hurley, Wisconsin, meet near the Montreal River. East of the mining range, most of Gogebic County's land is part of the Ottawa National Forest. The Gogebic County Forest has another 50,000 acres. This land, managed for recreation and for timber, was left to the government by logging companies which didn't want to continue paying taxes on it. National forest land includes good fishing rivers and lakes, miles and miles of hiking and snowmobile trails, and an exceptional network of mountain bike trails in Michigan and neighboring Wisconsin on old logging roadS.

In the wake of widespread economic devastation as the iron mines began closing in the 1930s, area leaders worked to develop tourism. Rustic Gogebic County road signs are adorned with locally made carvings of a stereotypical Indian chief in headdress, harkening back to the area's earlier Ojibwa residents. Even more kitschy is the World's Tallest Indian just outside Ironwood. Locals also have drawn visitor attention by building the world's highest manmade ski jump, Copper Peak Ski Flying Hill, a striking landmark seen on the horizon from many high points.

Gogebic County and neighboring Iron County across the state line in Wisconsin are heavily promoted during the ski season as Big Snow Country. Area lodgings have 10,000 rooms, largely because of the four ski resorts: Indianhead Ski Resort (see Wakefield), Blackjack, and Big Powderhorn (see Bessemer) in Michigan and Whitecap Mountain (in Wisconsin. Thousands of ski chalet units and condos cluster around them. The fifth Big Snow Country component is the beautiful natural ski hill by POI#Lake Superior# at the Porcupine Mountains State Park, less than an hour from Ironwood.

Alpine skiing here goes back to the late 1950s, when Jack English, an amateur pilot from Chicago, flew over north-facing Indian Head Mountain. He realized the abundant snow there would make an excellent ski hill, and proceeded to develop Indian Head Mountain Resort. An indication of how important skiing has become to the region is Gogebic Community College's program in ski management, one of the few in the country.

Waterfalls are the area's other major visitor draw. Gogebic County has 22 easily visitable falls. Ten more are across the Montreal River in neighboring Iron County, Wisconsin. With so many waterfalls to choose from, visitors to any single fall aren't as concentrated as in the Upper Peninsula's Munising/Pictured Rocks area, also known for waterfalls. Fewer crowds make for a more enjoyable experience. Visit waterfalls before 11 or after 5 for best light effects and fewer fellow visitors. Here falls tumble quickly down from the ancient, eroded Porcupine Mountains (millions of years ago as high as the Rockies) to Lake Superior. Water tends to be stained golden or brown by hemlock roots. The best-known waterfalls are on the Presque Isle and Black rivers (see Black River waterfalls & Black River Scenic Byway/Ottawa National Forest) within half a mile of Lake Superior.

Far less celebrated, but at times even more spectacular, is Superior Falls, bordered by hundred-foot cliffs on the Montreal River forming the Michigan-Wisconsin border northwest of Ironwood. Farther east in the Ottawa National Forest are two beautiful waterfalls you'll likely have all to yourself: Yondota Falls (see Yondota Falls/Ottawa National Forest) and the challenging-to-find Nelson Canyon Falls (see Nelson Canyon Falls/Ottawa National Forest). For waterfall-watching hints and resources, click "Uniquely U.P." in the left-hand column.

The Gogebic's best-known places are the twin county seats of Ironwood, Michigan, and its sister city across the Montreal River, the once-rowdy Hurley, Wisconsin. Ironwood and vicinity is an interesting place to vacation because it's not just a tourist area. As in much of the Upper Peninsula, the mix of people and cultures adds much to a visitor's experience. The population is composed largely of Finns and Italians who came to work in the iron mines, along with Croat, Poles, and other Slavs from coal-mining regions of Eastern Europe. The latter had come earlier to mine what little coal was here.

People here are friendly. It's a pleasure to chat with the folks sitting next to you at cafés. And the food can be quite a surprise! Manny's and Tacconelli's in Ironwood make their own pasta for lasagna and ravioli by hand because their customers expect it. People can be stunningly generous if you're passably polite and forthcoming---like the family in a rattletrap pickup who offered to loan downstate visitors a flashlight and blankets so they could sit down on the beach by Superior Falls and watch the sunset. And the level of honesty and trust puts downstaters to shame.

It's interesting how mining towns like Ironwood, Bessemer, and Wakefield beginning as bleak, artificial company towns where ethnic groups with no common culture were thrown together have become enduring communities that keep drawing their departed residents back. Great natural beauty and cheap real estate help, no doubt. (A more cynical observer attributes the U.P.'s "heavy gravity" to the culture shock of getting out into a wider, more competitive world.) Ray Crenna, a sixtyish opera singer and food lover who grew up in the area, came back often for sustenance the whole time he was living in Chicago. (He founded and still owns the Opera Shop of Los Angeles, which sells opera librettos, scores, DVDs, CDs and more at its store and in the opera house lobby.) Now, he says, Bessemer is his permanent home base.

"You go away, and you come back, the hills are alive with music. It's cathedralish!" he rhapsodizes. "It's a basilica of the four seasons. The gardens of wildflowers splash from heaven's paintbrush in swashes of color. It's like 'The Sound of Music.' The music is in the landscape, like a woven tapestry, rough and smooth."

Crenna's Italian forbears came to Bessemer because cousins arrived first and spread the word among their relations. In his era, he says, "There was something very healthy about growing up here. You grew up with roots that you don't find very many places---the family history, the connection to Europe---roots that never leave you. "

Appreciation of roots is, predictably, much weaker in the younger generation, though many middle-aged people are taking up genealogy. (See Bessemer) and look in on www.GogebicRoots.com.)

Enrollment is booming in Ray's own class on regional cuisine of the Italian provinces, offered in Hurley through Lake Superior Technical College. Many young people continue the pattern of getting an education and going out into the world. However, with the mines closed and housing so cheap, welfare dependency has developed among some old families as well as newcomers.

Local historian Larry Peterson grew up in the paternalistic mining location of Ramsay. He has a much darker view of the area's heritage. "The area's most exploited resource is its people. There were 1,150 mining accidents on the Michigan side---a tremendous number. In World War I they really had to get out the ore quick. There has been no roll call on mining fatalities.

"We have a collective identify crisis. Many of these immigrants were naturalized very quickly. They were accustomed to authority like the old country. The mines were very paternalistic. They gave us this and that. It was a parent-child relationship, and when the mines folded and the parents left, the child goes into trauma and paralysis. We were conditioned to feel we couldn't live up to their standards."

In these plain Gogebic towns, wealth was extracted and quickly exported. Money didn't stay around and pay for too many fine office buildings and cultural institutions, the way it did in Houghton, Calumet, and Marquette. Here mining families experienced booms and busts, and saw legions of their children forced to move away. Compared to the rest of America, the range does seem like a remarkably rooted place, where many stories are told and old friends gather.

Many natives move back in retirement or after a first career. Many others return with their own children and grandchildren to spend summers here, spawning generations of Yoopers in diaspora. Much of the area's cultural energy comes from these returnees and transplants, as visitors to this site are sure to notice. To be in Wakefield or Bessemer at homecoming is to witness a sense of community that upscale suburbs could never match.

Note: Two outstanding specialty stores on U.S. 2, the Pine Tree Gallery and Trek and Trail outdoors store, have closed.

Return to Home/Guide to Upper Peninsula Regions