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Hunts' Guide to Michigan's UPPER PENINSULA

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ISHPEMING
POINTS
OF INTEREST

Downtown Ishpeming. Unusual historic buildings house a large antiques store, a longstanding outdoors store, a classic Italian grocery, a specialty homebuilders' store with an upstairs gallery of art and home accessories, and a vintage Carnegie library ... more

Cliffs Shaft Mining Museum. See where miners dressed, walked through tunnel to cages to be lowered down in mine. Retired miners tell tales of work life, cave-ins, tragic accidents. Engaging mine model, artifacts, mineral specimens from Ishpeming Rock & Mineral Club. ... more

Lake Bancroft Park. In dramatic surroundings, you can picnic while enjoying good views of Ishpeming and its monumental mining headframes ... more

Jasper Knob, Cliffs Cottage and vicinity. Climb a huge outcrop of deep-red Michigan jasper (“the world's largest gemstone”) and get a nice view of Ishpeming's southeast side ... more

U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame & Museum. In a ski jump-shaped building, the story is told of how U.S. skiing developed from a minor sport brought by Scandinavians, enhanced by Hollywood, Sun Valley, and the illustrious WWII ski assault team ... more

Artisans Gallery & Clay Studio. A working pottery studio and quality crafts gallery showing U. P. pottery, painting, weaving, wood, and glass works. ... more

Da Yoopers Tourist Trap & Museum. The roadside attraction from a popular satirical U.P. comedy group combines free outdoor exhibits like the world's largest chain saw and deer playing cards at deer camp with Yooper novelties, books, and a good rock shop ... more

Al Quaal Recreation Area. This woodsy 300-acre city park offers a 1,200-foot iced toboggan run and swimming on Teal Lake ... more

Tilden Mine Tour. Tour the vast open-pit iron mine and taconite processing plant and see industry on an awesome scale ... more

ISHPEMING

Jasper Knob, Cliffs Cottage and vicinity

Jasper is a kind of dense, opaque quartz with crystals too small to be visible. Michigan jasper is a deep red. This huge outcrop, locally touted as “the world's largest gemstone,” forms a dramatic knob with a good view on the southeast edge of Ishpeming. The stately wall around it makes it look like a public park. Actually it's owned by Cleveland-Cliffs Iron, which does not encourage visitation because of liability. The public is allowed on the property, though footing is difficult here. From downtown, take Division/BR 28 east to Jasper St., turn south. The Knob is in one block.

Back down a little on Jasper at Bluff, the entrance gate to the Swiss-inspired 1891 Cliffs Cottage can be seen. CCI president William G. Mather built Cliffs Cottage as his summer home. CCI uses it to entertain employees and guests. It's not visible from the street.

If you turn west onto Bluff, you can see one of Ishpeming's most interesting houses, a big, fanciful Gothic Revival affair at 112 Bluff. Inspired by Sunnyside, Washington Irving's Hudson River Valley residence, it took advantage of a grand view of town, now obstructed.

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