|
|
|
REGION
NINE
Marquette Range
|
A rich old mining city and lively college town adjoins
a splendid lakeshore, rugged wilderness
& choice trout waters.
|
|
Iron made Marquette County the richest and most populous county in the Upper Peninsula. Its 65,000 residents far outnumber any of the other 14 U.P. counties. This is a land of striking dark two-billion-year-old rock outcroppings, among the most ancient surfaces on the globe. The rugged-sized hills here are eroded vestiges of towering mountains, once far higher than the Rockies. Today's terrain is mostly forested, interlaced with rivers and streams that
...continued below...
|
|
|
|
|
Click
on any town in red on the map above
to get its profile, points of interest, and recommended
restaurants, lodgings, and area campgrounds
|
|
|
|
|
|
have long been the delight of trout fishermen. Some two dozen waterfalls scattered throughout the county are publicized by the Marquette Country Visitors' Bureau with a special waterfall map. The region's northern shore along Lake Superior has miles of beaches. Between Munising and Marquette many beautiful sand beaches are right off M-28. In Marquette itself, several free public beaches are between the lighthouse and Presque Isle Park.
The middle-19th-century towns that sprang up in this region grew from iron mining and were located in a line along the Marquette Range of iron ore deposits, from Negaunee and Ishpeming west to Michigamme and Republic. (Mines around Gwinn, southwest of Marquette, came later.) Eventually some 200 mines were dug, stretching westward to create such towns as Ishpeming, Negaunee, Republic, Champion, and Michigamme. Up into the 1890s, this 45-mile-long band was the richest known source of iron in the world.
Marquette itself was not near a mine. It became the ore's shipping port and the financial and commercial center. Local natural resources and later banking formed many fortunes of national significance. Iron money built Marquette's imposing 19th-century homes and downtown buildings of red sandstone that make it stand out as one of the most handsome Midwestern towns. Iron created the red color of the Jacobsville sandstone formation, also called "brownstone." Quarries in Marquette, L'Anse, and Jacobsville near Hancock shipped the stone as far away as East Coast cities.
The iron was discovered by accident by Euro-Americans. (Native people were well aware of iron deposits but lacked the technology to develop them.) It was 1836 when as Michigan was becoming a state it acquired the western three-fourths of the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize in the "Toledo War" border dispute with Ohio. But it took the fledgling state years for its surveyors to describe and map the vast northern realm above the Straits of Mackinac. In 1844 surveyor William Burt found nearly pure iron deposits at the surface at Teal Lake, the big lake seen just north of U.S. 41 in Negaunee, eight miles west of Marquette. Burt's magnetic compass fluctuated so suspiciously that he sent his men out to investigate. They returned with iron ore from rock outcrops. The next year native Ojibwa guided prospectors to a place where iron ore was right at the surface, visible in the roots of a fallen tree. In 1847 that site became the Jackson Mine on the south side of Negaunee. It was the first mine of the Marquette Range.
Miners extracted a million tons a year of the highest-quality iron ore available anywhere during the 19th century. The Marquette Range was home to the first of the enormously important Lake Superior mines that launched great manufacturing industries and helped create the wealth of Great Lakes cities from Milwaukee to Buffalo. Up to the mid 1870s the Marquette Range had the only important iron mines on Lake Superior. But by the end of the 1870s its rich, inexpensively mined surface deposits were becoming exhausted, and the Upper Peninsula's Menominee and Gogebic Ranges to the west were coming on strong with softer, somewhat less desirable ores.
The booming mines created great wealth. Though much wealth went east to investors in Cleveland, Boston and elsewhere, lots of money stayed in the port city of Marquette and in Ishpeming, center of mining operations. Early on the area's energetic, politically savvy boosters gained Marquette two important additional economic linchpins: the Upper Peninsula's first state prison and its normal school for teacher training, which became today's 9,300-student Northern Michigan University.
Monied Americans, mostly of Yankee origins, came to the region early and were able to make more. The mines attracted an immigrant workforce for underground and surface work. In 1892 92% of all Marquette Range miners were foreign-born. The 1900 census showed Marquette County's foreign-born to come mainly from Great Britain (23%, largely represented by the Cornish and some Irish); Finland (22%); Canada, especially French-Canadians (20%); and Sweden-Norway (18%). (Norway was not yet independent.) Finnish immigration peaked in 1910, while Italian immigrants became a very large part of the ethnic mix between 1900 and 1920.
For the first and second immigrant generations, ethnic rivalry was typical, intensified by employment practices within the mines. Lumber camps were another important employment source, especially for French-Canadians. Native Americans, mostly Ojibwa, intermarried with Marquette-area pioneers and later arrivals. One of Marquette's richest men, Louis Kaufman, was proud of his Ojibwa ancestry. Today ethnic cultures, accents, homestyle cuisines, and genes have blended into a distinctive regional culture.
In Marquette the Episcopalians and Presbyterians were at the top of the social ladder. The Cornish Methodists were the cream of mining towns' society. The Finns, who over the years have added much to the current flavor of U.P. culture, were initially among the bottom of the heap socially. Though literate, they brought no mining skills. The pious "church Finns" were followed by those with more radical politics, the so-called "hall Finns."
Regional food specialties aren't only pasties, a Cornish introduction. A Marquette-area specialty is cudighi (pronounced "COULD-ih-GI"), a spicy Italian pork sausage patty served on a bun with tomato sauce. Scandinavians developed winter sports and introduced Heikki Luunta (HEY-kee LOON-tuh), the Finnish snow god, now part of the local culture.
The Depression reduced mining employment. So did mechanization. After World War II, the underground mines started closing, replaced by huge open-pit mines using new techniques to extract small percentages of low-grade ore from vast masses of rock. Two of these newer open-pit mines, the Empire and Tilden mines near Palmer south of Negaunee, are still going, and the Tilden mine can be toured in summer by advance reservation. The inactive open pit in Republic, four miles long, can be viewed any time. The Tilden and empire mines employ a well-paid work force of 1,800 - an important component of the local economy. Trains carrying taconite pellets still chug through Marquette to the ore dock near Presque Isle Park. It's an impressive spectacle, watching them back their cars out an ore dock extending 1,200 feet into Marquette Bay to deposit their heavy loads in waiting freighters.
A blow to the region was the closing of K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base in late 1995, a B-52 base 20 miles south of Marquette at the west end of M-94, not far from Gwinn. Its 3,300 military personnel and 1,000 civilian employees had created a military payroll and purchases totaling $157 million annually-20 percent of the economic output within a 50-mile radius. In all, the base created a community of 7,000, the equivalent of Upper Michigan's fourth largest city. Sawyer meant more students at Northern Michigan University, more skiers at Marquette Mountain, more kids in local schools.
Sawyer has rebounded impressively as the Sawyer International Airport and Business Center. The airport, with its huge 12,300-foot runway, is now the region's commercial airline airport (Northwest/Mesaba, Midwest, and American). Dozens of new businesses have sprung up, helped by the tax advantages of an enterprise zone. The defunct Air Force base is far from desolate, not like the weedy abandoned runways and giant rusting hangars at the spooky former Kinross Airforce Base near Sault Ste. Marie.
Despite the Marquette Range's many touristic attractions, its economy has never been geared to tourism. Employment in the mines and in Marquette's big bureaucracies, from Northern Michigan University and Marquette Branch Prison to government and the huge regional Marquette General Hospital, has been too good to encourage people to take up poorly paid, seasonal work in tourism. Local people generally tend to guard their favorite places from outsiders. (Perhaps this is an extension of passionate trout fishermen's secretiveness.) But the Marquette Country visitor bureau supplies excellent maps for waterfall driving tours and for the area's well developed trail systems for hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling.
A big part of the Marquette area's special charm is the way it intimately juxtaposes its twin sides of wilderness and relative sophistication. "Discover how civilized our wilderness can be," proclaims the visitor bureau. Transplants and second-homeowners have been part of Marquette's mix since the latter part of the 19th century at least, when mining investors had summer homes in Marquette and the Huron Mountain Club outside Big Bay was a fishing and summer retreat for some of America's wealthiest industrialists. For glowing and detailed descriptions of the U.P. lifestyle geared to very wealthy people looking for premium waterfront property, search for the profusely illustrated web site of Huey Real Estate in Marquette, written by real estate broker/skier/angler Dick Huey.
The city of Marquette's visual elegance offers sophisticates more fine dining, entertainment, live music, art, and shopping than anywhere else in the U.P. (Smaller, more isolated Houghton-Hancock, the Upper Peninsula's other big college town, is right up there with Marquette in cultural events, however.)
Marquette is one of the few U.P. areas where style means much of anything. (Iron Mountain, with its stylish Italian-American women, is a surprising, hidden fashion standout - just check out the castoffs at its Goodwill.) The steady flow of travelers across the northern Upper Peninsula along U.S. 41/M-28 from Sault Ste. Marie to Ironwood provides customers not just for Marquette's revitalized downtown and its Third Street campus shopping area, but for a growing number of specialty businesses and attractions in Ishpeming, Negaunee, and the former mining village of Michigamme.
At the same time, great expanses of choice wild terrain begin right at Marquette's edge: to the north towards Big Bay, to the west (especially past Ishpeming), and to the south, where the upper reaches of the long Escanaba River challenge trout fishermen. Within minutes of town there are craggy granite outcrops of the Canadian Shield, celebrated trout streams, and Lake Superior shoreline.
Area visitor highlights include:
• Marquette's museums, shops, restaurants, historic architecture, and lakeshore bike trail and parks.
• the beautiful Lake Superior shoreline and inland streams and waterfalls between Marquette and Big Bay. Kayaking has joined fishing as a destination activity.
• mining-related sights including the awesome Tilden Mine tour, the outstanding Michigan Iron Industry Museum, the Presque Isle ore dock in operation, and the townscapes of Ishpeming and Negaunee.
• dogsledding opportunities and North America's leading mid-range dogsled race, the U.P. 200.
• wild, rugged country near Van Riper State Park where moose are thriving and might be glimpsed.
Return to
Home/Guide to Upper Peninsula Regions
|
HELPFUL AREA INFORMATION
For questions or to have local info mailed, including a helpful Marquette County Visitors' Guide with complete lodgings listings, attractions, events, and more, call Marquette Country Convention & Visitors' Bureau, (800) 544-4321 or visit www.marquettecountry.org . . . . The county-wide chamber of commerce/economic development group, Lake Superior Community Partnership (888-578-6489) has a website, www.marquette.org . A knowledgeable office staff may be able to field questions that tourism people can't. It's at Marquette Park downtown & in Ishpeming at the Ski Hall of Fame. . . . The helpful website of the City of Marquette, including parks and camping info, is www.mqtcty.org. . . . The best place to pick up printed info about the area and the entire U.P. is the beautiful Michigan Welcome Center on U.S. 41/M-28 between Harvey and Marquette just east of town. It's open daily from 9 to 5, to 6 in summer. Call (906) 249-9066. . . . For local perspective, visit Marquette Monthly magazine's website, www.mmnow.com or look for a copy when you're in the area. . . .A number of Big Bay businesses are on the web at www.bigbayonline.com bay/hmo/home.html . . . . Gwinn has its own chamber of commerce, (906) 346-9666; www.gwinnmi.com
PUBLIC LAND: The Escanaba River State Forest is the managing agency for most of the public land in Marquette County, including the Little Presque Isle area, the Yellow Dog Plains, some land east of Van Riper State Park, and the Escanaba River watershed around Gwinn. Some prime trout fishing waters are on this state land and in the Van Riper and Craig Lake state parks. The main DNR and state forest office is in Gwinn at 410 West M-35 (906-346-9201), with field offices in Ishpeming at 1985 U.S. 41 West just west of Westwood High (906-485-1031) and in Marquette (906-249-1497). Offices are open weekdays from 8 to 4:30. . . . The 17,000-acre McCormick Wilderness is part of the Ottawa National Forest, managed by its Kenton office (906-852-3500).
GUIDES, TOURS and RENTALS: Fishing in the Marquette area is famous. One guide is Brad Petzke ( www.riversnorth.net ) . . . . Licensed charter boats can take anglers to Stannard Rock, famed for lake trout catches, and other places on Lake Superior. Kimar's Resort (906-892-8277) in Shelter Bay has half- and full-day Lake Superior charters. Uncle Ducky Charters in Marquette (906-228-5447; 906-228-307-; www.uncleducky.com ) offers deep-sea trolling, Stannard Rock trips, and inland fishing trips, plus lighthouse cruises to the distant Huron Islands. For a fuller current list of area charters on rivers, inland lakes, and Lake Superior, contact Marquette Country CVB (800) 544-4321 or www.marquettecountry.org . . . . In season from May into October, Big Bay Outfitters (906-345-9399) offers a daily tour of Big Bay waterfalls and mountaintops from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., including lunch and pickup, for $35 a person ages 12 and up. Reserve ahead if possible. Other tours by reservation, also $35, include an eco-tour of the proposed Kennecott nickel mine site and a Big Bay historical tour from Lake Independence to Bay Cliff Health Camp. Rentals include fishing boats and motors ($90/day including gas), kayaks ($30/day for singles and doubles), canoes, some camping and backpacking equipment, and in winter ice fishing gear, snowshoes, and cross-country skis. (NOTE: Jeff Ten Eyck, Big Bay's colorful guide for many years, now makes his year-round base in South Carolina, his wife's home state.) . . . . Martha Bush and Ken Baker, proprietors of the Little Tree Cabins in Big Bay, and their children have a Family Guide Service (906-345-9535) to waterfalls and scenic spots in the Big Bay area. For a very modest fee they will consult at home over the kitchen table, mark up maps they give you, share tips, give directions, even take people out to area waterfalls, streams, and hiking and mountain biking trails - which are, alas, not easy to find on your own. On trips, Martha can tote a toddler in a backpack carrier. Skis or snowshoes can be rented for 2-3 day trips. . . . History buff Fred Huffman's Marquette County Tours (906-226-6167) rents some equipment and gives tours (on foot, by van or snowmobile, or on snowshoes or cross-country skis) of everything in the area, from mining and geology to Big Bay waterfalls and mountaintops, and all over the U.P. . . . Kayak specialist Northern Waters in Munising (906-387-2323; www.northernwaters.com ) gives guided tours and instruction mainly in the Pictured Rocks area but also around Marquette. It rents kayaks to qualified people. . . . Cross-country skis and snowshoes can be rented from Wilderness Sports in downtown Ishpeming. It's also a good source of local fishing advice. . . . . Camping gear, canoes, kayaks, cross-country skis, and snowshoes can be rented from NMU's Outdoor Recreation Center from office 126A of PEIF (the Phys. Ed. Building next to the Superior Dome). Call (906) 227-2519. Limited hours. . . . Maple Lane Sports in Ishpeming's Country Village on U.S. 41 rents mountain bikes and snowmobiles. (906) 485-1636. . . . Mountain bikes, canoes, pontoon boats, and fishing boats are rented at Michigamme Shores Campground Resort off U.S. 41. (906) 339-2116.
HARBORS with transient dockage: In Big Bay (906-345-9353; lat. 46' 49' 45" N, long. 87' 43' 27" W, long. 87' 43' 27" W) with showers. In Marquette/Presque Isle (906 228-0464; winter 228-0460; lat. 46' 34' 20" N, long. 87' 22' 25" W) with showers. In Marquette/Lower Harbor (906-228-0469, winter 228-0460; lat. 46' 31' 56" N, long. 87' 22' 26" W) with showers.
EVENTS: Visit www.marquettecountry.org for details, dates, and a more complete events calendar. Theater, music, and other arts-related events, including popular Lake Superior Theater summer productions based on regional history and music, are listed on the web at www.mqtcty.org Advance reservations are a must for the musicals, held in a converted boathouse. Marquette Monthly magazine has a good calendar, but you have to sift through the illness support groups and local clubs to find interesting events. It's online at www.mmnow.com. . . July 4 is celebrated with fireworks at Marquette's Lower Harbor (which has an International Food Fest over the weekend), in Ishpeming, Big Bay, Michigamme, Gwinn, and Republic. . . . The third weekend in July brings both the three-day Hiawatha Music Festival (see box). July's last weekend, Art on the Rocks, a two-day juried art show in Presque Isle Park, has some very high-caliber work from the area's professional art community. The site has to be one of the most spectacular art show settings anywhere. The unjuried Outback Art Fair is nearby at Picnic Rocks Park on Lakeshore Drive toward the lighthouse. . . Marquette County hosts three nationally known winter events. The 53k Noquemanon Ski Marathon starts in Ishpeming at 1,400 feet, goes up along ridges, then descends quickly to Lake Superior. The Superiorland Ski Club sponsors it; visit www.noquemanon.com . Non-marathon events include a snow-worthy outdoor art exhibit for the Glacier Glide on Saturday in Presque Isle Park. . . . Ski jumpers from around the world come to the Continental Cup Ski Jumping Tournament in Ishpeming, sponsored by the Ishpeming Ski Club. . . . The U.P. 200 Sled Dog Championship in mid February, perhaps the nation's leading mid-range sled dog race, is the centerpiece of a festive weekend. It's memorable to see and hear the dogs start off from downtown Marquette at midnight, go off to Chatham, and return to the Lower Harbor. Visit www.up200.org . . .
PICNIC PROVISIONS and PLACES: An excellent produce department and big deli section make for one-stop shopping Super One Foods on U.S. 41 just west of Westwood Mall (same side of road) heading out to Negaunee. Better bread, chewy and crusty, can be had at the Huron Mountain Bread Company (one bakery is on U.S. 41/South Front coming into Marquette; another is near the Ski Hall of Fame on U.S. 41 in Ishpeming). . . . In Marquette, see Restaurant section for these picnic possibilities. Babycakes Muffin Company downtown and Sweet Water Café and the Village Café on Third Street bake desserts, muffins, and more. Babycakes also has salads, breads, filled croissants, and many picnic items. Jean-Kay Pasties, on the way to Presque Isle Park, bakes pasties all day long. Mexican takeout at The Border Grille is outstanding and vegetarian-friendly. The same owner's Baja Bistro in town offers home-cooking: rotisserie chicken and pork, plus sides. The Marquette Food Co-op downtown on Baraga at Front has produce, cheese, and picnic fixings.. . . . . In Negaunee fabulous morning pastries, brownies, cookies, and desserts are turned out at Midtown Bakery & Cafe. See text. . . . Good takeout subs and pizza can be had at Ralph's Italian Deli in Ishpeming and in NEGAUNEE at Paesano's Pizza (after 4 p.m. only), which has a deck at the east end of Teal Lake. Paesano's has Italian dinners, too.
As for picnic spots, Marquette has a whole string of waterfront picnic areas, beginning at the Lower Harbor and scattered along Lakeshore Boulevard all the way through Presque Isle Park. Another waterfront spot is just behind the Michigan Welcome Center on U.S. 41 three miles southeast of town. Marquette Meats 249-2333) , on M-28 in Chocolay Township, just east of where U.S. 41 and M-28 join, has a big reputation for sausage, venison jerky, and meat. . . . Big Bay picnic areas are at Perkins County Park on Lake Independence and at the marina. Trail lunches at Sugarloaf and Little Presque Isle are another possibility. The Corner Store, across from the Lumberjack Tavern, makes good sandwiches in summer and has ice cream cones. (Look for a bear on the porch and a moose on top.) Cram's General Store has good BBQ chicken and better groceries than it used to. . . . On the north side of U.S. 41 in Negaunee a new park has swimming on Teal Lake. . . . In Ishpeming (see text) Al Quaal Park has a picnic area and swimming on Teal Lake. Bancroft Park west of town offers interesting views. . . . East of Michigamme, the picnic area at Van Riper State Park is by the swimming beach. State park sticker ($6&$8/day, $24 & $29/year) required. . . . . An idyllic little Michigan Department of Transportation park and picnic area is along U.S,. 41 along Tioga Creek and a pretty little waterfall - a memorable place for a driving break.
|
|
|
