United States geography abounds in quirks and oddities. Most mysterious of all, perhaps, is the question of the Upper Peninsula — that strange, detached portion of Michigan that accounts for nearly one-third of its landmass but a mere 3% of its population. Separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, the U.P. (also known as Yoop) is only separated from Wisconsin by lines on the map. Wisconsin shares a 200-plus-mile border with it, whereas Michigan’s two peninsulas are only connected via the Mackinac Bridge. Which has naturally given rise to a question: Why isn’t it part of Wisconsin instead?
History of the Upper Peninsula
The answer requires us to go back several hundred years. Members of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Menominee, and Ho-Chunk tribes all lived in what’s now known as the Upper Peninsula as far back as 800 CE — long before the American Revolution was a glimmer in George Washington’s eye.
After America gained independence, the U.P. became part of the first post-colonial territory: the Northwest Territory, which was established by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. All of what’s now Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin were part of it, as was the northeastern portion of Minnesota.
The ordinance called for the Northwest Territory to eventually be carved into three to five states, with the southern tip of Lake Michigan acting as a dividing line between the lower three and upper two. Before that happened, Michigan became a separate territory in 1805, and in 1819 the Michigan Territory was expanded to encompass all of-present day Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the majority of the Dakotas.
However, when Michigan finally sought statehood in the 1830s, officials proposed using the original boundaries of the Michigan Territory, which included the Lower Peninsula and only the eastern portion of the Upper Peninsula.
The Ohio Question
When it comes to the question of the rest of the Upper Peninsula, it wasn’t Wisconsin that Michigan had to contend with — it was Ohio. In 1835, a land dispute arising from inaccurate maps led to what is known as the Toledo War.
When the Michigan Territory was drawn, surveyors realized the tip of Lake Michigan — supposedly the southern border of the territory — was actually further south than they thought. It included the area that would later become Toledo, a major port city on the Great Lakes, which Ohio argued belonged to them.
While the war resulted in no casualties, it did lead to new borders being drawn by Congress. Ohio would get Toledo after all, with Michigan becoming a state and receiving the entirety of the Upper Peninsula as part of the compromise.
James Duane Doty, who served as the territorial governor of Wisconsin from 1841 to 1844, wasn’t pleased. In addition to referring to the decision as “theft,” he threatened to secede from the Union. He didn’t follow through, of course, but one imagines that Wisconsinites appreciated his enthusiasm.
For some who live there, an even more pressing question is why the U.P. isn’t a state of its own. Proposals have been put forth to make it so, usually under the name Superior, but don’t expect it to become a state anytime soon — this one is unlikely to join the Union.
What All the Fuss Is About
There’s plenty to do in the Upper Peninsula, especially for the outdoors-inclined. Its sparse population — Marquette, the largest city, is home to just 21,000 people — means that there’s much in the way of hiking and sightseeing.
That includes a visit to the aptly named Lake of the Clouds, which is located in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and offers striking views. There’s also island-hopping: Start at the car-free paradise of Mackinac Island before making your way to Drummond, Grand, and Les Cheneaux for camping and off-roading. There’s even a ghost town known as Fayette Historic Townsite, which was a bustling industrial community from the 1860s until the Jackson Iron Company ceased operations in 1890s.
Wherever you go, you have to eat a pastie. The savory meat pies are everywhere in the U.P. They’re also easy to mispronounce: If you want to impress Yoopers, make sure you pronounce the first syllable as “past” rather than “paste” — that’s how they’ll know you belong.
Featured image credit: ovidiuhrubaru/ iStock via Getty Images Plus
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