MICHIGANMICHIGAN

istoryistory FOR Kids HSUMMERH 2002

THETHE UPPERUPPER Volume 1 • Number 5

h t Director, Department of History, Arts and Libraries W a’s Dr. William M. Anderson

Director, Historical Center Sandra Sageser Clark

Editor INSIDE... Dr. Roger L. Rosentreter

Assistant Editors Paul D. Mehney FeatureS: Carolyn Damstra The Unique Peninsula...... 2 Marketing Manager The Gipper ...... 6 Kristin M. Phillips A Walk on the Wild Side...... 8 Circulation Kelley Plummer Kidding Around at Fayette ...... 10 Administrative Assistant Iron ...... 12 Mary Jo Remensnyder

It’s a Small World ...... 14 Design Making a Miner’s Meal ...... 16 Holly A. Miller A Jump to Remember...... 17 The Michigan Historical Commission: William C. Whitbeck (president), Robert J. Danhof, Samuel Logan Jr., Keith The Soo Locks ...... 18 Molin, Tom Truscott and Marge Greiner—provides advice on historical activities of the Michigan Historical Center, including the publication of this magazine. e a t e t : © Copyright Michigan Department of History, Arts & Libraries 2002 What berry found D p r m n s Ask the Professor...... 1 Michigan History for Kids is published by Michigan History in the U.P. is magazine, P.O. Box 30741, 717 West Allegan, Lansing, MI In the News...... 1 48909-8241. Phone (517) 373-3704. The Michigan named after a Historical Center is part of the Department of History, Arts and Clues to the Past ...... 13 Libraries. Dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in sewing gadget? Michigan, the department also includes the Mackinac Island What Do You Think?...... 20 State Park Commission, the Library of Michigan, the Michigan To find out, Film Office, and the Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs. Periodicals postage paid at Lansing, MI. Postmaster: turn to page 23. Great Lakes Giggles ...... 21 Send address changes to Michigan History for Kids, Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries, Lansing, MI What’s Wrong?...... 22 48909-8241 or visit our World Wide Web page, Brain Strain ...... 23 www.michiganhistorymagazine.com. Where to Take Your Family ...... 24 Printed on recycled paper

THE EDITOR SAYS... To introduce this issue on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Brandt “BJ” Rosentreter, a fourth grader in Okemos, poses as a young miner in the mine shaft gallery at the Michigan Historical Museum. Mining has been an important activity in the U.P., and years ago young boys did work in the mines. Photo Tom Sherry

Check us out on the Web: www.michiganhistorymagazine.com Ask the PROFESSOR WHAT ARE Taconite is a poor kind of taconite taconite pellets iron ore. When it is PELLETS? separated from —JOHN from JACKSON the waste rock, it is like baby powder and difficult to transport. Scientists mixed taconite with water and clay and rolled it. The result was a high-grade iron ore pellet. Today, taconite pellets are manufac- tured at mines in the Upper Peninsula.

In The NEWS

STEEL IS MADE from iron ore. Because workers in other countries are paid lower wages than American workers, steel from other countries is cheaper than American steel. Iron miners are afraid they will lose their jobs if American companies buy this steel. They want the government to charge foreign produc- /Marquette Mining Journal ers a higher tariff to make their steel more expensive. (A tariff is a tax put on a product imported from another country.) At the Stand

Aaron Peterson Up for Iron Ore rally on July 15, 2002, at Northern Michigan Iron ore workers in University in Marquette one miner said, “The steel industry is important to our the Upper Peninsula nation and that makes iron ore important, too.” In March 2002, the United States demand increased announced that it was going to increase the tariff on foreign steel. tariffs on foreign steel.

SUMMER 2002 MICHIGAN HISTORY FOR KIDS 1 urrounded on three sides by the waters of Lakes Superior, SMichigan and Huron, the Upper Peninsula looks like a jagged finger of land pointing to the east. Years ago, some people thought the U.P. (as the Upper Peninsula is often called), should be its own state. One popular name was Superior. The Upper Peninsula never became a state. It does, however, have a fas- cinating history. It also is, as automaker Henry Ford once said, “one of the prettiest places in the world.”

2 MICHIGAN HISTORY FOR KIDS SUMMER 2002 NIQUE ENINSULA

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a P he earliest settlers in the anything.” Others said the U.P. was only U.P. were Native Ameri- good for an unlimited supply of bear meat cans who mined copper and constant snows. there more than 3,000 Settlement of the U.P. began in the 1840s years ago. The Ojibway after geologist Douglass Houghton reported were the largest Indian on the area’s valuable minerals. Houghton group in the U.P. when predicted that the minerals “will prove a Tthe French began exploring Lake Superior source of eventual and steady in the mid-1600s. increasing wealth.” However, he prospector

The earliest French settlement in the feared that many of the early one who U.P. began in 1641 when missionaries visit- prospectors would fail. explores an area looking ed Native Americans living at the rapids of Houghton was right. Hundreds for natural the St. Mary’s River. The missionaries of people raced to the Keweenaw resources named the area Sault Ste. Marie (pronoun- Peninsula to strike it rich mining nced soo-saint-marie). In 1671, Father copper in the nation’s first mineral boom. Jacques Marquette started an Indian mis- These early pioneers knew little about sion named St. Ignace on the north side of mining and most failed. One mine that the Straits of Mackinac. For years, Sault did make money was the Cliff mine. Ste. Marie and St. Ignace were the two It became the first successful copper main settlements in the Upper Peninsula. mine in Michigan. Another settlement was Mackinac Island. About the same time that copper mining Fur trappers often stopped there as they started on the Keweenaw, iron ore was dis- explored the Great Lakes. covered near Teal Lake. The Jackson mine, As Michigan prepared to become a state Michigan’s first iron ore mine, opened in in the mid-1830s, only the eastern tip of 1848. Eventually, min- the U.P. was to be included in the new ers worked three state. That changed when Michigan different iron was forced to accept the west- ern Upper Peninsula in a L A K E S U P E R I O R compromise to end the Toledo War. Michiganians were not happy. One upset person wrote that the Upper Peninsula was “too far from civilization to ever amount to

4 MICHIGAN HISTORY FOR KIDS SUMMER 2002 ore deposits in the Upper In 1913-14, a bitter strike Peninsula. They were called hit the Keweenaw copper the Marquette, Gogebic and mines. As a result, many Menominee ranges. miners moved to Detroit To ship the copper and and took jobs in the auto- iron to processing factories, mobile plants. At the same access into Lake Superior time, good copper and iron had to be improved. Boats ore were becoming harder could not get through the to find. As mines closed rapids at Sault Ste. Marie. many people left the U.P. The opening of a shipping The opening of the canal in 1855, better Mackinac Bridge in 1957 known as the Soo Locks, State Archives of Michigan made visiting the Upper solved the problem. Annie Clemenc Peninsula easier. Tourism became Soon, more mines were dug. lived in Calumet more important as governments During much of the second half of and led protestors opened parks and forests. Isle the 19th century, U.P. mines pro- in the 1913-14 Royale National Park, Pictured copper strike. duced more copper and iron ore Rocks National Lakeshore, Seney than mines anywhere else in the nation. As National Wildlife Refuge, Porcupine mining grew, towns like Marquette, Mountains State Park, Fayette Historic Negaunee, Escanaba, Ishpeming, Ironwood, Townsite, Fort Wilkins and Fort Mackinac Iron River, Menominee, Calumet, Houghton are some of the Upper Peninsula’s most and Hancock were settled. popular attractions. Many people who lived The Upper Peninsula is also home to immigrant

and worked in the U.P. were one who three major universities—Michigan immigrants. The Cornish leaves a Technological University (Houghton), country to from Cornwall, England, were Northern Michigan University (Marquette) settle in some of the first. They knew another and Lake Superior State University (Sault how to mine because they Ste. Marie). Another school is Suomi worked in English copper mines. College in Hancock. It was started by Immigrants from other countries followed. Finnish immigrants in 1899. It is now These included Scandinavians (people from called Finlandia University. Norway, Finland and Sweden), French- Today, 309,000 of Michigan’s 9.9 million Canadians, Germans, Italians and Irish. residents live in the Upper Peninsula. Yet, The Upper Peninsula experienced great to those who live there, life in the U.P. is change in the early twentieth century. often described as superior.

SUMMER 2002 MICHIGAN HISTORY FOR KIDS 5 The Gipper

Notre Dame football player George Gipp (below) grew up in Calumet. Gipp, one Have you ever heard of the greatest college athletes ever, car- ried the football on the opposite page. the saying, “WIN ONE Gipp’s team captain, Pete Bahan, wore this Notre Dame letter sweater. FOR THE GIPPER”? This quote has Upper Peninsula connections.

eorge Gipp, known as the Gipper, was born on February 18, 1895, in Laurium on the . Gipp was a great athlete, Galthough not a good student. He played basketball and football, but baseball was his favorite sport. When he was a teenager, Gipp played baseball for a team in nearby Calumet. Gipp’s friend William Foster remembered that, “me and my buddies used to look through the knotholes in the fence of the ballpark to watch Gipp play. He was terrific.” In 1916, the in South Bend, Indiana, asked Gipp to come and play baseball. Gipp agreed. He was not with the team long. After getting into a

Photos University of Notre Dame Archives fight with the coach, he quit. Shortly afterward, Knute

6 MICHIGAN HISTORY FOR KIDS SUMMER 2002 Rockne, Notre Dame’s football coach, saw the hospital Laurium Gipp punting a football and asked him to many join the freshman football team. Gipp was newspapers on his way to becoming a carried stories star. about his condition. In 1917, 22-year-old Gipp made the var- The editor of the Calumet paper kept wor- sity football team. Unlike many players ried people informed by putting hourly who only did one thing, Gipp kicked, updates about Gipp’s health in his store passed and ran the football. He helped window. the team become the “Champions of the On December 14, 1920, George Gipp West” by winning all their games in 1918. died. He was 25 years old. Teammate Fred Larson remembered that As Gipp was dying, Coach Rockne was Gipp was “the greatest football player I at his side. Gipp whispered to Rockne, ever saw.” “Sometime, Rock, when the team is up In 1920, Gipp became ill with strep against it, when things are going wrong— throat and a bad cough. Gipp kept playing tell them to go in there with all they’ve got football even though he was sick and get- and win just one for the Gipper.” Eight ting sicker. Penicillin would have cured years later, before a tough game, Rockne Gipp, but it had not been told his players to “win one for the invented. When Gipper.” They listened. Since then, Gipp was in the famous quote has been repeated during sports games all over America.

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