History Commons^™

Michigan's Upper Peninsula Is The Cradle Of Paul Bunyan's Beehives, Thomas J. Straka

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

One of the Michigan Upper Peninsula’s earliest industries was iron production. Iron furnaces (smelters) were part of that industry; these were primarily fueled by charcoal, produced in hundreds of charcoal kilns scattered across the Upper Peninsula. The four basic kiln designs (rectangular, round, conical, and beehive) were all used in the region, with the beehive design becoming the predominant form. James C. Cameron, Jr. is credited with developing the beehive charcoal kiln design while employed by Upper Peninsula iron furnaces. This design was first introduced to the Upper Peninsula, and then to Northeastern Wisconsin, Northern New York, and the Far …

Italian Farmers And Winemakers On The Northern Border, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

It is the objective of this narrative to focus on the little studied Lake Superior Basin and to see how some Italian immigrants farmed and gardened under arduous and formidable conditions, far removed from successful experiences in the eastern and southern United States. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century there were over forty active Italian agricultural communities in these areas.

Upper Country Vol 10 2022 Copyright Page, James Shefchik, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

No abstract provided.

Ukrainians In The Lake Superior Basin, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

No abstract provided.

Poetic Commodities: Exploration Of The Familial Impacts And History Of Indigenous Food Insecurity In “Why I Hate Raisins”, Katarina Rothhorn

Conspectus Borealis

This essay looks at Natalie Diaz's poem "Why I Hate Raisins" and the historical and contemporary implications of Native American reliance on government commodity programs.

On The Altar Of Industry: A History Of The Kingston Plains, Donovan Murphy

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

The Kingston Plains are a remnant of historic practice in logging of clear cutting, of timber cruising, of wildfire impacts, and of attempted ecological remediation. It is a reminder of human impacts an odd, a mostly treeless place.

Don Antonio De Alcedo's Spanish Slant On The Upper Country, Ted Bays

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Don Antonio de Alcedo’s 1786-89 Diccionario geografico-historico de las Indias Occidentale o America includes entries about countries, provinces, cities, villages, and hamlets; about every aspect of political, cultural and natural history; and about products from cochineal to zarzaparilla, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. As a Spanish military officer he naturally focused most of this monumental five-volumework on New Spain, from the North American southwest to Patagonia and Chile. This article covers his descriptions of Lake Superior, Nipigon, Michipicoten, and Michilimackinac.

Habsburg Ruthenian/Rusyn Identities Part I: The Habsburg Lands, Robert Goodrich

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

No abstract provided.

Blaney Park Resort, Part I: Birth And Transformation, Ted Bays

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

For decades, Blaney Park Resort in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula drew visitors from all over the Midwest to an unparalleled array of activities.

From nearby and faraway, tourists and local residents came by train, small plane, and vehicle to Blaney Park. U. P. residents remember Blaney as the scene of formal receptions, informal socializing, dining, dancing and drinking, and a whopper smorgasbord. From horseback riding, swimming, golf, archery and snow sports; to hunting, fishing and trapping; to elbow-bending and toe-tapping, Blaney had something for everyone.

Warrioress In White: A Semiotic Analysis Of America's Joan Of Arc In The Women Of The Copper Country, Akasha Khalsa

Conspectus Borealis

Mary Doria Russell’s The Women of the Copper Country is a fictionalized historical account of the 1913 mining strike in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Significantly in this strike, a great deal of leadership was focused in the Union’s Women’s Auxiliary. In particular, one woman formed the backbone of the local movement. Known by her community as Big Annie, Anna Klobuchar Clements was the heart of the 1913 strike. Memories of her bravery linger today in the form of recorded testimonies by elderly community members, immortalization in plaques and songs, and Russell’s popular novel. Today she is remembered not as herself, not …

Buffalo In The Upper Peninsula, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

No abstract provided.

Italian Immigrants In The Lake Superior Basin, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

From 1870 through 1920 hundreds of thousands of Italians arrived in the United States and Canada seeking economic opportunity and better lives. They were attracted to cities of the Midwest – Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland – and eastern Canada – Montréal and Toronto -- where as cheap labor they found jobs in factories, railroads, urban construction, and service businesses and created new lives in the Midwest.

Sporting Houses, Soiled Doves, And Bad Repute: Houses Of Ill Fame In Marquette, 1870-1943, Emily Tinder

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Within the male-dominated economic landscape of Marquette's founding era, many women turned to the illicit business of selling sex to make a living. In the absence of self-created primary sources, court case records and newspaper accounts dating between 1870 and 1943 reveal small pieces of the lives of dozens of such women. Yet while the stories of underground miners and northwoods lumberjacks have been studied in detail, these sex workers have been ignored and forgotten almost entirely; a broader social history, without moral bias, can account for many of the women who worked alongside the men who dominate our historical …

Vanishing Ghosts Of Michigan’S Upper Peninsula Charcoal Iron Industry, Thomas Straka, Lawrence A. Gueller

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

One of Michigan's Upper Peninsula's earliest industries was iron production, powered by dozens of charcoal iron furnaces. Charcoal was the fuel for the furnaces and the Upper Peninsula's forests were devastated to produce it. Most of the charcoal was produced in huge brick or stone charcoal kilns, usually located at or near the furnaces, or along the railroad lines for easy transport to the furnaces. These kilns were the chief industry for many early settlements and were local landmarks. Tourists found the igloo-shaped kilns to be fascinating and called them "Paul Bunyan's beehives." Gradually, the charcoal kilns have deteriorated. Two …

Investigating Resilience Through The Rhetoric Of The Revolution, Leah Danielson

Conspectus Borealis

In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cuba's core values and the rhetoric used by revolutionary leaders. To do so, I frame my paper around two critical questions; how was it that revolutionary leaders created such a deep loyalty to their cause, and in what ways has that loyalty continued today? As such, I will investigate how the rhetorical choices exemplified in linguistic, visual, and other ethnographic observations, collected in a trip to Cuba in 2020, represent a Cuban society that continues these revolutionary characteristics as is carried out through themes of community identity and belongingness, a desire to …

Barnacle Geese And Sky Burials: Relativism In The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville, Akasha L. Khalsa

Conspectus Borealis

As a medieval travel narrative, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was immensely popular for everyone from bookworms to world travelers in 14th and 15th century Europe. Given its popularity, and the period in which it was produced, one might expect the fictitious travelogue to display an incredible level of intolerance towards the various peoples and cultures it depicts. However, the Travels frequently surprises modern readers with its message of tolerance towards greater humanity, and its recognition of the universality of human experience as it is mirrored in the lives of people of different ethnic and cultural groups. In order …

The Mighty Handful: The Effect Of Nationalistic Music On Post-War Russia, Ella Uren

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

The Ojibwe In Marquette County, Michigan: 1850 To The Present, Russell Magnaghi

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

No abstract provided.

Broken Glass: The Decline Of Corporate Paternalism And Welfare Capitalism, A Critical Analysis Of One Company’S Systematic Socio-Economic Metamorphosis, Doug Bruno

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

"Disease, Wild Beasts, And Wilder Men": The Plymouth Brethren Medical Mission To Ikelenge, Northern Rhodesia, Sarah Ponzer

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

No News Is Good News: Newspaper Reports Of Calumet’S Italian Hall Disaster, Allie Penn

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

This paper focuses on the newspaper bias within various newspapers after the Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet, Michigan. The paper samples newspapers from Calumet, Houghton, and Hancock, the Upper Peninsula, Lower Peninsula, Midwest locations and major metropolitan areas. It uses primary resources, including interviews and the Coroner’s Inquest to evaluate the accuracy within multiple newspaper articles.

The Upper Peninsula As It Was: What The Europeans Encountered, Robert Archibald

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

This essay establishes a baseline for measuring environmental change caused by the influx of Europeans beginning in the seventeenth century. In it the author describes the natural forces including volcanism, sedimentation, geologic metamorphism, and glaciation as natural forces that shaped the landscape of the Upper Peninsula and created deposits of minerals. He uses survey notes, travel accounts and journals to describe flora and fauna prior to large-scale commercial exploitation

Playing For The People: Labor Sport Union Athletic Clubs In The Lake Superior/Iron Range 1927-1936, Gabe Logan

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

From 1927-1935 the United States Communist Party developed and implemented the Labor Sport Union (LSU). This athletic experiment encouraged workers to abandon paternalistic company teams, theologically inspired gyms such as the YMCA and YWCA, and withdraw their support from school sponsored athletics. Instead, workers would join the LSU, a worker controlled sporting fraternity. The LSU enjoyed support in the metropolitan centers of the Northeast and Midwest. However, it was also enthusiastically received in the rural mining and farming regions of Lake Superior. This work recounts the history of the LSU in general and its specific development in upper Michigan, northern …

The Minnesota Farm-Labor Party: The Role Of Third Parties In The Americanization Of European Labor Radicals In The Great Lakes Region, Paul Lubotina

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

This paper examines the political transformation of former radicals from Ethnic Socialist Parties, Industrial Workers of the World, and the Western Federation of Miners during the 1920s and 1930s, as they joined mainstream third party organizations such as The Nonpartisan League and Farm-Labor Party of Minnesota. Former resident of Copper Harbor, Michigan and mayor of Hibbing, Minnesota, Victor Power led a coalition of Americans and immigrants in a struggle to circumvent the burgeoning power of Ku Klux Klan members who dominated local government in the city, with the support of the United States Steel Corporation. This political battle between progressive …

The Habsburg Problem, Doug Bruno

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

A Birthday For The Upper Peninsula, Mark Ruge

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Everyone and everything should have its own birthday, particularly a special place like Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which does not. In this article, the author traces the political machinations of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula with a goal of finding the most appropriate birthday. He and the attendees at the Sonderegger Symposium XVI, sponsored by the Center for U.P. Studies, at Northern Michigan University, settle on December 14, 1836, the date when the final condition was met to establish the boundaries of Michigan as a state—boundaries that for the first time included the entirety of the Upper Peninsula as we know …