Across the Upper Peninsula
St Ignace to Ironwood along the top of Lake Michigan and the bottom of Lake Superior — a tilted shack, a shipwreck museum, a copper mine, a hall where 73 people died at a Christmas party, and a light that isn't there.
9 stops · 4 days · Michigan · roughly 378 miles point to point
See the whole route and everything odd beside it
OddWay draws your route first, then plots every stop that falls inside the detour you're willing to make. No hunting through a list to work out what is actually on the way.
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Every one of the 9 places in the index. Plan a route and the map narrows to what's actually near it.
The Upper Peninsula is three hundred miles wide, has about three per cent of Michigan's population, and is culturally closer to northern Wisconsin than to Detroit. People here call themselves Yoopers and everyone below the bridge a troll, because trolls live under bridges.
This is the length of it, east to west, and four days is not generous.
Over the bridge
St Ignace first, and the Mystery Spot — a tilted shack of the kind this index has a piece about. Every one of them is the same room, and knowing that does not stop it working.
Then north to Paradise for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. This is the serious stop of the route. Whitefish Bay has taken more ships than anywhere else on the lakes, and the museum holds the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, raised in 1995 at the request of the families. Twenty-nine men are still down there.
The middle
Grand Marais has the Pickle Barrel House, a two-storey barrel built in 1926 as a summer cottage for the cartoonist who drew the Teenie Weenies.
Lakenenland near Marquette is a sculpture park a welder built beside the highway from scrap and left open, free, all year, with a donation box. Drive through it slowly.
Da Yoopers Tourist Trap at Ishpeming is the U.P. explaining itself to visitors on its own terms, and is funnier than that makes it sound.
Copper country
The Keweenaw Peninsula produced more copper than anywhere in the world for a time, and the industry is what built and then emptied these towns.
Quincy Mine takes you down a shaft that goes over nine thousand feet.
Italian Hall in Calumet is not a monument in the ordinary sense. During the 1913 copper strike, someone shouted "fire" into a crowded Christmas party for strikers' children. There was no fire. Seventy-three people died in the stairwell, most of them children. The building was demolished in 1984 and only the sandstone doorway they died trying to get through is left standing, in a small park. Go, and be quiet about it.
The last stretch
The Paulding Light appears down a power line corridor near Watersmeet most nights. Michigan Tech students identified it in 2010 as headlights on US-45 about four and a half miles away, visible through a gap in the terrain. It is still worth the drive, and the car park still fills up.
Ironwood finishes the route with a giant Stormy Kromer cap, which is a hat made in Wisconsin and worn devoutly here.
Practical
Four days minimum. Distances are long, towns are far apart, and phone signal is patchy through the middle.
Most of this is summer-only. Several stops close entirely between October and May, and the U.P. gets two hundred inches of snow — winter is a completely different trip requiring a completely different vehicle.
The Route
Mystery Spot
St. Ignace, Michigan
Opened in the 1950s, this classic roadside "mystery spot" uses tilted construction and visual cues to make visitors feel as though gravity is behaving incorrectly. The seasonal attraction has grown to include the original gravity experience plus other family attractions, but the old mystery-house presentation remains the reason it belongs on OddWay.
Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
Paradise, Michigan
Whitefish Point has witnessed some of Lake Superior's most notorious maritime disasters, and its museum preserves artifacts recovered from Great Lakes wrecks. The collection's centerpiece is the bell recovered from the Edmund Fitzgerald, displayed as a memorial to the ship's 29 crew members.
Pickle Barrel House
Grand Marais, Michigan
Cartoonist William Donahey received this barrel-shaped cottage in the 1920s, inspired by the tiny barrel homes in his Teenie Weenies comic strip. The restored structure now operates seasonally as a museum and looks exactly like two giant wooden pickle barrels joined together.
Lakenenland Sculpture Park
Chocolay Township, Michigan
Artist Tom Lakenen has filled a large wooded property east of Marquette with more than 100 sculptures made largely from scrap iron and industrial leftovers. Visitors can walk or drive through the free outdoor art park at any hour, encountering everything from humorous figures to political and environmental pieces.
Da Yoopers Tourist Trap
Ishpeming, Michigan
This proudly ridiculous Upper Peninsula attraction mixes Yooper humor with homemade machines, mining jokes and enormous outdoor sculptures. Its best-known pieces include Big Gus, an oversized working chainsaw, and Big Ernie, a gigantic rifle, giving travelers multiple oddities at one easy roadside stop.
Quincy Mine
Hancock, Michigan
The Quincy Mining Company became one of the Keweenaw Peninsula's most successful copper operations and left behind an enormous industrial landscape. Guided tours descend underground and visit the massive No. 2 hoist house, home to one of the world's largest steam-powered mine hoists.
Italian Hall Memorial Park
Calumet, Michigan
On Christmas Eve 1913, a false cry of fire caused a deadly panic during a striking miners' holiday party at Italian Hall, killing more than 70 people, most of them children. The building was later demolished, but its original stone arch was preserved in this memorial park alongside the names of the victims.
Paulding Light Viewing Area
Watersmeet, Michigan
For generations, people have gathered at the end of an old roadway to watch a mysterious light appear in the distance, inspiring stories about a ghostly railroad worker and other supernatural explanations. Experiments have strongly connected the phenomenon to distant vehicle headlights, but the established public viewing area keeps the Paulding Light one of Michigan's most enduring legend-tripping stops.
Giant Stormy Kromer Cap
Ironwood, Michigan
Stormy Kromer's famous wool cap is manufactured in Ironwood, and an enormous version of it sits outside the factory on Wall Street. The giant cap can be viewed anytime, while the factory store and scheduled tours provide a closer look at the century-old Michigan clothing brand.