County note shelf
Gogebic County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Gogebic County. This shelf has 4 practical notes and 10 local stories.
14 notes
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- Outdoors Copper Peak, where skiers fly Just north of Ironwood stands Copper Peak -- the only ski-flying hill in the Western Hemisphere and the tallest artificial ski jump on Earth, now being rebuilt to host the world's best again.
- History and culture How Gogebic County got its name Gogebic County takes its name from Lake Gogebic -- an Ojibwe name, Agogebic, whose exact meaning has been debated for over a century. This was Lake Superior Chippewa country long before it was a county.
- History and culture Ironwood, the Gogebic Range, and Big Snow Country Ironwood was born from some of the richest iron ore in Michigan and named for the miner whose ore-stained hands gave the town its name -- and when the mines closed, the deep snow gave it a second life.
- Money and taxes Is there a city income tax in Ironwood or Bessemer? Neither Ironwood, Bessemer, nor Wakefield charges a city income tax -- and neither does anywhere else in the Upper Peninsula. The nearest one is Grayling, well over two hundred miles away.
- Outdoors Lake Gogebic, the U.P.'s biggest inland lake Lake Gogebic is the largest inland lake in the Upper Peninsula -- a fifteen-mile fishing paradise so big it sits in two counties and two time zones at once, ringed by the Ottawa National Forest.
- History and culture The Ghost Light That Has Glowed in the U.P. Woods for 60 Years The Paulding Light has drawn ghost-hunters to a U.P. forest road since 1966 — and a 2010 Michigan Tech study traced it to distant headlights bent by a temperature inversion.
- History and culture The Strange, True Story of How Michigan Accidentally Gave Wisconsin a Chunk of the U.P. After Michigan won the U.P., surveyors followed the wrong fork of the Montreal River and handed a chunk back to Wisconsin — and in 1926 the Supreme Court let the mistake stand.
- Outdoors The Black River Waterfalls The Black River near Bessemer gives you five waterfalls in a row — Great Conglomerate, Potawatomi, Gorge, Sandstone, and Rainbow — strung along one of the great waterfall walks in the Midwest.
- History and culture The Hand-Pie With a Crust You Weren't Supposed to Eat The U.P.'s beloved pasty came over with Cornish miners — and the famous story about its thick crust being a disposable handle is half legend.
- History and culture Why Do Some Parts of the U.P. Have a Different Time Than the Rest of Michigan? Most of Michigan runs on Eastern Time, but four counties in the western U.P. that border Wisconsin — Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee — sit on Central Time.
- Outdoors Bond Falls Many U.P. folks call Bond Falls the prettiest waterfall in Michigan after Tahquamenon — a hundred-foot-wide staircase of cascades you can stand right in the middle of.
- Home and property What to know about well and septic in Gogebic County Outside the cities, most of Gogebic County is on private well and septic. Michigan has no statewide septic code, and the local health department doesn't require an inspection when a property is sold -- though it offers one that some home loans and buyers ask for.
- Money and taxes Buying in a township? Watch for special assessments on top of your taxes Michigan township buyers should check for special assessments that can add separate road, sewer, water, lighting, sidewalk, or drain charges.
- Money and taxes In Michigan, you get two property-tax bills a year — not one Most Michigan property owners get separate summer and winter tax bills, with local rules deciding what lands on each bill.