County note shelf
Marquette County Porch Notes
Stories, practical details, outdoor places, tax quirks, and local history connected to Marquette County. This shelf has 4 practical notes and 22 local stories.
26 notes
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- History and culture The Egyptian obelisks over an Ishpeming iron mine Two concrete towers above the Cliffs Shaft Mine in Ishpeming were built to look like Egyptian obelisks in 1919 — the only iron-mine headframes in the country designed for beauty as much as work.
- History and culture Why Marquette's harbor light is painted red The red brick lighthouse on the point in Marquette dates to 1866, still guides ore freighters into the harbor, and is the oldest significant building in the city.
- Outdoors The day nine billion gallons came down the Dead River In May 2003 a spillway at Silver Lake Dam failed and emptied the reservoir down the Dead River, taking out a second dam, nine bridges, and a power plant — without killing anyone.
- Outdoors A 47-mile trail laid over the rails that hauled the iron The Iron Ore Heritage Trail runs 47 miles across the Marquette Iron Range, much of it on old railroad grades, linking the mining towns of Negaunee and Ishpeming to Marquette's Lake Superior shore.
- History and culture Northern Michigan University started with 32 students and six teachers Northern Michigan University opened in Marquette in 1899 as a teacher-training school — 32 students, six faculty, 22 acres — and grew into the largest university in the Upper Peninsula.
- Outdoors The scrap-metal sculpture park a township tried to ban Lakenenland, on M-28 east of Marquette, is 37 acres of welded scrap-iron sculptures by Tom Lakenen — free, open around the clock, and born when officials called the art illegal yard signs.
- Outdoors The town that moved so a mine could swallow its old ground A free overlook at Republic looks down into a 600-foot-deep flooded iron pit — the only open-pit mine in Michigan set up for public viewing, dug after part of town was moved aside.
- History and culture The mining town that burned to three buildings, then rebuilt by fall Michigamme grew up around an iron mine on the county's biggest inland lake — then a June 1873 forest fire wiped out all but a few buildings, and the town rebuilt within months.
- Money and taxes Is there a city income tax in Marquette? Neither Marquette nor any other city in Marquette County charges a city income tax -- and neither does anywhere else in the Upper Peninsula. The nearest one is Grayling, well over a hundred miles away.
- History and culture Ishpeming, the birthplace of American skiing The iron-range city of Ishpeming is where organized skiing in the United States was born -- the national ski association was founded here in 1905, and the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame still calls the town home.
- History and culture Marquette's ore docks, where the iron range meets the lake Marquette grew up as the port that shipped the Upper Peninsula's iron to the world. Its great ore docks still define the waterfront -- one a beloved retired landmark, the other still loading freighters with iron pellets today.
- History and culture Negaunee and the birth of Michigan's iron industry Negaunee is where it all started -- iron ore found in the roots of a fallen tree in 1844, the first mine, the first forge. The Michigan Iron Industry Museum sits on the very spot where Michigan iron was first made.
- Outdoors Presque Isle Park and Sugarloaf, Marquette's outdoor gems Two of Marquette's best-loved spots sit minutes from downtown: Presque Isle Park, a forested headland ringed by ancient black cliffs on Lake Superior, and Sugarloaf Mountain, a short climb to a sweeping view of the whole shoreline.
- History and culture Who Marquette is named for Marquette -- the city, the county, and the university -- is named for Father Jacques Marquette, the French Jesuit missionary and explorer who traveled the Great Lakes in the 1600s and helped map the upper Mississippi.
- History and culture Stannard Rock: The Loneliest Lighthouse in America Twenty-four miles out in open Lake Superior with no land in sight, America's most isolated lighthouse — built against brutal odds, and now a lonely climate-research station.
- History and culture That Time the Upper Peninsula Tried to Become the 51st State More than once, Michigan's Upper Peninsula tried to secede and become a 51st state called 'Superior' — coming closest in the 1960s and '70s.
- History and culture The World's Largest Working Chainsaw Guards a U.P. Gift Shop Big Gus, the world's largest working chainsaw — 22 feet of V-8-powered steel — guards Da Yoopers Tourist Trap on US-41 near Ishpeming.
- History and culture Cudighi: The U.P.'s Sweet-Spiced Secret The U.P.'s sweet-spiced Italian sausage sandwich — a Marquette County staple that Italy itself wouldn't recognize.
- History and culture How 'Yooper' Made It Into the Dictionary It took one Yooper more than a decade of letters (and a few pasties) to get the word 'Yooper' into the dictionary.
- Outdoors Laughing Whitefish Falls One of the best names in Michigan, and a shape to match: the Laughing Whitefish River fans out about a hundred feet down a stepped limestone wall in a quiet, uncrowded state park.
- 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 Manoomin — Wild Rice Michigan's newest symbol is one of its oldest foods: in 2023 it became the first state to name an official native grain — manoomin, the wild rice at the heart of Anishinaabe history.
- Home and property What to know about well and septic in Marquette County Outside the cities, much of Marquette County is on private well and septic. Michigan has no statewide septic code, and the county health department doesn't require an inspection purely because a property is sold -- though it checks the septic when you apply for a well permit, and some home loans ask for one.
- History and culture The iron range that built America (and still ships) Marquette County's iron range fed the nation's furnaces for 175 years — Negaunee and Ishpeming mined it, and the ore dock at Marquette still loads freighters today.
- 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.