That Time the Upper Peninsula Tried to Become the 51st State

Spend any time with Yoopers (that’s residents of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and you’ll notice a fierce independent streak. That streak once came surprisingly close to redrawing the map of the United States.

For more than a century, folks in the U.P. floated the idea of breaking away from Michigan to form their own state. The name was usually “Superior,” after the great lake. The reasoning was always about distance and feeling overlooked. The U.P. is cut off from the rest of Michigan, has a culture all its own, and sits far from the capital in Lansing. (Fun bit of trivia for how separate it feels: some Yoopers root for the Green Bay Packers, since Wisconsin is closer than Detroit.)

The idea is old. Thomas Jefferson once proposed a state called “Sylvania” covering roughly the same area. But the push peaked in the 1960s and ’70s. An Upper Peninsula Independence Association formed in 1962. A secession bill went to the Michigan Legislature, and backers gathered 20,000 petition signatures for a ballot referendum on separation — 36,000 short of the number needed. State Rep. Dominic Jacobetti championed the cause in the 1970s. The last serious attempt came in November 1975, when voters in Marquette and Iron Mountain were asked about the split. They turned it down. About 29% of Marquette voters backed the split, and about 32% in Iron Mountain.

Why did it fizzle? For one, the U.P. receives more in state funding than it could easily raise alone. And the Mackinac Bridge, opened in 1957, tied the two peninsulas together with a direct highway link. A separate “Superior” would also have had the smallest population of any state. Still, every few years, the dream resurfaces.