Keweenaw Peninsula

  • Dwelling in the past

    Around Lake Superior, overnight guests can try out life at a lighthouse.

    When Lake Superior lighthouses had keepers, there was nothing romantic about life there. The posts were cold, lonely and meagerly furnished on the government dime. The work was physically taxing and repetitive. Through the long nights, keepers had to get up every two hours to wind the mechanism that rotated the lens. It's no wonder many of the early lighthouse keepers were hermits or grouches.

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  • Exploring Isle Royale

    Famous for its moose and wolves, this Lake Superior wilderness island is beguiling.

    When it rains on Isle Royale, you just have to soak it up. Moisture comes with the territory in Lake Superior's northern reaches. No one comes here for the weather, despite early advertising that called it a "Summertime 'Bermuda' Paradise." Bermuda it's not. But paradise? It depends on how you look at it.

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  • Copper Harbor refuge

    Early fortune-seekers left their mark on a village at the tip of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.

    Copper Harbor, Mich., never has had an easy existence. Indians and explorers always knew there was copper sitting along the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the desolation of the area made mining difficult. The earliest expedition, sent by London investors in 1771, gave up in disgust on an area Patrick Henry told Congress was "beyond the most distant wilderness and remote as the moon."

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  • Digging the Keweenaw

    On Lake Superior, an isolated peninsula yields up all sorts of riches.

    On Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, distance is both curse and blessing. Jutting deep into Lake Superior, it's far from big cities — for Detroit residents, Nashville and Washington, D.C., are closer than the Keweenaw (pronounced KEY-win-awe).

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