Aaron French moved in from Cincinnati. He had only been here approximately 6 Months. So he himself was a transient character, he had attempted to be a businessman in Cincinnati, involved in the meat

I remember the first time I tried to visit the French family grave, just outside of Wabash, Indiana. It was a Sunday, in the middle of the winter, one day before the mini-blizzard that closed county

The sky to the west of the small town of Peshtigo (PESH-ti-go [not pesh-TEE-go]), Wisconsin glowed red before the sunrise, on the morning of October 8th, 1871. It was Sunday, and when the local priest

The day after leaving Copper County, I took the obligatory cruise of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It might be the one thing up here that people from outside the UP are likely to have heard o

That sound you hear in the background is the hoist control of the Quincy Mine just outside Hancock, Michigan, where we’re heading today. Quincy is sort of the Madison Square Garden of the northern

So, the motel that I stayed at in Eagle Harbor, Fletchy's Otter Belly Lodge, formerly the Shoreline Motel, was apparently the location of well-known feud between a local doctor and the president of th

One of the things I’d heard about my next stop, Phoenix, Michigan, was that it was home to a well-known bridge troll – but instead of a bridge, it was a 148-year-old general store, and instead of a tr

The following morning, my first real stop across the canal, apart from gawking at random pieces of rotting machinery, was the ghost town of Gregoryville – which is of a very different sort than the on

The first mining boom in American history was not the California Gold Rush, the Klondike Gold Rush, or any other gold rush. The first mining boom in American history was the copper rush of the uppermo

The distinctive sound of the Mackinaw Bridge is due to the grating in the two center lanes, one going each way. This grating allows air to pass through the bridge rather than pushing against it. Pa