History and Local Culture
See also: Timeline of Michigan history and Michigan: HistoryNorthern Michigan was inhabited by Native American tribes, most recently Ojibwa and Odawa, well before English settlers founded a fort on Mackinac Island. Later, industry depended on natural resources such as lumber and fur trading which contributed to the rise of Traverse City. When the railroads connected Northern Michigan to the large cities through Kalamazoo, some wealthy urbanites established summer home associations in Charlevoix, Harbor Point,and Bay View. As passenger railroad usage ended in the 1960s because of increased automobile travel, aggressive promotion of Northern Michigan by local chambers of commerce led to many of the festivals and attractions that bring visitors north even today.
The area was populated by many different ethnicities, including groups from New England, Germany, and Poland. The Odawa nation is located in Emmet County.(Little Traverse Band of Odawa Indians)Native American reservations exist at Mount Pleasant and on the Leelanau Peninsula.
The Lumberman's Monument honors lumberjacks that shaped the area, exploiting the natural resource. It is located on River Road, which runs parallel with the beautiful Au Sable River, and is a designated National Scenic Byway for the 23 miles (37 km) that go into Oscoda. The State of Michigan has designated Oscoda as the official home of Paul Bunyan due to the earliest documented publications in the Oscoda Press, August 10, 1906 by James MacGillivray (later revised and published in the Detroit News in 1910).
Hartwick Pines State Park is a 9,672-acre (39.1 km2) State Park and Logging museum located in Crawford County near Grayling and Interstate 75. It is the third largest state park on Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the state's fifth-biggest park overall. The park contains an old growth forest of white pines and red pines that resembles the appearance of all of Northern Michigan prior to the logging era. Also to be noted is Interlochen State Park, which is the oldest state park and the other remaining stand of virgin Eastern White Pine in the Lower Peninsula.
Read more about this topic: Northern Michigan
Famous quotes containing the words history, local and/or culture:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Hey, you dress up our town very nicely. You don’t look out the Chamber of Commerce is going to list you in their publicity with the local attractions.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Dr. Matt Hastings (John Agar)
“Unthinking people will often try to teach you how to do the things which you can do better than you can be taught to do them. If you are sure of all this, you can start to add to your value as a mother by learning the things that can be taught, for the best of our civilization and culture offers much that is of value, if you can take it without loss of what comes to you naturally.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)