Background of the Statehood Issue

Michigan's U.P. as an Independent State

By Jerry Wuorenmaa

Michigan is the only state in the United States that is comprised of two bodies of land. They are referred to as the "Upper Peninsula" (U.P.) and the "Lower Peninsula" (L.P.). The L.P. is larger and was inhabited first, and when acquired, the U.P. was a vast wilderness for the most part. Michigan's Capitol is based far into the L.P., and obviously, because of the Lower Peninsula's larger population, its problems are often a greater concern than those of the U.P. Throughout the past, inhabitants of each peninsula have had starkly different viewpoints and problems of concern. Because of the different backgrounds and issues of each peninsula, I believe that the U.P. of Michigan should become an independent state.

Problems between Michigan's two peninsulas started when Michigan was first admitted to the union. There was a dispute between Ohio and Michigan over whose state would contain the city of Toledo. Congress settled the disagreement by handing the Upper Peninsula to Michigan, and giving Toledo to Ohio. At the time, Michiganians thought the U.P. to be worthless. Although it was later considered to be a good bargain, the U.P. wasn't what the Lower Peninsula wanted in the first place. Therefore, the Lower Peninsula holds the U.P. at a lower value. To put it bluntly, the L.P. has always considered itself to be the only "real Michigan." As far as the L.P. is concerned, the U.P. was only an inferior add-on.

As I have said, the U.P. does have a small population. Some people would consider its people to be low-income, low-class hunters, lumbermen, and miners. Although many of the U.P.'s residents are not wealthy, the peninsula's unique, self-sustaining culture has provided its people with a strong feeling of pride. If the U.P. became an independent state, its residents' strong wills and determination could help it pull through difficult beginnings and gain experience. An independent statehood would cause the U.P. to become further-developed and more inhabited. In time, this would help its people pay the taxes and gain the drive necessary for what is now Upper Michigan to support itself and become a great state.

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The difference in geographical condition and culture in the two peninsulas also causes many problems. Since the U.P. is isolated from the Capitol's location, the U.P.'s problems are also thought by the state government to be isolated. The Upper Peninsula's wilderness areas and underdevelopment have led L.P. representatives and leaders to think the U.P.'s physical condition and residents are inferior to theirs. The state government may actually believe that U.P. district representatives are inferior to those supporting the L.P. districts. Therefore, the opinions of U.P. representatives may be held at lower face value by the legislature. Finally, the U.P.'s culture, terrain, and industry are different than those of the L.P. Therefore, it is difficult for legislators at the Capitol to understand the U.P.'s problems. That is why the state government doesn't grant the U.P. enough money for aid in many situations.

If the Upper Peninsula was an independent state, it would be able to handle its own issues. Its Capitol and legislature would be based in the area where they need to function, and her legislature would be made up of people who understand what needs to be done. No longer, for example, would the U.P.'s people have to drive on icy roads and risk their lives during a grueling winter because the Lansing legislature wouldn't fund needed salt and sand for road repairs, etc. The L.P.'s population is larger than that of the U.P., so the L.P. has more district representatives and senators. But especially during the winter, the U.P. needs a lot of financial support. The U.P.'s relatively few representatives and senators have a difficult time convincing legislature to grant necessary aid. Furthermore, since Michigan's Capitol is in Lansing, the Governor and the legislature are focused on areas nearby and their own problems. Amassed in their own area's issues, L.P. lawmakers can easily forget about the Upper Peninsula. The governor is closely knit to her fellow L.P. residents and, through her treatment and decisions, seems to favor them. The U.P. needs a collection of its own representatives from around the whole peninsula, with none from another body of land, so they can concentrate on the area's own needs that its people are surrounded in.

There is much controversy surrounding the laws made almost entirely by the legislators in the Lower Peninsula. Michigan is the only state made up of two separate parts, which are very different from each other. This setup is not working effectively. Decisions being made in Lansing are not made in the best interest of both peninsulas. No more does the Upper Peninsula need to be controlled as if pulled around on a rope by lawmakers from down below. Powerful lawmakers in Lansing have no business pretending to try to solve the U.P.'s affairs. The Upper Peninsula can thrive if given a chance to control itself the way it should be done. I encourage the Upper Peninsula's people to demand another vote to make the U.P. independent, and to pridefully vote a positive "yes."

Hello:

A friend and I came across your essay today concerning the creation of a new state that would consist of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I found your opinions to be very intriguing.

I am a student at Michigan Tech University in Houghton and I have been so for three years now. Like many of the students attending this university, I am from the Lower Peninsula and have come to the U.P. to receive my education. Myself, as well as my peers, soundly defeat your biases towards people from the Lower Peninsula. We in fact do not view the U.P. as an "inferior add-on" and actually have enjoyed our time here. While we will leave the U.P. after graduation to find work elsewhere, we will have fond memories of the area.

Basically, the idea that the Upper Peninsula would or could ever become its own state is just preposterous. The U.P. is simply a part of the State of Michigan, just as northern lower Michigan (Traverse City, my hometown), southeastern Michigan (Detroit), central Michigan (Lansing), and western Michigan (Grand Rapids) are. As such, it is only natural that residents in the Upper Peninsula have different viewpoints and issues of importance than other areas of the state. However, to suggest that all downstaters are the same, and that we are all conspiring against the U.P. to shut out various opinions, is ridiculous. If you believe that people in Grand Rapids believe the same things and care about the same issues as people in Detroit, than you are ignorant. On the other hand, if you agree that there could indeed be cultural and social differences between different areas like Grand Rapids and Detroit, then why not section off the western part of lower Michigan and make it a new state? If we were to give every geographic and social demographic it's own autonomy you couldn't possibly stop after splitting up the two peninsulas. What you would have in the end is about eight different states, all with their own set of beliefs and way of life.

I am also wondering if it ever occurred to you the peril the U.P. would be in economically if it were to secede. Since the collapse of large scale mining in the region, communities have been struggling to find their economic identity. If you look at the most successful cities in the Upper Peninsula, you will notice that their social and economic identity hinges on one major constant: a college or university. Houghton/Hancock, Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, and to a lesser extent Ironwood, Escanaba, and even Brimley depend heavily on students as a source of income and have been able to build a semi-stable economy based around their respective institutes for higher learning. All of these schools, save Finlandia University in Hancock, are public schools and as such are funded by the State of Michigan, and to a large measure, the 8-million-plus Lower Peninsula taxpayers. Consider the effects of the U.P. becoming its own state. Suddenly, the stream of money from Lansing has dried up, and you have now forced the one million or less Upper Peninsula residents to cough up nearly ten times the tax dollars they spend now as Michiganians to fund these universities. Not to mention the thousands of L.P. students who go to school in the U.P. and pump millions of dollars into the economies are now paying out-of-state tuition. Do you think you'll see enrollment increase when that happens? I don't.

It's obvious to me that if the Upper Peninsula became it's own state the effects on the local economies would be disastrous. Many of the U.P. counties are already some of the poorest in the state, and you simply compound the problem by cutting off downstate funding to universities and other community-enhancing programs. You say that the U.P.'s "residents' strong wills and determination could help her pull through difficult beginnings and gain experience," but it seems to me that if the U.P. becomes more impoverished, there are a lot of people who will leave for better opportunities elsewhere. I can buy the "strong wills" argument, but surely you can't tell me that an economic downturn would lead to this area becoming "further-developed and more inhabited."

And even if the residents of the U.P. could champion this cause to fruition, what on earth makes you think that independence would ever be granted? Not only would that motion need to pass through both houses of the state legislature, but it would also have to pass through both houses of Congress. It would never, I repeat, NEVER happen. Even your state representatives (who I might add, have the same voting power in Lansing as any downstate rep) and Bart Stupak (you know who he is, don't you?) understand the importance of the Lower Peninsula to the economy and way of life for Upper Peninsula residents.

Basically, your views on U.P. independence are radical, uninformed, and out of touch with reality. Nowhere in your essay do you state any real facts that lead me to believe that the U.P. is being ignored or abused by it's southern neighbour. You only state things you "believe" might be true, with nothing to back up your claims with. The fact of the matter is, the people of the U.P. have a lot to be grateful for, and I know that most of them are indeed happy to be a part of Michigan. You are, just as every other resident of Michigan, represented in our state and federal governments equally and fairly. If you want to do something to improve your life and the lives of those around you, work within the system and make a difference, like Chase Osborn did, one of the greatest governors the state ever had, and one who happened to be from the Upper Peninsula. Spreading misleading and misinformed propaghanda in the hopes of riling up locals does nothing to help.

I'm sorry this got so long, but I felt compelled to rebutt your opinions not because the were so much pro-Upper Peninsula, but because they were so obviously anti-Lower Peninsula. Good luck championing your cause when in Lansing with your "anti-Troll" biases.

First let me say that I wrote that essay when I was in ninth grade. Over the past two years I have become much more politically informed and perhaps more realistic. Perhaps I didn't know as much about Michigan's current and historical politics at the time I wrote it as I should have, but I had a dream which I do still believe can eventually be attained. I did attempt to obtain information about the subject from the internet and from our district representative at the time, Mike Prusi, but neither source yielded anything useful. This may explain the lack of support for many of my opinions. I was writing a somewhat technical essay without enough information, and this may have been a mistake.

You make a number of very good points in your letter. Let me address them one by one.

1.) While I do believe that many "Trolls" (used on an equal level as the word "Yoopers", since both terms have negative connotations) do regard Yoopers as inferior people, I have realized that most Lower Peninsula residents do greatly value the U.P. for both its/her land and its/her people.

2.) As for my reference of the U.P. as an "inferior add-on" to Michigan (in the opinions of L.P. residents) this was in fact the reaction of L.P. residents to the exchange of the U.P. for the Toledo area during Michigan's founding. This fact is firmly supported by Michigan history. I did not mean to imply that L.P. residents still view the U.P. that way - at least not in that passage.

3.) You dismiss the idea of U.P. independent statehood by comparing it, as a region, to any other geographic region in the L.P. or in any other state. My opinion remains that the U.P. is different, geographically and culturally, to an extent not existent in any other area of Michigan. One of the reasons that separate states come to exist in certain locations in our country is that there are large social and geographic differences between them. Of course there are small differences in these concerns between each state's unofficial regions, but what I am saying is that the U.P. is different enough to justify defining it as a unique, separate state.

4.) Economy is the problem always stated when someone rebutts the independence issue, and I must admit it is the strongest opposing force. It is true that our economy is not strong enough (yet) to become a state. It is true that it suffered a downfall with the disappearance of mining in many places. Do you know why I didn't better support the U.P.'s method of attaining economic stability as a state? It's because I myself didn't know how we would. I still don't. But there are strong economic platforms besides universities building up in several U.P. locations. Two of the most notable are the K.I. Sawyer area and Marquette General Hospital, both in Marquette County. The other counties do, however have a long way to go. There is no rush for independence.

5.) I never had even considered the fact that the U.P.'s public universities are economic strongholds in many cities. I did realize that if independence ever was attained, the U.P. would probably have to abandon all public universities except for perhaps one. And it didn't occur to me at the time of writing the essay that these universities' closure could mean economic disaster for many areas. This is a serious problem I'll have to think about.

6.) It was my hope at the time of writing the essay that the U.P.'s economic weakness would make L.P. legislators happy to get rid of us and abandon us as part of Michigan. I now realize that this was an unrealistic theory. The L.P. would be hard pressed to vote in favor of the U.P.'s secession because of its own interests in the U.P., and the federal government would be hard pressed to do so due to the fact that such a secession of a state region is unprecedented. The U.P. doesn't have enough state representatives to have a meaningful voice in state affairs, due to its small percentage of Michigan's population (between three and four percent), and this would make the secession almost impossible. But remember that one of my main reasons for wanting U.P. independence was exactly that problem: the lack of representation in state goverment. I know that the U.P. does have equal democratic representation, but it just doesn't work as well as in other areas because of the U.P.'s miniscule population percentage. To me, it is like the U.P. has a big brother, the L.P., who speaks for us on every concern and the U.P. doesn't have any control because it is the unimportant little brother. I don't have a problem with the U.P.'s federal representation, however, because federal affairs are on such a large scale compared to localized state affairs.

7.) Although I concede that I was slightly biased against lower peninsula residents at the time of writing the essay, from what I understand there are some lower peninsula residents who are just as biased against the upper peninsula. I don't have proof to back that up, however.

Thank you for your intelligent and informed rebuttal against my essay. Although the essay is mediocre compared to my current standards, at the time it was just the beginning of one of my life crusades. My spirit for the issue was more important than total accuracy and factual support. You have given me new things to think about in your rebuttal and I will take them into consideration whenever I talk about or write about the independence issue in the future. I apologize for offending lower peninsula residents who value the U.P. as a legitimate part of Michigan as a whole. They are the type of people who are appreciated throughout the state and by people of all regions. I'm glad you enjoyed your stay in the U.P.; as you have discovered, we have a lot to offer. Good luck in your future prospects!