Mention
MICHIGAN and most people think
of cars, heavy industry and inner-city
Detroit. Midwesterners prefer to focus on its
magnificent scenery. The beaches, dunes and
cliffs along the 3200-mile shoreline of its
two vividly contrasting
peninsulas -
bordering four of the five Great Lakes - rival
many an oceanfront state.
The mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula is
dominated from its southeastern corner by the
industrial giant of Detroit ,
surrounded by satellite cities heavily devoted
to the automotive industry. In the west, the
scenic 350-mile Lake Michigan shore drive
passes through likeable little ports before
reaching the stunning Sleeping Bear Dunes
and resort towns such as Traverse City
in the peninsula's balmy northwest corner. The
desolate, dramatic and thinly popu lated Upper
Peninsula , reaching out from Wisconsin
like a claw to separate lakes Superior and
Michigan, is a far cry indeed from the
cosmopolitan south.
In the mid-seventeenth century, French
explorers forged a successful trading
relationship with the Chippewa, Ontario and
other tribes. The British , who
acquired control after 1763, were far more
brutal. Governor Henry Hamilton, the
"Hair Buyer of Detroit," advocated
taking scalps rather than prisoners. Ever
since, Michigan's economy has developed in
waves, the eighteenth-century fur, timber and
copper booms culminating in the state
establishing itself at the forefront of the
nation's manufacturing capacity, thanks to its
abundant raw materials, good transportation
links, and the genius of innovators such as Henry
Ford . Despite the slumps of the Seventies
and Eighties, car production remains the major
source of Michigan income - and tourism is now
a four-season money-spinner.
