Why is the Upper Peninsula part of Michigan and not Wisconsin?

Because Wisconsin said to Michigan “Up yours!”

Wisconsinites wanted Michiganders to have to spend beaucoup bucks on ferries and a big bridge.

Make the lakes great again?

When Michigan applied for statehood, there was contention with Ohio over a strip of land known as the “Toledo Strip”. Congress gave the Toledo Strip to Ohio, and gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a consolation prize.

And what do Yoopers think? Free the Upper Peninsula! Let’s march on Washington.

Lower Peninsulites just say “Talk to the hand!”

I’ve often wondered the same way regarding…

° most of the Florida panhandle, which would make more sense to be part of Alabama,

° the Delmarva Peninsula (weirdly shared among three states: Delaware, Maryland and Virginia – which is why it has that name, after all),

° Liberty Island (the island that the Statue of Liberty resides upon should by rights belong to New Jersey),

° and the weird little peninsula / island at the extreme western end of Kentucky that juts into the Mississippi River and actually adjoins Tennessee (or Missouri), but is part of Kentucky by jurisdiction and history. That is, the ‘Kentucky Bend’ region.

Even in my own neighborhood, there is a small southern jog in the otherwise straight-line east-west border between Massachusetts and Connecticut to account for the Congamond Lake area. No one can really say why the line extends south to encompass one of the lakes; it’s unlikely to have been a simple surveying error.

I suspect that the UP of Michigan has more to do with the fact of it becoming a state before Wisconsin did, and the knowledge even then that the region had significant iron ore deposits which would be valuable to accrue to whichever state could form – and be admitted to the Union – quickly enough to be in “my state, rather than someone else’s.”

I believe it’s time to redraw all the states based on common sense geographical features. I will be heading the commission. Who would like to be a member?

Good luck widdat.

The people who live in Oklahoma would not, for the most part, want to be known as “Texans”. And vice versa. Likewise, those who live in the Florida panhandle don’t want to be part of that redneck Alabama crowd, and the people who live on Virginia’s Eastern Shore are proud to be Virginians, and not – what they hell are they called, anyway? – “Delawarens”? or Marylanders.

And those people living in the Massachusetts jog into Connecticut might wish they could be Nutmeggers, but fuck ‘em; they are what they are – whatever that is.

And no one lives on Liberty Island, so that hardly matters.

As for the Kentucky Bend, my reading suggests that it’s mostly one family who lives in and controls most of that land, so as far as I’m concerned, they can attempt to secede and form a new state, if they want to, and can think of a name.

@CWOTUS You can blame the Delaware demarcation on Mason and Dixon, they drew the line.

And, like the Toledo Strip fiasco, it was reliance on poorly drawn maps that ended up having to be settled by surveying.

Read this about the Toledo War: wikipedia

Michigan was given the UP by Congress as a consolation.

@Hawaii_Jake The idea of U.P. secession comes up every few years. I grew up in Michigan (Lower Peninsula) and the story pops up in the news and goes away again. It’s never gained much traction.

It’s like Northern California secession – an idea that’s always out there among a small number of people.

Though the western U.P. is tied to Wisconsin in a lot of ways. They bleed Packer green & gold. Towns near the border like Iron Mountain are on Central Time, not Eastern like the rest of the state. They talk funny like Wisconsinites and Minnesotans.

I also have a strong Wisconsin heritage. In fact I’m in Milwaukee right now, visiting family.

I’ve never heard anybody in Wisconsin mention the desire to take the U.P.

Wisconsinites? Really? I always liked the notion of Wisconsinners, myself.

Sconnies has become popular in recent years.

Cheese anyone?

@Call_Me_Jay What’s a sconny? (sconnie?)

@Hawaii_Jake I’m assuming it comes from WiSCONsin.

Oh! Thank you.

Cheese anyone?

Beer cheese soup if you want to go full sconnie. In a Packers bowl.

@janbb and @Hawaii_Jake I think you two have milked this as far as possible.

@zenvelo How dairy you say that?

Thanks to this Q I just learned all about the Toledo War!
I love this place!

I spent a week in Toledo one day.

Moooommmmm!! Oklahoma is touching me! Make it stop!!