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MIMichigan Fun Facts
Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes and ends up with 3,288 miles of shoreline, more coast than any state except Alaska. All of it is fresh water. A state sitting in the middle of the continent has the second longest coastline in the country, split across two peninsulas that had no road link to each other until 1957.
Facts most people get wrong
- You drive south from Detroit to reach Canada. Windsor, Ontario sits across the river below the city, the one stretch of the border where Canada is to the south.
- The Upper Peninsula was a consolation prize. Michigan and Ohio nearly came to blows over the Toledo Strip in 1835 and 1836. Congress gave Toledo to Ohio and handed Michigan the western UP, then considered worthless. Its copper and iron proved worth far more than Toledo.
- Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake entirely inside the United States. The other four are shared with Ontario, which is why the state's water border runs against a foreign country.
- Corn flakes were health food, not breakfast candy. John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, and boiled wheat left sitting too long produced the flaking accident in 1894. Sugar came later, over the doctor's objections, and split the two brothers for good.
- The hand map only covers half the state. A right palm works for the Lower Peninsula and nothing else. Yoopers use the left hand, and the two halves were joined by ferry, not road, until 1957.
Records and firsts
- 3,288 miles of shoreline, second only to Alaska, plus more than 11,000 inland lakes.
- The Mackinac Bridge opened in November 1957 and measures 26,372 feet between anchorages, the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere by that measure.
- The first mile of concrete highway in the country was poured on Woodward Avenue in Detroit in 1909.
- A Detroit police officer named William Potts built the first four-way, three-color traffic signal in 1920.
- Ford's moving assembly line at Highland Park cut Model T build time from more than twelve hours to about 93 minutes in 1913.
- Berry Gordy started Motown in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family, in a house on West Grand Boulevard he renamed Hitsville U.S.A.
Geography that surprises
- Michigan runs on two clocks. Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee counties in the western UP keep Central Time because their daily business runs toward Wisconsin.
- Isle Royale sits in Lake Superior closer to Ontario and Minnesota than to any part of Michigan. It is the least visited national park in the lower 48 and shuts down entirely for winter.
- The Upper Peninsula holds close to a third of the state's land and about three percent of its people.
- Michigan's land borders stop at Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, but its water borders in the lakes put it against Minnesota, Illinois and the province of Ontario.
- The high point, Mount Arvon at 1,979 feet, only took the title in 1982, when a resurvey found it beat nearby Mount Curwood by about eleven inches.
Where the name comes from
Michigan comes from the Ojibwe word mishigami, meaning large lake or great water. French explorers attached it to the lake first, and the territory took the lake's name in 1805. The Latin motto, Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice, means if you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you. The second nickname, Wolverine State, is odder: wolverines are not native here, and none had been confirmed in the wild for roughly two centuries until one turned up in Huron County in 2004 and lived there until 2010.
Questions people ask about Michigan
What is Michigan known for?
The auto industry and Ford's assembly line, Motown, 3,288 miles of freshwater shoreline, the Mackinac Bridge, cherries around Traverse City, the cereal companies of Battle Creek, and a shape people describe by holding up a hand.
Is Michigan in two time zones?
Yes. Four counties in the western Upper Peninsula, Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee, observe Central Time. The rest of the state is on Eastern Time.
What is the weirdest law in Michigan?
You cannot buy a car on Sunday in most of the state. A long-standing statute bans Sunday motor vehicle sales, with a local option only counties under a set population threshold can use, so dealer lots in the big metros stay closed.
Why do people from Michigan use their hand as a map?
The Lower Peninsula is close enough to a mitten that a right palm works as a map, and locals point at a knuckle to say where they live. It fails for the Upper Peninsula, so Yoopers use the left hand for that half.
What was the Toledo War?
A border standoff between Michigan and Ohio in 1835 and 1836 over the Toledo Strip. Militias mustered, nobody was killed, and Congress settled it by giving Toledo to Ohio and the western Upper Peninsula to Michigan.