USA Guide
The Great Lakes
Michigan
Mention Michigan and most people think of cars, heavy industry, and inner-city Detroit. Midwesterners prefer to focus on the state's 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 shoreline 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 populated 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 Native American 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, automobile production remains the major source of Michigan income – though tourism is now a four-season money-spinner, too.
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