Region 12:
The Michigan Soo is the smaller component of the "twin Soos," or what's occasionally billed as "Sault Ste. Marie, the International City" - "two nations, one city!" The much larger Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario has been connected to Michigan since 1962 by the International Bridge. The Canadian Soo developed heavy industry (a steel mill and paper mill) shortly after 1900 because the American side failed to give American entrepreneur Francis Clergue the financial support he sought. Today the Canadian Soo's population is around 80,000.
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is a visitor hub for a beautiful natural area that extends west along the beautiful, forested shores of Whitefish Bay. It includes the villages of Bay Mills and Brimley, Monocle Lake, Bay View beach and related campgrounds of Hiawatha National Forest, the Point Iroquois Lighthouse and museum, and the beautiful Bay Mills Casino and Resort. The Bay Mills Indian Community of Chippewas has done much to make its community the most attractive of all the Upper Peninsula's tribal lands.
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario is the point of departure for the Algoma Central Railroad's popular Agawa Canyon tour train. (In winter it's known as the Snow Train.) Sault Ontario is also the starting point for the drive along the spectacular red Lake Superior bluffs to Wawa. Skiers come to ski nearby Searchmont, a ski resort with the second-biggest vertical drop in the Midwest after Mount Bohemia in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
The city is large, familiarly suburban in its sprawl, yet with many distinctively British/Canadian touches in its older architecture. But just north of it, the landscape becomes wild and rugged, part of the Algoma Highlands. Heading north on Highway 17, the road around Lake Superior to Wawa and Thunder Bay, development suddenly stops as you leave town, and a vista of pure trees unfolds before you. Motorists can feel like they're driving across the frontier. Actually, there are small communities at Goulais Bay (pronounced "GOO-lee") and inland at Searchmont where outdoors-lovers live and commute to Sault Ste. Marie. But it's important to fill up on gas heading north and around the big lake, because gas stations are few and far between.
The Canadian Soo has long been a jumping-off place for people going into the bush in the roadless north. The Algoma Central Railroad (now the Agawa Canyon Tour Train and Snow Train) was begun in the 1890s by Francis Clergue to connect iron mines in the wilderness a hundred miles north of Sault, Ontario, to his steel mill. Even today the tour train also serves fishing and hunting lodges unreachable by road. Search for "Algoma Central Railroad history" to read several interesting accounts. Canada's famous Group of Seven expressionist landscape painters used an Algoma Central box car shunted to sidings as the mobile base camp for some of their outdoor painting trips. (See their vivid views of the Canadian landscape at www.groupofsevenart.com and read about their important role in creating a Canadian identify at www.mta.ca/faculty/arts/Canadian_studies.) Bushplanes based here at the Ontario Provincial Air Service, begin in 1924, were sent out to fight fires in the north. Later seaplanes based here provided transportation to lumber, mining, and fishing camps. Today land-based amphibious planes have made seaplanes obsolete. Their waterfront hangar now houses the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, an unusual and compelling visitor attraction.
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, is the oldest continuously settled place in the Middle West, going back to a fur trading post in the 1650s and mission a decade later. The southern (now American) riverbank was settled first because it was higher and more habitable.
Long before that, Ojibwa (also called Chippewa) Indians lived on Sugar Island and fished in the whitewater rapids of the St. Marys River, teeming with whitefish. They called the place "the rapids" - "Sault" in French, "Bawating" in Ojibwa (pronounced "BOW-ding," rhymes with "cow"). Today's visitors to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site can take the Attikamek Trail and probably see descendants of early Ojibwa fishing in what remains of the rapids.
The rapids, rich in many species of fish, have always been the basis of the local economy one way or another. During the fur trade, from the 1600s into the 1800s, portaging around the rapids was necessary. (Today's Portage Avenue by the locks is along that old portage route.) The pressing need to ship valuable cargoes, first of copper, then iron, and later grain, to the Lower Lakes motivated the construction of a succession of locks, beginning in 1855. Today the locks permit even huge 1,000-foot freighters to pass from one lake to the other.
There's little in the way of manufacturing and no mining in the Eastern Upper Peninsula. Across the river in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, the imaginative American industrialist Francis Hector Clergue put together cheap power (generated by the fall at the St. Marys River) with the iron and timber in the Canadian hinterland to create an industrial powerhouse that today dwarfs the older American Sault in population.
Much of the land in Michigan interior here is marshy, though some of the best Upper Peninsula farmland is around Pickford and Rudyard, 20 or so miles to the south. Two automotive test tracks, Continental Teves near Brimley and Smithers near Raco, take advantage of the area's cold, snowy weather and relative accessibility to Detroit via I-75. The multi-prison complex at Kincheloe and the casino are the biggest employers in a region that used to have one of the state's highest poverty rates. Then the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians led the way in Michigan to community economic development on an impressive scale through gambling.
Between Sault Ste. Marie and Whitefish Point, Lake Shore Drive along Whitefish Bay is beautiful and most interesting. At Bay Mills, it offers terrific Lake Superior views from the short detour up Mission Hill, looking out onto shipping lanes. Going west along Lakeshore Road, motorists pass the Bay Mills Casino and Resort (the first casino to take advantage of a prime scenic location and market itself as a destination resort with golf) plus a lighthouse museum with a stunning view from its tower, and a beautiful North Country Trail segment with a swinging bridge. The Hiawatha National Forest, which includes much of this land, has several picnic areas, campgrounds, and beaches in prime settings, often with very large trees spared during the logging era.
It all makes for a lovely day's drive, especially magnificent in fall color season, when maples, birches, and dark green conifers make rich color contrasts. If you're driving between Tahquamenon Falls and Sault Ste. Marie, it's well worth the extra time to take Lake Shore west from Brimley as an east-west scenic route, instead of the direct but dull M-28.
Border areas are always sensitive to shifting economic and political circumstances. 9/11 brought many changes to the area, starting with a stepped-up U. S. Border Patrol presence and a new, much larger customs/immigration/Border Patrol building on the American end of the International Bridge. Backups aren't as frequent as they had been when American customs and immigration staff looked in every trunk. Canadian border employees were involved in labor negotiations and work slowdowns. Possible backups at the border are expected only on peak days in summer, and they're always worse for Americans returning to the U.S.
Some things are different. If children don't have a passport, they should have a birth certificate. Also, if you're driving a borrowed car, you may be questioned if your registration doesn't match your name. Different inspectors require different things, local residents say, and they have the right to handle things the way they want.
Sault Ste. Marie
Sault Ste. Marie is strategically located on the American side of the rapids of the St. Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. It's the Upper Peninsula's second largest city, with a population of some 14,000. Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is the business and government administrative center of the Eastern Upper Peninsula, and it has long been a tourist attraction because of the Soo Locks at Soo Locks Park at Lake Superior's outlet. The locks are a mecca for serious boatwatchers. The Soo Locks Boat Tour takes visitors through the smallest lock. On the Canadian side, the much smaller locks (part of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site) provides historical perspective on Canadian history and can be toured via Lock Tours Canada www.locktours.com. But in recent years, the huge, glitzy Las Vegas-style Kewadin Casino has become a much bigger visitor draw than the locks.
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is a visitor hub for a beautiful natural area that extends west along the beautiful, forested shores of Whitefish Bay. It includes the villages of Bay Mills and Brimley, Monocle Lake, Bay View beach and related campgrounds of Hiawatha National Forest, the Point Iroquois Lighthouse and museum, and the beautiful Bay Mills Casino and Resort. The Bay Mills Indian Community of Chippewas has done much to make its community the most attractive of all the Upper Peninsula's tribal lands.
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario is the point of departure for the Algoma Central Railroad's popular Agawa Canyon tour train. (In winter it's known as the Snow Train.) Sault Ontario is also the starting point for the drive along the spectacular red Lake Superior bluffs to Wawa. Skiers come to ski nearby Searchmont, a ski resort with the second-biggest vertical drop in the Midwest after Mount Bohemia in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
The city is large, familiarly suburban in its sprawl, yet with many distinctively British/Canadian touches in its older architecture. But just north of it, the landscape becomes wild and rugged, part of the Algoma Highlands. Heading north on Highway 17, the road around Lake Superior to Wawa and Thunder Bay, development suddenly stops as you leave town, and a vista of pure trees unfolds before you. Motorists can feel like they're driving across the frontier. Actually, there are small communities at Goulais Bay (pronounced "GOO-lee") and inland at Searchmont where outdoors-lovers live and commute to Sault Ste. Marie. But it's important to fill up on gas heading north and around the big lake, because gas stations are few and far between.
The Canadian Soo has long been a jumping-off place for people going into the bush in the roadless north. The Algoma Central Railroad (now the Agawa Canyon Tour Train and Snow Train) was begun in the 1890s by Francis Clergue to connect iron mines in the wilderness a hundred miles north of Sault, Ontario, to his steel mill. Even today the tour train also serves fishing and hunting lodges unreachable by road. Search for "Algoma Central Railroad history" to read several interesting accounts. Canada's famous Group of Seven expressionist landscape painters used an Algoma Central box car shunted to sidings as the mobile base camp for some of their outdoor painting trips. (See their vivid views of the Canadian landscape at www.groupofsevenart.com and read about their important role in creating a Canadian identify at www.mta.ca/faculty/arts/Canadian_studies.) Bushplanes based here at the Ontario Provincial Air Service, begin in 1924, were sent out to fight fires in the north. Later seaplanes based here provided transportation to lumber, mining, and fishing camps. Today land-based amphibious planes have made seaplanes obsolete. Their waterfront hangar now houses the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, an unusual and compelling visitor attraction.
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, is the oldest continuously settled place in the Middle West, going back to a fur trading post in the 1650s and mission a decade later. The southern (now American) riverbank was settled first because it was higher and more habitable.
Long before that, Ojibwa (also called Chippewa) Indians lived on Sugar Island and fished in the whitewater rapids of the St. Marys River, teeming with whitefish. They called the place "the rapids" - "Sault" in French, "Bawating" in Ojibwa (pronounced "BOW-ding," rhymes with "cow"). Today's visitors to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal National Historic Site can take the Attikamek Trail and probably see descendants of early Ojibwa fishing in what remains of the rapids.
The rapids, rich in many species of fish, have always been the basis of the local economy one way or another. During the fur trade, from the 1600s into the 1800s, portaging around the rapids was necessary. (Today's Portage Avenue by the locks is along that old portage route.) The pressing need to ship valuable cargoes, first of copper, then iron, and later grain, to the Lower Lakes motivated the construction of a succession of locks, beginning in 1855. Today the locks permit even huge 1,000-foot freighters to pass from one lake to the other.
There's little in the way of manufacturing and no mining in the Eastern Upper Peninsula. Across the river in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, the imaginative American industrialist Francis Hector Clergue put together cheap power (generated by the fall at the St. Marys River) with the iron and timber in the Canadian hinterland to create an industrial powerhouse that today dwarfs the older American Sault in population.
Much of the land in Michigan interior here is marshy, though some of the best Upper Peninsula farmland is around Pickford and Rudyard, 20 or so miles to the south. Two automotive test tracks, Continental Teves near Brimley and Smithers near Raco, take advantage of the area's cold, snowy weather and relative accessibility to Detroit via I-75. The multi-prison complex at Kincheloe and the casino are the biggest employers in a region that used to have one of the state's highest poverty rates. Then the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians led the way in Michigan to community economic development on an impressive scale through gambling.
Between Sault Ste. Marie and Whitefish Point, Lake Shore Drive along Whitefish Bay is beautiful and most interesting. At Bay Mills, it offers terrific Lake Superior views from the short detour up Mission Hill, looking out onto shipping lanes. Going west along Lakeshore Road, motorists pass the Bay Mills Casino and Resort (the first casino to take advantage of a prime scenic location and market itself as a destination resort with golf) plus a lighthouse museum with a stunning view from its tower, and a beautiful North Country Trail segment with a swinging bridge. The Hiawatha National Forest, which includes much of this land, has several picnic areas, campgrounds, and beaches in prime settings, often with very large trees spared during the logging era.
It all makes for a lovely day's drive, especially magnificent in fall color season, when maples, birches, and dark green conifers make rich color contrasts. If you're driving between Tahquamenon Falls and Sault Ste. Marie, it's well worth the extra time to take Lake Shore west from Brimley as an east-west scenic route, instead of the direct but dull M-28.
Border areas are always sensitive to shifting economic and political circumstances. 9/11 brought many changes to the area, starting with a stepped-up U. S. Border Patrol presence and a new, much larger customs/immigration/Border Patrol building on the American end of the International Bridge. Backups aren't as frequent as they had been when American customs and immigration staff looked in every trunk. Canadian border employees were involved in labor negotiations and work slowdowns. Possible backups at the border are expected only on peak days in summer, and they're always worse for Americans returning to the U.S.
Some things are different. If children don't have a passport, they should have a birth certificate. Also, if you're driving a borrowed car, you may be questioned if your registration doesn't match your name. Different inspectors require different things, local residents say, and they have the right to handle things the way they want.
Return to Home/Guide to Upper Peninsula Regions
For everything from finding Sault Ste. Marie picnic spots & fishing guides to renting
kayaks click here.
SAULT STE. MARIE: THE TOP ATTRACTIONS (to locate, see MAP)
See our U.P. interactive maps that locate the best experiences the U.P. has to offer—from camping & hiking to good eating & vistas!
We also have created useful maps to major U.P. TOWNS.
Hunt's Map Guide to the Upper Peninsula
• 13 detailed U.P. maps
• Full color, on sturdy, water-resistant paper
• Folds out to 12”x38”
• Only $6.95
To learn more & buy online, click here
Make Custom Gifts at CafePress
