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.
