We are publishing this article by Courtney Argall, a research assistant at the University of Michigan’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP). This article is part of a series from the ...

For over a hundred years the Upper Peninsula has been promoted as an escape from everyday life. The Upper Peninsula Development Board, charged with diversifying the economy away from natural resources ...

Most drivers race across the Seney Stretch without a second look, but the tiny town at its end has a wild past. In Part 1, Seney's story runs from Anishinaabeg homelands and the railroad through the ...

There is a long-neglected history of labor in the Upper Peninsula. The main reason for this is because workers did not have the time or the energy to write their history. As a result, most of the ...

A thorough history of the non-mining industries in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has not been fully developed over the years. If the broader picture has not been realized, the story of female ...

In May 2026, the Census Bureau released its annual population estimates for U.S. counties. These estimates use current birth, death, and migration data to calculate population change since the last ...

“America is uniquely ill-suited to handle a falling population,” so proclaimed a recent headline in The Economist. The article’s author visited the city of Cairo, Illinois and surrounding Alexander ...

Recent structural economic changes in the US economy have led some observers to argue that the country is evolving into two separate entities: one rural, the other urban. Rural areas, they suggest, ...

The following article, written by Debra Horner, Natalie Fitzpatrick, and Thomas Ivacko at the University of Michigan’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), presents a unique trend in ...

Once the timber era ends there is always a concern as to what will happen to the cut-over land, now worthless except possibly for farming. The Michigan legislature created the Experimental Farm of the ...

“Rural Voices” shares cultural, educational, economic and artistic views of people who have lived and thrived in the Upper Peninsula. Each of our authors in Rural Voices may be living here in the U.P.

The data listed here comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The BEA is a government agency that focuses on producing economic statistics from the national level down to metropolitan and ...