• Friday-What'sUP January 8 - 12:33 am

Donn de Yampert captured the snowy decorations adorning the welcome signage on the walkway between the parking ramp and the Wells Fargo Bank (formerly known as Houghton National Bank), across the street. Downtown Houghton serves as an inviting entrance to the many wonders you'll find as you venture beyond, seeking out the beauty to be found all around you. It's one of the many different landmarks that folks associate with their arrival to the Copper Country. We featured another association a couple weeks ago, in the same medium - the old sign you'd see as you reached the border of town....

Like the picture! Have a great weekend everyone!

I wish I was going underneath that walkway! That would mean I was on my way to Little Betsy!

Donn,

Another great picture take of Houghton. You have caputred it in its best of the north. I have walked the town quite a few times and it is always breath taking. It is just as great in the summer time as it is this time of the year!

Sarah, let's go, I'll drive!! Have a great weekend everyone.

What a great shot! Great lighting and color saturation.

Wish the sign {and section of ore dock} in downtown Marquette was still there with the sign proclaiming 'Home of Northern Michigan University'.

Have a safe weekend everyone!

Crossing the Portage Lift Bridge makes me either happy or
melancholy, depending on which direction I'm driving.

Yes, we all have those sorts of landmarks. I have about 50 of
them between Chicago and Copper Harbor :)

Wishing I was the one that took the picture. *sighs* Happy Friday everyone!

Looks like a beautiful sunny day in the Yoop. Wish we had that much snow here...

Great Picture!!!!!!! Thanks soooooooooooooooo much for me home!!!!! It is so awesome to see what some see everyday and those of us that don't really, really appreciate these views.... Infinite Gratitude...

Reaching this point is when I TRULY know I am Up North!

Awesome picture, could be a postcard.

Sarah and Norma,

With this time off work, it's hard not to load the kids in the car and go1

absolutely beautiful photo,tanna is right about the postcard potential. don's pics are always a pleasant reminder of home.i remember working at the crown bakery in the early 70s,pre walkways.i like the downtown view and parking access much more now.

The vitalizing air sign was ALWAYS what told me we were home! When we passed that... I felt warm and fuzzy! :)

I actually saw a person use that walkway once!

I used to live right across the canal in Hancock. It is still my favorite spot in the universe with Calumet a close second. Thanks for the pic!

So, wouldn't "right across the canal" really be Ripley?

I'm with Mike........Houghton, Calumet, Little Traverse...........(with a beer stop in Dreamland)

I used that walkway quite a few times to get to the bank from the parking structure. Was a handy spot to park (easier than wrangling traffic to park on the street) so long as the car had clearance. Once the shocks & springs were shot though, I dragged the back end trying to get off the parking deck more than once. Bit steep, eh?

Only real problem was navigating the stairs on the bank side to find the right door.

10 or 12 years ago on a vacation tour of the UP, my wife and I were going north on 41 after crossing "THE BRIDGE" and we stopped in at a restaurant on a corner and enjoyed what was probably the best whitefish dinner we had ever had. We may have been as far north as Ripley. If my wife was home she probably has a pamphlet from that eatery!

That sight tells me that I am truly Up North. The Copper Country calls to me. It is home. I feel that I am a displaced yooper!

Just under the walkway
To the right we'd go
And down to the Library
For some study you know.

Was a time long ago
that flashes to mind
With a lot of ol' friends
And a seat hard to find.

Those days we remember
a little less bright
that live on forever
as those cold hockey nights.

---------------------

It great to be a Toot and a Yooper
To bad I'm not still up in the North Country

Harry M, that was beautiful. As a displaced Toot and Yooper it really hit a note!

What is a Keewenaw . . . or THE Keewenaw. My map tells me that it is the name of the northernmost county, however, I am curious as to the definition of the word.

I told you she would know! She says it was Laurium that we had the "great" whitefish! She's never been wrong yet.

KC - Utah

"Keweenaw" was said to be native American for "the way around". Making the portage, verses going around the peninsula, could save lots of paddling.

It was a very long time ago. Turn right and go to the Board of Trade. Seats were easy to find, because Toots in the 1950's & 1960's had very little money; except on hockey night at Dee Stadium. The place was packed between periods for 10 cent drafts. Many thanks to the night watchman at the Bosch brewery that permited midnight tours of the draft room.

KC - Utah:
What is a Keewenaw..

True, as you say, that is the name of the northernmost county in Michigan, but it has in recent years come to mean a bit more, referring the the region that was for so many decades known as The Copper Country, generally including Keweenaw, Houghton, Baraga, and Ontonagon counties, those generally served by the Daily Mining Gazette (as noted in their masthead).

Maybe they're trying to get away from that old moniker "Copper Country" these days, since the copper mines shut down something like forty years ago.
Personally, "Copper Country" still works for me, and I'm disappointed to see it de-emphasized!

There's something about north," he said, "something that sets it apart from all other directions. A person who is heading north is not making any mistake, in my opinion."
"That's the way I look at it," said Stuart. "I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days." -E.B. White (Stuart Little)


So happy that I'm already there...;-)

As long as you are heading north you know things are always looking U.P.

Love that photo of Sheldon Ave. I remember taking walks
downtown to the Pine Cone Shop, The Lode Theater, and
the old Woolworth's with my grandpa. Are any of them still
there?

I showed this picture to a friend of mine at work, who grew up in Hong Kong. He says that Donn's shot of Franklin Avenue reminds him of small villages that he's visited in Switzerland.

Our conversation started about a lovely picture of an elk in the snow, which he had set as his background. It turns out that it's part of a Microsoft tool called "Winter Fun Pack 2004 for Windows XP", which can be downloaded for free from microsoft.com. To find it, go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and search for "Winter Fun Pack".

When installed, it's placed in the "My Pictures" folder, and contains a subfolder called "Wallpaper", which comes with six fine winter pictures, including the elk. You can run the tool and it will change your wallpaper every 15 minutes, every day, or whatever you want.

A little experiementation revealed that if you save Pasty Cam pictures as JPEG files in this folder, they will be included in the wallpaper rotation as well as the ones that Microsoft provides.

Cheers, Bill

Hello from Mishawaka IN. Another great picture from Donn. The town looks so inviting. Someday I will be up there to see it for myself.

On my drives from the Detroit area to the Copper Country, I have several landmarks that I refer to as "decompression zones" on the way up.

The first one is the Mackinaw Bridge for obvious reasons because of the dramatic change of scenery with the U.P. being instantly more wild and rugged than the lower peninsula. Next is the right turn at L'Anse around the bay, the the "Welcome to Houghton" sign, then the Lift Bridge, then the snow depth pole on US-41 by Calumet, and then either Eagle River if going by the lake or the Tunnel of Trees if I'm going up 41. The final decompression is then passing the flashing red light in Copper Harbor.

On the way back we can almost feel our blood pressure rise as these same landmarks reverse to "Recompression" phases. The mood then becomes thoroughly drab and gloomy passing over the Zilwaukee Bridge and then we can't wait to go back up again.

Driving into Houghton from either direction is a beautiful site! The whole area is a very special place.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mi/county/keweenaw/ a link to a site on Keweenaw and its meaning

If you remember Christy's Board and Trade, long since the Library Bar started by Jon Davis, and tours at da brewery, usually on Friday afternoons, then you be a Toot forever.

Forgive my ignorance, but what type of person is a Toot? Only a few things come to mind and I need clarification! :o)

Bill Denning, Texas......Regarding Houghton looking like a village in Switzerland.......my grandfather came to the Copper Country from Breitenbach, Solothurn, Switzerland in 1880.....he was 19 yrs old and just discharged from the Swiss Army...he worked at the Quincy and the Calumet and Hecla......he must have felt at home......he never left....... the UP is 5,000 sq miles larger than the whole country of Switzerland....my cousins came to visit and we took them for a tour of the UP and they were amazed at the vast areas of uninhabited land........the loved their stay at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge and we enjoyed showing them the area.

toot is a nickname for a tech student.

Buckeye Gal,
Locals in the Copper Country call Michigan Tech students "toots". Tech is one of the premier engineering schools in the U.S. If you think of engineers, think of trains. At least thats my understanding of the term. There may be other (possibly more colorful) explainations for the term, but that's what always thought it meant.

A long time ago, when it was the Michigan College of Mining and Technology, before it MTU, and actually it was almost MUT, but because of the huskie mascot, that was abandoned, an old Finn asked a young student what he was studying....
The young man (22 men to 1 women at that time) replied he was an "engineer". The old Finn thought he was the type of engineer who got to blow the whistle while going down the tracks....
Hence the name............Actually it was the Michigan School of Mines first..........well, I guess you had to be there, and I wasn't...LOL

Tim, St Clair Shores, Mi.
My feelings exactly............. to the "T".

Wasn't Tech also called "Michigan Institute of Technology" (MIT) before the current MTU?

Toot's...my understanding is they were all engineers and therefore smart enough to all be tutors.

Toot stands for:

Tech
Out
Of
Towner

Often derogative in usage during the time I
grew up. When you wanted to be nice you said
student or Tech student.

What ever happened to Jon Davis of Library fame? I remember many lunches at the Library in the mid-70's and some evenings.

Agree with Yooper in land of cheese: There was a certain tension between Town and Gown.

bobby,NoVA...as there is in any college town....

Wasn't Tech once called the Michigan College of Mining
and Engineering?

re: just curious

Agree. I first heard the term in Lincoln, NE UofN from my uncle in the '40s or '50s.

troll with connections, Mi:
Wasn't Tech also called "Michigan Institute of Technology" (MIT) before the current MTU?

& daughter of a Tech engineer:
Wasn't Tech once called the Michigan College of Mining and Engineering?

The short answer: No, neither!

Michigan Technological University began life as the Michigan Mining School in Houghton in 1885 with four faculty members and 23 students on the second floor of the Houghton Fire Hall.

Later the name was changed to the Michigan College of Mines, in the late 1800's I think.

Then another name change to Michigan College of Mining and Technology in the 1920's (1925?)

It finally became Michigan Technological University in 1964.

Keweenaw IS a special place. I have gathered if you live there there is no reason to leave. (Even for vacation!) I have a terrible time getting my cuzins to visit us downstate! But I visit them yearly!

Oh, to all of you our LOVE for such an incredible place flows in and thru us and then out to others and the world at large... such fun to go back and read all the entries sp? Feeling so intuned with each and everyone... then Harry M your Poem was Great! and Mae,,, YEs!!! I come up every summer and will retire in Keweenaw 5 yrs. or sooner and been planning and waiting excitely for that since I left MQT 1973.. and aRice I laughed, YES! and I have always felt and spoke those same words at Stuart Little.... and by the time I read by Just Me... I had tears in my eyes for all of your messages and the heart felt connection and the deep feeling and Love I have for the UP especially the Keweenaw area.......... peace

beautiful snow-- wish I was there-it is in the 70's in Texas and the weather is boring-cannot wait to get back up there this summer

To yooper in the land of cheese:

There has been considerable discussion about the origin of the word "toot" in the Michigan Tech alum newsletter and you got it exactly right. I attended Tech in the very early sixties and that is what I remembered it to stand for back then.
Don-Florida