Why 1/3 of Michigan Has Only 3% of Its People

The Upper Peninsula is one-third of Michigan's land area but houses only 3% of its population—just 308,000 people in a region the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. It's separated from the rest of Michigan by five miles of water, gets over 200 inches of snow annually, and its residents cheer for Green Bay, not Detroit. This is the story of how Michigan got a wilderness it never wanted—and how a historical accident created two completely different states trapped under one name.