MORE HURLEY AREA INFO

Today Hurley, Wisconsin, is a fairly placid place with a tourism-based economy. But it has over 30 bars, a rather unusual number for a town of 2,000. That's the only tip-off to Hurley's notorious past, unequaled in all the north woods. "Hurley, Hayward, and Hell," the saying went- though some people wonder if Cumberland shouldn't have been added to the list of lawless lumber towns. Seven Hurley taverns at the bottom of Silver Street still have strippers.

Snowmobilers love Hurley because it's so snowy, so friendly, and so handy. Snowgoer magazine consistently rates it "best nightlife in the Midwest." The entire downtown is virtually on trail because the snowmobile trail is on the old railroad right of way. The railroad made Hurley boom in 1885 by connecting it with Ashland, Wisconsin, and its ore docks. The tracks ran right behind the north side of Silver Street.

"Throughout the Middle West, wherever lumberjacks and miners congregated, Hurley was known as the hell-hole of the range," stated Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State, the 1941 W.P.A. guide. "Even Seney, at its worst and liveliest, could not compete with the sin, suffering, and saloons that gave Hurley a reputation unrivaled from Detroit to Duluth."

From the beginning, Hurley was the wild, wide-open frontier town, in contrast to Ironwood just across the river, where mining companies based in Michigan reflected the more sober values of the eastern and Marquette interests that developed the Gogebic Range. The fledgling community of Hurley fought to preserve its autonomy by separating itself from more powerful and staid Ashland County, which it did in 1893. Hurley's elaborate courthouse with its impressive tower had already been built, in a prearranged deal.

Hurley's rough, crude past was the subject of Come and Get It (1934), a popular novel by Edna Ferber, the author of Show Boat, Giant, and Stage Door. She set it during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferber stayed in town at the celebrated Burton House hotel, then in decline, and talked to many local people. She based the novel on fictionalized composite versions of an expansive lumber baron (said to reflect aspects of Escanaba lumber titan Bill Bonifas) and the celebrated Lotte Moore. Moore was "a well loved entertainer and lady of the evening," in the words of local historian Gene Cisewski. "In her day, the profession of high-class escort was not illegal. And when a woman carried herself with the proper comportment and discretion, the profession wasn't even frowned upon too seriously." Lotte was murdered in 1890, perhaps because she had witnessed a bank robbery.

In the sanitized but still enjoyable 1936 film version of Come and Get It, Lotta (played by Frances Farmer, now a cult figure, in her most noted role) reforms, marries, and has a daughter who marries the son of the lumberman who deserted her.

Ferber described the fictionalized Hurley as "a sordid enough town. . . , with all the vices and crudeness of the mining camps of an earlier day, but with few of their romantic qualities. Lumber and iron were hard masters to serve. A cold, hard country of timber and ore. . . . A rich and wildly beautiful country, already seared and ravaged. . . . Encircling the town were the hills and ridges that had once been green velvety slopes, tree shaded. Now the rigs and shafts of the iron mines stalked upon them with never a tree or blade of grass to be seen." Local people say that Come and Get It has little to do with the truth, but it's a good read and a memorable movie, often available through inter-library loan. Ferber, who was Jewish, did her research in Hurley but took offense to perceived local anti-Semitism, left town, and finished the novel at Bill Bonifas's cottage on Lake Gogebic.

A colorful true story from more recent times concerns a judge who ran a strip joint in which the stripper used a boa constrictor in her act. One fateful time she battered a heckling customer with it. Not long after that, the fire department got a call about a fire there, but arrived to find no smoke. Four or so hours later the place burned.

Hurley ignored all limitations on the sale of alcohol, up to and including Prohibition, passed in 1919. Stories of protracted conflicts between federal agents and local people are told during the Living History tour of Hurley taverns held during the Iron County Heritage Festival in late July and early August. For times, call (715) 561-5310 or look in at www.ironcountywi.com

The lower block of Silver Street dates from the Prohibition years, when a mining company decided to subdivide it and sell it off. Nearly 200 saloons, disguised as soda shoppes, lined downtown's streets. When Chicago gangsters established resorts and gambling rackets in northern Wisconsin mining and lumber towns, Hurley was a favorite place to relax and recreate. Al Capone never could figure out how to make inroads into Hurley's well-established business in illegal booze. He is said to have been a regular visitor; his brother Ralph ran several businesses in nearby Mercer and died in a Hurley nursing home.

Strip clubs are less artistically erotic and more crudely sexual than 50 years ago, and a small place like Hurley can't pay big-time performers. Compared to metro areas, local strip clubs are said to be tame. And patrons can't break the rules about physical contact, or the police will be called.

Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

Ski resorts and waterfalls top the attractions to the U.P.'s rugged far-western tip south of Lake Superior. People still refer to the region as the "Gogebic" ("go-GIBB-ick"), Ojibwa for "where trout rising to the surface make rings in the water." Iron deposits extend into neighboring Iron County, Wisconsin. The area's appearance has largely recovered from intrusive iron-mining boom days. Mining was winding down in 1930 after two decades in which this was the country's chief source of iron. A defining event was the last shipment of iron ore in August 1967 to Granite City Steel in Illinois. Today the mining scars are mostly covered by vegetation. Again the rural landscape is beguilingly, undramatically scenic. The expansive sky adds to the region's allure. Often it is remarkably beautiful, with wonderful cloud and light effects enhanced by nearby Lake Superior.

The string of old mining towns form what's basically a single population center, joined where two major mining centers, Ironwood, Michigan, and Hurley, Wisconsin, meet near the Montreal River. East of the mining range, most of Gogebic County's land is part of the Ottawa National Forest. The Gogebic County Forest has another 50,000 acres. This land, managed for recreation and for timber, was left to the government by logging companies which didn't want to continue paying taxes on it. National forest land includes good fishing rivers and lakes, miles and miles of hiking and snowmobile trails, and an exceptional network of mountain bike trails in Michigan and neighboring Wisconsin on old logging roads.

In the wake of widespread economic devastation as the iron mines began closing in the 1930s, area leaders worked to develop tourism. Rustic Gogebic County road signs are adorned with locally made carvings of a stereotypical Indian chief in headdress, harkening back to the area's earlier Ojibwa residents. Even more kitschy is the World's Tallest Indian just outside Ironwood. Locals also have drawn visitor attention by building the world's highest manmade ski jump, Copper Peak Ski Flying Hill, a striking landmark seen on the horizon from many high points.

Gogebic County and neighboring Iron County across the state line in Wisconsin are heavily promoted during the ski season as Big Snow Country. Area lodgings have 10,000 rooms, largely because of the four ski resorts: Indianhead Ski Resort (see Wakefield), Blackjack, and Big Powderhorn (see Bessemer) in Michigan and Whitecap Mountain (in Wisconsin. Thousands of ski chalet units and condos cluster around them. The fifth Big Snow Country component is the beautiful natural ski hill by POI#Lake Superior# at the Porcupine Mountains State Park, less than an hour from Ironwood.

Alpine skiing here goes back to the late 1950s, when Jack English, an amateur pilot from Chicago, flew over north-facing Indian Head Mountain. He realized the abundant snow there would make an excellent ski hill, and proceeded to develop Indian Head Mountain Resort. An indication of how important skiing has become to the region is Gogebic Community College's program in ski management, one of the few in the country.

Waterfalls are the area's other major visitor draw. Gogebic County has 22 easily visitable falls. Ten more are across the Montreal River in neighboring Iron County, Wisconsin. With so many waterfalls to choose from, visitors to any single fall aren't as concentrated as in the Upper Peninsula's Munising/Pictured Rocks area, also known for waterfalls. Fewer crowds make for a more enjoyable experience. Visit waterfalls before 11 or after 5 for best light effects and fewer fellow visitors. Here falls tumble quickly down from the ancient, eroded Porcupine Mountains (millions of years ago as high as the Rockies) to Lake Superior. Water tends to be stained golden or brown by hemlock roots. The best-known waterfalls are on the Presque Isle and Black rivers (see Black River waterfalls & Black River Scenic Byway/Ottawa National Forest) within half a mile of Lake Superior.

Far less celebrated, but at times even more spectacular, is Superior Falls, bordered by hundred-foot cliffs on the Montreal River forming the Michigan-Wisconsin border northwest of Ironwood. Farther east in the Ottawa National Forest are two beautiful waterfalls you'll likely have all to yourself: Yondota Falls (see Yondota Falls/Ottawa National Forest) and the challenging-to-find Nelson Canyon Falls (see Nelson Canyon Falls/Ottawa National Forest). For waterfall-watching hints and resources, click "Uniquely U.P." in the left-hand column.

The Gogebic's best-known places are the twin county seats of Ironwood, Michigan, and its sister city across the Montreal River, the once-rowdy Hurley, Wisconsin. Ironwood and vicinity is an interesting place to vacation because it's not just a tourist area. As in much of the Upper Peninsula, the mix of people and cultures adds much to a visitor's experience. The population is composed largely of Finns and Italians who came to work in the iron mines, along with Croat, Poles, and other Slavs from coal-mining regions of Eastern Europe. The latter had come earlier to mine what little coal was here.

People here are friendly. It's a pleasure to chat with the folks sitting next to you at cafés. And the food can be quite a surprise! Manny's and Tacconelli's in Ironwood make their own pasta for lasagna and ravioli by hand because their customers expect it. People can be stunningly generous if you're passably polite and forthcoming---like the family in a rattletrap pickup who offered to loan downstate visitors a flashlight and blankets so they could sit down on the beach by Superior Falls and watch the sunset. And the level of honesty and trust puts downstaters to shame.

It's interesting how mining towns like Ironwood, Bessemer, and Wakefield beginning as bleak, artificial company towns where ethnic groups with no common culture were thrown together have become enduring communities that keep drawing their departed residents back. Great natural beauty and cheap real estate help, no doubt. (A more cynical observer attributes the U.P.'s "heavy gravity" to the culture shock of getting out into a wider, more competitive world.) Ray Crenna, a sixtyish opera singer and food lover who grew up in the area, came back often for sustenance the whole time he was living in Chicago. (He founded and still owns the Opera Shop of Los Angeles, which sells opera librettos, scores, DVDs, CDs and more at its store and in the opera house lobby.) Now, he says, Bessemer is his permanent home base.

"You go away, and you come back, the hills are alive with music. It's cathedralish!" he rhapsodizes. "It's a basilica of the four seasons. The gardens of wildflowers splash from heaven's paintbrush in swashes of color. It's like 'The Sound of Music.' The music is in the landscape, like a woven tapestry, rough and smooth."

Crenna's Italian forbears came to Bessemer because cousins arrived first and spread the word among their relations. In his era, he says, "There was something very healthy about growing up here. You grew up with roots that you don't find very many places---the family history, the connection to Europe---roots that never leave you. "

Appreciation of roots is, predictably, much weaker in the younger generation, though many middle-aged people are taking up genealogy. (See Bessemer) and look in on www.GogebicRoots.com.)

Enrollment is booming in Ray's own class on regional cuisine of the Italian provinces, offered in Hurley through Lake Superior Technical College. Many young people continue the pattern of getting an education and going out into the world. However, with the mines closed and housing so cheap, welfare dependency has developed among some old families as well as newcomers.

Local historian Larry Peterson grew up in the paternalistic mining location of Ramsay. He has a much darker view of the area's heritage. "The area's most exploited resource is its people. There were 1,150 mining accidents on the Michigan side---a tremendous number. In World War I they really had to get out the ore quick. There has been no roll call on mining fatalities.

"We have a collective identify crisis. Many of these immigrants were naturalized very quickly. They were accustomed to authority like the old country. The mines were very paternalistic. They gave us this and that. It was a parent-child relationship, and when the mines folded and the parents left, the child goes into trauma and paralysis. We were conditioned to feel we couldn't live up to their standards."

In these plain Gogebic towns, wealth was extracted and quickly exported. Money didn't stay around and pay for too many fine office buildings and cultural institutions, the way it did in Houghton, Calumet, and Marquette. Here mining families experienced booms and busts, and saw legions of their children forced to move away. Compared to the rest of America, the range does seem like a remarkably rooted place, where many stories are told and old friends gather.

Many natives move back in retirement or after a first career. Many others return with their own children and grandchildren to spend summers here, spawning generations of Yoopers in diaspora. Much of the area's cultural energy comes from these returnees and transplants, as visitors to this site are sure to notice. To be in Wakefield or Bessemer at homecoming is to witness a sense of community that upscale suburbs could never match.

Note: Two outstanding specialty stores on U.S. 2, the Pine Tree Gallery and Trek and Trail outdoors store, have closed.