It IS an interesting thought
experiment. I will admit that.
Loraine and I were having lunch with
our friend Deanna Saturday when the strangest of topics came up.
Specifically, the topic of Calumet as the capital of Michigan.
Deanna, who has to drive to Lansing for work quite a bit, was
complaining about the travel, especially during winter, and bemoaned
the fact that Calumet was never given a shot at becoming the seat of
the state. And that got us to thinking--
Just how different WOULD the U.P.--and
Michigan in general—have been if Calumet was the state capital
instead of Lansing?
For those of you who don't know, for a
(very) brief time in the 1800s Calumet was being considered as a new
location for the capital of Michigan. At the time, Calumet had
75,000 residents and was the epicenter of the copper boom. Money and
power were pouring into the area, and while the proposed switch from
Lansing to Calumet was never made, it does make for a good story for
those people interested in the glory days of the Copper Country.
And that's what got us to thinking—just
how different WOULD the area in which we live be if all that money
and all that power had stayed in the U.P.? Just how different would
Calumet and Houghton and the whole Keweenaw Peninsula be if the
people who ran things ran things from there? Would the Lansing area
have turned into a ghost town, much like Calumet eventually became,
centered around farming instead of a dead copper industry? And how
would the rest of the state evolved? Because of its proximity to a
state capital, a seemingly endless supply of iron, and two natural
deep water harbors, would Marquette have become the Motor City
instead of Detroit? Would there have been foundries and steel
factories lining the shores of Lake Michigan to supply the raw
materials? Would places like Detroit and Flint and Saginaw be
filled with trees or turned into the breadbasket of the nation
instead of becoming the industrial hub of a country?
You never know. I doubt any of that
would've happened, because of both the relative isolation and the
harsher weather conditions of the U.P., but if this area was the hub
of wealth and power in the state, arrangements would've been made.
Transportation routes would've been set up. And, who
knows...technological advances that were never made may have been made to ensure that the
products manufactured here got to where they needed to go.
In a way, it's a shame we'll never
know. But that's part of the fun about speculating on “what ifs”
or on alternative histories—because we don't know what would've
happened, we can let our imaginations run wild. So, if you feel like
it, think about it yourself. What do YOU think the U.P. would've
been like if Calumet had become the state capital? Then let me know,
and I'll post a blog in a few days containing some of the ideas that
you guys come up with.
After all, that's what interesting
thought experiments are all about!
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