Finally, I made the trip. I had, at last, visited the place where my Finnish great grandparents, and their kids, had lived for decades. I had known that my great grandparents, on my birth mother’s maternal side, had emigrated to Hancock in the early 1900s, like thousands of other Finnish immigrants, who came to work the dozens of copper mines that are found in the Keweenaw Peninsula on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It sticks out like a stubby branch, pushing into Lake Superior. (Story continued below photo gallery.)
The Keweenaw Peninsula is considered to have one of the richest copper reserves ever dug from North America, and those reserves and the decades of mining in the 19th and 20th centuries are what pulled in immigrants from all over Europe, including from then-Russian controlled Finland. My kin from Finland were among thousands who made that journey to start a hard, new life. Dozens of copper mines shut down around World War II, including the historic Quincy Mine, that stands like a dark tower of Mordor above the struggling city of Hancock, in the valley below the hills.
The Upper Peninsula is completely off any travel path. It remains remote today. The remoteness of the area, and its distance the Pacific Northwest, where I have lived most of my adult life, meant I kept putting off a trip for decades. But, having connected with my Finnish kin in Finland in 2023, it felt like the right time to see the land the Finnish immigrants including my own family settled in the United States.
Finally I found a nice window and booked a four-day, three-night trip in early June 2026. It began with a flight from Portland to Minneapolis. From there, I drove a rental car a total of 800 miles between June 4 and June 7, 2026. The trip took me through the northern small cities and communities of northern Wisconsin and the now visibly right-leaning communities one passes along the way in Wisconsin and Michigan: Mellen, Montreal, Ironwood, Wakefield, Bergland, Mass City—before you arrive in Houghton and Hancock. I jammed as much as I could into a day and a half. I visited a local Finnish-American research archive. I visited a family sauna on a family farm owned by a relative I met for the first time. I visited the house where my great grandparents lived for decades, and was invited in by the owner. And I visited the graves of my great grandparents.
I feel like I know my relatives’ story more intimately seeing the landscape and mining history that created the pull that drew so many to the “north country.” I loved every bit about this trip.