Aerial view of Marquette,
Michigan
Dear George,
My dad was a big booster of the U.P. He’d traveled around the
world, but his opinion was that there was no place better to live than the U.P.
in general and our home town of Menominee in particular . He embraced our
natural surroundings — the forests, lakes, rivers, flora, and wildlife — as
well as the virtues of small town life and the quality of the people.
When confronted with newspaper reports that the U.P.’s population was
declining, Vic typically applauded, arguing that the fewer the people, the
better things would become.
Katja and I have lived for varied amounts of time in big cities
(Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco), in
medium-sized cities (Ann Arbor, Madison), and in small towns (Menominee; Yellow
Springs, OH; Bethel, ME). While we’ve opted for big city living for most
of our adult lives, it’s clear to me that a small U.P. town like Menominee has
a number of unique and desirable qualities: e.g., location on the water;
wilderness surroundings; ideal summer weather and a real winter; hunting,
fishing, camping, boating, bicycling; outdoor sports of all kinds; a low
crime rate; a low cost of living; small town values of community and
helpfulness; and ready access by car to larger metropolitan areas (e.g., Green
Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago).
There are various web-sites that provide detailed statistical
data on American towns and cities. Having accumulated a batch of
information on Menominee in the past, I decided it would be interesting to
compare major U.P. towns on “quality of life” dimensions. I relied on two
of the most comprehensive sources for this purpose: www.city-data.com and www.bestplaces.net. I selected data for the ten largest towns in the U.P.:
Marquette (pop. 21,383); Sault Ste. Marie (14,251), Escanaba (12,609),
Menominee (8,603), Houghton (7,692), Iron Mountain (7,662), Ishpeming (6,500),
Ironwood (5,366), and Kingsford (5,164). There are, of course, many
different variables on which to compare communities. For my purposes, I
picked seven dimensions. These were: (1) Education level (% of residents
with a bachelor’s degree or higher, labelled “Educ” in the table below); (2)
Income (estimated median per capita income, “Incom” in the table); (3)
Unemployment rate (circa 2013, “Unemp”); (4) Crime rate (average of violent and
property crime on a 1-100 scale, “Crime”), (5) City Parks budget (budget per
resident allocated to city parks, “$ Parks”), (6) Doctors per capita (number of
M.D.’s per 10,000 residents, “MDs”), and (7) Population Change (population
growth or decline since 2000, “Pop. Chng”). Cities were regarded as more
favorable when they had higher education and income levels, lower unemployment,
lower crime, a larger parks budget, more doctors per capita, and population
increases since 2000. The table below shows the raw data for each town,
as well as its rank ordering among the ten communities, from 1 (most favorable)
to 10 (least favorable). I’ve also provided average scores for the U.S.
as a whole on the various dimensions. The towns are ordered sequentially
in the table from Marquette, which had the highest average ranking on the seven
indices (1.8), to Ironwood which had the lowest average ranking of 7.2 out of
10.
Table: Comparison of ten U.P. towns on seven dimensions
(with towns ordered from the most favorable average ranking [Marquette] to the
least favorable [Ironwood]).
$ Pop.
Town
Educ Incom Unemp Crime Parks
MDs Chng
Marquette 35%
$21K 6.3% 32.7
$82 39 +9.3%
(2) (4)
(1) (1)
(2) (1.5) (1)
Kingsford 15%
$23K 7.0% 37.8
$38 29 -7.3%
(9) (1)
(2.5) (4)
(6) (3.5) (4)
Gladstone 25%
$22K 8.7% 32.9 $75
14 -9.1%
(3) (3)
(6.5) (2)
(4) (7.5) (7)
Iron Mountain 24% $23K
7.0% 40.1 $10
29 -8.6%
(4) (2)
(2.5) (5)
(10) (3.5) (6)
Ishpeming 19%
$20K 7.4% 37.5
$29 39 -2.4%
(7) (8)
(5) (3)
(9) (1.5) (3)
Houghton 51%
$15K 8.5% 60.0
$29 17 +4.8%
(1) (10)
(8) (8)
(8) (5) (2)
Menominee 14%
$20K 7.1% 45.4 $80
6 -9.2%
(10) (7)
(4) (6)
(3) (10) (8)
Sault Ste Marie 20% $21K 11.4% 62.8 $87
12
-14.3%
(5.5) (5)
(10) (10) (1)
(9) (9)
Escanaba 17%
$19K 8.7% 60.6 $61
14 -7.4%
(8) (9)
(6.5) (9)
(5) (7.5) (5)
Ironwood 20%
$21K 9.6% 46.4 $30
16 -14.6%
(5.5) (6)
(9) (7)
(7) (6) (10)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
U.S. Average 29%
$29K 6.3% 42.5 NA
26.1 +8.5
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- -
The U.P. has
been an economically depressed region for many decades, and it shows up here in
terms of income levels below the national average for all ten towns and unemployment
higher in 9 of 10 towns. (I should note that cost of living is also well
below the national average.) Education levels are lower than the national
average in all except two college towns, Houghton and Marquette. Eight of
the 10 U.P. towns showed a population decrease since 2000. Crime rates
and MDs per capita are similar, on average, to national trends.
While most of
the U.P. towns are clustered fairly closely on these seven dimensions,
Marquette stands out as a clear favorite, ranking first or second on 6 of the 7
dimensions examined. My brother Peter attended Northern Michigan
University in Marquette for a while, and my brother Steven graduated from
Northern before going to law school. Both enjoyed their stays in
Marquette, and that’s not surprising since the town has enjoyed many
accolades. It was recently identified by CNN/Money as one of the top five
places in the U.S. to retire. Gear Patrol, a travel adventure website,
lists Marquette among the top 25 adventure travel destinations in the world,
along with Tangier, Istanbul, and Bogota. It’s also been ranked among the
10 Best Small Cities in America (Nerwdwallet), the top 10% of Towns for
Outdoorsmen (Outdoor Life), one of the 10 best Winter Wonderlands for
Retirement (US New & World Report), and the third best small city in the
U.S. for raising kids (Forbes).
Marquette has
abundant outdoor activities — hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain or in Presque Isle
Park, world-class mountain biking, and sweet water paddling on Lake Superior.
There’s Nordic skiing in the winter, boat tours in the summer. In
addition to the university campus, there are six museums and galleries in
Marquette, including the Maritime Museum, the Iron Industry Museum, the
Marquette County History Museum, and the U.P Children’s Museum. The
Superior Dome, home to the NMU football team, is the world’s largest wooden
dome. The downtown historic district houses boutiques, art galleries,
antique stores, and good restaurants. Da Yoopers Tourist Trap features
the world’s largest working chainsaw. At various times the city offers
music festivals, food festivals, summer theater, ski and sled dog races, and an
annual wife-carrying competition.
I’m
disappointed that my home town, Menominee, didn’t come out at the top of the
heap, but it’s our first choice for family visits nonetheless Now I’m
itching to visit the U.P. and take a trip up to Marquette.
Love,
Dave
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