#3 How did Michigan get the Upper Peninsula in the first place?

I think it's a good question. After all, until the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957 there was no land connecting the lower and upper peninsulas. Even growing up far, far away from the midwest, I remember that I always found the existence of a state made up of two pieces to be a bit curious.

Not all good questions have good answers, but this one does. The short, boring story as far as I can make out is that Michigan just got there first. Wisconsin was several years behind Michigan in getting populated and established, and so when the Upper Peninsula was ceded to the U.S. in 1818, it was natural to attach it to the Michigan territory, and then later to the state.

But the longer story is much more interesting. When Michigan did petition for statehood, they didn't actually expect to take in the Upper Peninsula as well. But their statehood was being delayed by a border dispute with the already state-ed land of Ohio. The law defining the boundaries between the two territories was unclear, and both felt they had claim to a narrow strip of land containing what is now Toledo. The dispute went unsettled for a very long time, and finally the governor of Ohio decided to step in and resolve the matter once and for all by creating an official Ohio county in the Toledo strip. Which, naturally, he named after himself.

Surprisingly, this ingenious solution failed to settle the dispute. Michigan retaliated by making it illegal for Ohio to carry out their dastardly governmental acts in the Toledo strip, and Ohio countered with a $300,000 budget to fund its militia so that they could govern as much as they wanted, and Michigan countered that with a $315,000 budget to fund its own militia to prevent all that governing.

The two states continued one-upping each other until it all led to bloodshed. A person was stabbed (nonfatally). A pig was killed (accidentally). And the U.S. government grew weary of the bickering. President Andrew Jackson himself stepped in and officially gave rightful ownership of the Toledo strip to Ohio, but, as a concession, Michigan got the Upper Peninsula.

At the time it seemed like the raw end of the deal because there wasn't a whole lot up there. But then the yoopers discovered rich deposits of iron and ore, and also that people will pay money to stay in hotels and eat food and rent canoes and sit in glass-bottom boats to look at old shipwrecks if the scenery is spectacular enough (and it is). Thus the Upper Peninsula became an economic boon to the state and a tourist destination for thousands of Wisconsonians and Michiganders and at least three Californians.