Okay, But WHY Is The Upper Peninsula Part Of Michigan?

Going up North is a common getaway for most Michiganders. We're fortunate that we can cross the Mighty Mack and enter another world. However, part of growing up in Michigan is just accepting that, to anyone in the Lower Peninsula, we have a Part 2 to our state and we don't really question it.

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But looking at any map it's fair to ask "Why isn't this part of Wisconsin?" and ya know what? Good question.

So when someone overseas took to the r/Michigan subreddit to ask that very question, plenty of people had legitmate answers, but other people also had lots of jokes that the question asker wouldn't understand but had me chuckling.

Innocent Question, Comedic Answers

Reddit user TheProuDog asked "Hi Michiganians (?), non-American here. Why does this part belong to Michigan and not to Wisconsin?". Props to this user for adding the question mark after the "Michiganian", because plenty of people (nicely) said thats not our title.

Hi Michiganians (?), non-American here. Why does this part belong to Michigan and not to Wisconsin?
byu/TheProuDog inMichigan

Answers had a wide range of helpful vs unhelpful. Plenty of users simply said "because F Ohio", while others said "Michigan and Ohio got into a war. Wisconsin lost." Both are insightful, but not exactly what the original poster was looking for.

What makes this funnier is the responses over on the r/wisconsin subreddit. It looks like the original poster posed this same question over there as well, and Wisconsinites have a very different opinion on it all.

Okay, but WHY do we have the UP?

The answer is pretty simple. Michigan exists AND has the Upper Peninsula courtesy of the Toledo War in Ohio. Well, "war" can be considered a bit of an exaggeration.

Read More: Upper Peninsula Teacher Wins Big On "Wheel of Fortune"

According to Michigan.gov, the Toledo War was less of a war and more of a land dispute with all involved parties trying to one up each other, waving guns around without actually firing anything. The only casualty of the entire "conflict" was a non-fatal stabbing in a bar fight.

As you can see in the map above, Toledo was originally considered part of Michigan, but Ohio wanted the land and refused to let Michigan become a state unless they relented the land. However, both parties wanted the area and claimed it as their own.

So after much bickering and President Andrew Jackson getting invovled. it was decided that Michigan would be given "the western three-quarters of the upper peninsula as compensation" for Ohio keeping Toledo.

Why didn't Wisconsin have a say in any of this you may be asking? Well, as user Decimation4x put it, Wisconsin didn't exist so they couldn't lose. Sorry, Wisconsin.

In all, Ohio may have won the war, but we all know who REALLY won. Check out some of the best places to see from our prized piece of land below.