Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
HurleyandevensmallerMontreallieinthemidstofthemightyPenokeeIronRangeaswell
as the over-the-border Gogebic Iron Range, the last and most massive of the Upper Penin-
sula's three prodigious iron deposits, long since depleted. The range, for many Wisconsin-
ites, has been unfairly relegated to backwater status—too many news reports in southern
WisconsinmentionedthepopulationflightfromIronCountyinthebadolddaysofeconom-
ic decline. And while it is true the county ranks pretty low in population and thus doesn't
have the infrastructure taxes to pretty things up as the richer areas to the southeast do, Iron
County has important history and even some outstanding topography.The Turtle-Flambeau
Flowage is one of the most wilderness-like stretches of any northern river, and Iron County
competes squarely with across-the-state rival Marinette County for numbers of cascades.
Marinette may have more, but no falls beat Iron County's for sheer height and isolation.
The Flambeau Trail
Native Americans followed a route from Saxon Harbor northwest of Hurley, portaging ca-
noes and beaver pelts between their villages and Northwest Fur Company Trading Posts.
The 90-mile trail from Madeline Island to Lac du Flambeau became the crucial Flambeau
Trail, followed in due course by explorers, trappers, traders, and the U.S. military. The
whole thing is mapped out now, passing Superior Falls at the first take-out point. The trail
later passes the
Continental Divide;
the northern waters above the divide were unnavig-
able, necessitating this 45-mile portage to southern-flowing streams.
Living museum Hurley sure had some big britches in its headier early days. The little
town—more or less a sister city to boomtown Ironwood, Michigan, across the bor-
der—arose more than a century ago on the iron riches taken from the subterranean veins
of the mammoth Gogebic and Penokee Iron Ranges, the former accounting for almost 40
percent of the Upper Peninsula's economy at its zenith (about 350 mines tore through the
subterranean stretches). White pine wealth followed later. “Lusty infants on a diet of lum-
ber and iron ore,” the old WPA guide noted.
What really set Hurley apart from other boomtowns was its unimaginable bacchanalia,
for which it became legendary. At its sybaritic zenith, more than 75 saloons lined the aptly
named Silver Street, wooing the 7,000-odd salty miners and loggers. The same WPA guide
quotes the prevailing wisdom along the logger/miner transient railway: “The four toughest
