9Centuries ago, Europeans desperate for gold and a route to the East found a lush, green paradise populated by native tribes in the New World. Despite a clash of cultures, cooperation created the fur trade that dominated early Michigan history. Subsequent violence and disease all but wiped out the native population. Later, intrepid residents crossed the frozen Straits of Mackinac on foot and then built the famous Mackinac Bridge. The land nurtured Charlton Heston and Ernest Hemingway in their youths and spawned the assassin of President William McKinley. Northern Michigan also bore witness to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history, and to the bizarre kidnapping of Gayle Cook, an ill-fated attempt to save the Perry Hotel in Petoskey from bankruptcy. Author and storyteller Dave Rogers recounts these and other historical tales from Up North.