JOHN PEPIN

“Take a look at all the detail in a single little thing, just a single little snowflake or a tiny insect wing. Tell me who could make the clouds and make ’em move across the sky? Who could make your mind and put it here to wonder why.” — Steve Forbert

From the time I was a young kid I’ve had a fascination with words, but it wasn’t until many years later that I became deeply infatuated with place names of things like rivers, roads, towns, plants and animals.

What I have found increasingly intriguing is the wonderful world lying beyond the surface, underneath the familiar, those things we take for granted because they have always been so.

For example, places I had known my whole life took on grand new significance when I started to stop to think, to wonder how these things got their names.

I was fascinated to find out all kinds of things were named for important figures from Houghton — for the state’s first geologist Douglass Houghton — to Gwinn, which was the middle name of William G. Mather’s mother.

Mather was the Cleveland head of Cleveland Cliffs Iron Co. which laid out Gwinn as a model company town. He also maintained a strange wild game refuge on Grand Island in Munising Bay. There are all kinds of references to Mather, from an avenue and a former grand inn to a high school and historic iron mines.

Then there are tricky instances like the Houghton Douglass Falls, which is at once named for Douglass Houghton and his cousin C.C. Douglass, who accompanied Houghton on copper and iron ore surveys and exploration in the Upper Peninsula.

Later, after Houghton’s accidental drowning near Eagle River, Douglass was instrumental in aiding development of mining interests in the region. At one point, he owned the lands where Houghton and Hancock are located. He also served the people of Houghton County in the Michigan Legislature.

Years ago, when I was a newspaper reporter, I was heading home along the Seney Stretch from some assignment when I started wondering why one of the many little streams I often crossed along M-28 was called Star Creek.

It was situated not far from Star Siding Road. I knew a siding was a section of railroad track off the mainline, but Star siding? At first blush, I thought my search wouldn’t be that interesting finding out the creek and siding were named for William Starr, a Wisconsin man with timber holdings in the area.

But digging into some dusty newspaper articles I found out a pair of gags pulled years ago produced a fantastic legend.

As a joke, workers loaded a heavy chunk of slag iron onto a railroad car and had it sent from Marquette out past Shingleton to the Star siding where the men there would be expected to have a hell of a time getting it unloaded.

From there, a story sprung to life about a gigantic meteorite that brightened the skies above Alger County before landing in the Seney swamp, where it supposedly smoldered for days.

This, of course, was the chunk of slag. The story was spun by a couple of locals fond of folklore and fantasy. In years to come, the specimen was exhibited in a fenced off area in front of a gas station along the stretch. The story of the meteor was retold for travelers and the legend grew.

If had never asked why I never would have discovered the legend. So cool.

This is one of thousands of happy moments of discovery produced by asking simple questions. The more I learn, the more I want to know.

Matchwood in Ontonagon County is named for the Diamond Match Co., which owned timberlands in the area and a mill and lumberyard that burned along with the village of Ontonagon in the late 1800s.

Since I was a kid, I had crossed the Chandler Brook never asking who or what a chandler was. It turns out it was both. Once I took the time one day to consult my unabridged dictionary it didn’t take long to learn that a chandler is a candlemaker.

I smiled when a couple years later I heard a man who had owned a local candle-making shop had named his son Chandler. Obtaining those kinds of little insights is fun and meaningful to me.

Raco in the eastern Upper Peninsula is a contraction representing the Richardson-Avery timber company. Estivant Pines is named for a Frenchman who never set eyes on the majestic pines he once owned in Keweenaw County.

The best part is for each discovery I find, there are millions I will never get to.

I have often wondered why there are so many things named for the devil. There’s the devil’s washtub, post pile, tower, lake, island, and hundreds more.

At one point I thought I might write a book on many of the geographic name derivations calling it Hell’s Half-Acre. All that says nothing about deviled ham and deviled eggs. Why deviled?

Then there are animal names like the bird, hoary redpoll. A strange name at first glance. The “poll” part of the name means a “cap” like a hat, and hoary refers to a frosty looking appearance. So, it’s basically a white bird with a red cap. There’s also a hoary bat.

Then there are the pleasant-sounding spring peeper frogs. Many people think they are some type of bird, with the chirping sounds they make from ponds and pools on spring and summer evenings.

In this case, it’s the species part of the scientific name — Pseudacris crucifer — for the frog that bears interest for me. As the name may imply, these tiny tree frogs have dark lines forming an easy identification cross on their backs.

Constellations are full of name references and creatures of mythology dating back to the Greeks and Romans. The names of these star arrangements may change depending on where you live or who you are.

Even exploring derivations that are unclear reveal interesting notions. Tamarack is a pine tree species familiar to many in these parts as a local conifer — a larch — that loses its needles in the fall.

The word “tamarack” is thought to be of Algonquian origin, where similar sounding words referred to wood used to make snowshoes, but it isn’t clear if that’s the case.

Of course, many place names in Michigan come from Native American origins -Ishpeming, Negaunee, Menominee, Ontonagon and Escanaba are just a small handful. These words all have meanings behind from their locally familiar town or town and river namesakes.

There are so many of these names that pique my curiosity, many of which are not necessarily easy to uncover and may require a good deal of investigation, but that’s like a lot of things, the journey to revelation makes the whole trip worth it.

Among the names I’ve been rolling around in my head lately are Teaspoon Creek, White City Falls and Buffalo Reef. These are some not so easy to decipher, at least not after several tries so far.

No matter what it is I notice when I’m outside, whether it’s a name for something or how no one place ever looks the same way twice, the weather, the woods, the water or a million other things, I remain devotedly fascinated.

The longer I live, the greater the desire becomes to learn as much as I can before checkout time. With that in mind, I’m going to head out the back door or the front door. Either way, I know there’s something interesting going on right now.

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Pepin is the deputy public information officer for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula. Send correspondence to pepinj@michigan.gov or 1990 U.S. 41 South, Marquette, MI 49855.