Best Web Design in Ishpeming, MI (2026)

Web Design for Ishpeming, Michigan

Ishpeming is a former iron-mining boomtown on the Marquette Iron Range in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, its Ojibwe name meaning roughly "high place" or "heaven." Home to more than 13,000 people at the turn of the 20th century, it is celebrated as the birthplace of organized skiing in America. Today it is a proudly quirky Yooper town of pasties, cudighi sandwiches, ski jumps, and giant roadside chainsaws.

AppWT serves Ishpeming and the surrounding Michigan area from Livonia, Michigan.

About Ishpeming

Also known as. Ish (local shorthand, as in the "Old Ish" statue). Birthplace of Organized Skiing in the United States. Home of the Hematites (Ishpeming High School teams, named for the iron ore).

History. The name comes from the Ojibwe word ishpiming, meaning "above, in the air, on high" (often translated as "heaven" or "high place"). Grew up around iron ore of the Marquette Iron Range and was incorporated as a city in 1873. Population peaked at 13,255 in 1900 during the iron-mining heyday, then declined with the mines to 6,140 at the 2020 census. The National Ski Association (now U.S. Ski & Snowboard) was founded in Ishpeming on February 21, 1905, by local banker Carl Tellefsen. The Barnes-Hecker Mine disaster of November 3, 1926 killed 51 men, one of the worst mining disasters in Michigan history. The Green Bay Packers played their first-ever road game in Ishpeming on October 19, 1919, defeating a local team 33-0. Ishpeming native and judge John D. Voelker (pen name Robert Traver) based his novel "Anatomy of a Murder" on a local case; Otto Preminger's 1959 film was shot in the region.

Local economy. Historically built on iron ore from the Marquette Iron Range; the Cliffs Shaft Mine (Cleveland-Cliffs lineage) operated underground into the 1960s. Cleveland-Cliffs' Tilden Mine, an open-pit iron ore operation about 5 miles south, is the major area employer today. The city's iron identity endures in the Ishpeming High School "Hematites," named directly for the ore mined here. Outdoor recreation and heritage tourism (skiing, ski jumping, snowmobiling, mountain biking) supplement the modern economy.

Culture and community. Cudighi, a spiced Italian sausage sandwich introduced by Italian immigrants in the area around 1936, is an Ishpeming and Marquette County signature food. Congress Pizza, a downtown institution dating to 1936, serves cracker-thin pizza and cudighi; Ralph's Italian Deli is a multigenerational favorite. Pasties, the Cornish and Finnish miners' handheld meat pies, are a regional staple. Deep ski-jumping heritage centered on the famed Suicide Hill; the Ishpeming Ski Club (organized 1887) is one of the oldest continuously active in the U.S. Notable natives include Nobel Prize chemist Glenn T. Seaborg (co-discoverer of plutonium, namesake of element seaborgium) and Lockheed "Skunk Works" engineer Kelly Johnson, designer of the SR-71 Blackbird.

What makes Ishpeming distinct. Da Yoopers Tourist Trap displays "Big Gus," billed as the world's largest working chainsaw at 22 feet 11 inches long and about 3,500 pounds, powered by a V8 engine, plus "Big Ernie," a Guinness-record roughly 35-foot working rifle. The high school mascot, the Hematites, is named after an iron ore rather than an animal or person. Two towering figures of 20th-century American science and aviation, Glenn Seaborg and Kelly Johnson, were both born in this small mining town.

Ishpeming Landmarks and Local Life

• U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame and Museum (current building opened 1992).
• Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum - marked by twin Egyptian obelisk-style headframes over a mine that once held about 65 miles of tunnels reaching 1,358 feet deep
• Da Yoopers Tourist Trap in West Ishpeming - home of the giant chainsaw "Big Gus."
• Suicide Hill Ski Jump.
• The "Old Ish" statue - a Native American figure erected in 1884
• Lake Bancroft - a lake within the city