The
Michigan Outdoor Writers Association is dedicating a historical marker today that celebrates the connection between famed author Ernest Hemingway and the Upper Peninsula.
The ceremony is being held at the East Branch of the Fox River State Forest Campground. The Fox River was thought to be the inspiration for Hemingway's short story "Big Two-Hearted River," and was the site of a fishing and camping trip the author took in 1919.
The marker is one of a series of Michigan Heritage Memorials the association has dedicated to noteworthy events in the state's outdoors heritage. The state
Department of Natural Resources collaborated on the design and location of the monument, which is an aluminum plate affixed to a limestone slab.
It describes how Hemingway came to Seney as a young man with some friends to fish and camp near the river, although he later said he borrowed the name of a different U.P. river for his short story title, because it was more poetic.
Other markers in the series commemorate the invention of the Adams fishing fly in northern lower Michigan; Great Lakes shipwrecks, with a St. Ignace marker; the "Operation Mooselift" west of Ishpeming; and the reintroduction of elk near downstate Atlanta.
Writer: Sam Eggleston
Source: Michigan Department of Natural Resources
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