The Emerald Triangle of The Midwest

In the early 1990s, the war on drugs came one of the most remote areas of the United States. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan contains 16,377 square miles of land. From end to end, it takes roughly 5 hours to drive across. It's a beautiful part of the country that most people assume is Canada.

In 1989, the recipe for a Cold War era Russian drug was discovered by a Northern Michigan University student while interning at the University of Michigan laboratories one summer. I know this because while attending NMU, I had a friend that worked in the University archives and we used to pass time by looking through old news stories. The details are a bit hazy depending on the source, but this drug was an early look at what would become a major epidemic of meth use across the country. Methcathinone, nicknamed 'Cat,' quickly became popular in the UP after the student who discovered it returned home and began producing it on campus.

A truly dangerous and addictive drug, a task force was formed to handle the issue. The Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team quickly secured funding to fight the production and use of Cat. With a large team of law enforcement and new toys including helicopters, it didn't take long for the problem to be run out of town and eventually settle in the Dakotas where the problem only got worse for the rest of the U.S.

So what does this have to do with Cannabis? The formation of UPSET also marked the end of an era for one of the best kept secrets in Cannabis. If you lived in the Midwest and consumed Cannabis anywhere from the 1950s through the 1990s, you almost certainly were smoking stuff grown in the Upper Peninsula. From the foothills of the Huron Mountains to the Garden Peninsula, the UP has a long history of cannabis cultivation that is mostly unrecorded and rarely talked about outside of the local scene. And for good reason, because in 1995, an UPSET helicopter spotted a cannabis grow in the Garden Peninsula that made national headlines and put an end to the largest outdoor grows in the UP.

It wasn't until 2008, when Michigan's Medical Marijuana laws were passed, that cannabis became widely grown in the area again. But the legacy lived on amongst the locals and, to this day, Garden Green is one of the most coveted strains amongst those who know.

Growing up in the area, I've heard countless stories of massive grows from the old days, trips across state borders, fortunes made and lost. Apparently, there are even old High Times and Playboy Magazine articles that reference the Upper Peninsula's famed growing capabilities. I have yet to find articles from either publication or, really, any major documentation of cultivation in our area outside of a few old photographs passed down from generations of families who made their living growing cannabis. It's very common to have a black and white photo of grandpa in the field with plants; it seems like most of my friends growing up all had similar stories.

I hope that one day, more of the history is uncovered and the legacy of cannabis in the Upper Peninsula is documented for generations to come. Until then, you can always take a road trip down one of the many county roads until you spot a bar in the middle of nowhere, order a pint, and wait until you find someone willing to talk...