“All organisms have to grow. They have to evolve. They have to change. And I think that Marquette has been doing a great job of that. And I think that over the next 20 or 30 years, it may evolve into the next Marquette. And I actually really look forward to seeing what that looks like.” – Jim Koski

In Marquette, Michigan, history isn’t just a collection of dates and facts. It’s a living force shaping how tourism is led today.

In this episode of Travel Beyond, Jim Koski, widely known as Marquette’s urban archaeologist, speaks about the city’s journey from a polluted industrial shipping port to a thriving hub of outdoor adventure. In cases like this, history gives us perspective and challenges us to think beyond marketing and numbers. It reminds us that tourism is deeply intertwined with a community’s identity, shaped by decades of transformation, resilience, and shared stewardship.

Marquette’s story pushes DMOs to ask: How well do we know the stories beneath our destinations? How can those stories help us connect more meaningfully with residents and visitors alike? And how can honouring the past inspire leadership that’s rooted in authenticity, responsibility, and long-term care?

In a world where tourism often feels transactional, Marquette teaches that embracing history can spark trust, guide better decisions, and create experiences that truly belong to a place and its people.

For destination leaders ready to lead with heart and vision, passionate historians like Jim Koski show that history is a powerful tool to lead places forward.

This episode, you’ll learn:

• How Marquette transformed its industrial waterfront into a vibrant community asset.
• How a destination’s historical phases can guide smarter, long-term tourism decisions.
• Why working with local historians can strengthen storytelling and community pride.
• How Marquette’s shift from industry to outdoor recreation shows the economic value of environmental stewardship.

Subscribe to Travel Beyond through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.

Feature image provided by Travel Marquette.

Show notes

More Marquette History with Jim: Dive deeper into Marquette’s rich past with Jim through his multiple-video series for the Marquette Regional History Center. 

Travel Marquette: Discover how Travel Marquette integrates environmental stewardship with tourism development, including initiatives that promote Leave No Trace principles and community-led conservation efforts.

Episode transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been lightly reviewed for accuracy.

Jim Koski: I think you get an appreciation of what you have by realizing what was here before, and that’s one of the things that I really try to get through on these tours is that Marquette wasn’t always a pretty place. Marquette always wasn’t a playground. Marquette’s basically here because they needed to ship iron ore.

If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have these playgrounds that you have. You wouldn’t have this amazingly beautiful city without that.

Sara Raymond de Booy: Welcome to Travel Beyond. I’m Sara Raymond de Booy from Destination Think. I’m recording from Seattle, Washington from the homeland of the Duwamish, Squamish, Suquamish, and Muckleshoot people. On this show, we look at travel’s role in making a better [00:01:00] world, and we highlight leading destinations and change makers.

Our guests are taking local action that the world can learn from. They’re helping to regenerate ecosystems, communities, and economies, and they’re often making positive change happen from the bottom up. Today we’re back in Marquette, Michigan, where we’ve already heard from CEO Susan Estler about the community’s strong culture of care.

Now we’re joined by radio personality and local historian Jim Koski, a lifelong Marquette resident who has witnessed the town’s many changes firsthand and through plenty of his own research. What I found especially fascinating about this conversation with Jim is how he brings Marquette’s history to life in a way that’s accessible for so many people.

This is about more than the history of Marquette for those of us who work in tourism. This really made me think about how zooming out and understanding the different phases of your destination’s past growth might help you to make more authentic and thoughtful decisions for the future. I’ll let Jim explain the rest.

Jim Koski: My name is Jim Koski [00:02:00] and, uh, how would I describe myself? I, I, I joke that there are a lot of different gyms. There’s a radio gym, there’s a TV gym. Uh, there’s a history gym and they’re all kind of interconnected, but they’re not. I’ve, uh, I’ve done radio here in Marquette for a little over 30 years now on, uh, Q 107 WNQT.

Also, I, uh, do a couple of TV gigs. I host high school bowl on WN and UTV, and I have a, a weekly bit on a local newscast on WZMQ 19. Uh, but we’re here at the History Center today and. That’s where history Jim comes in. I like to think of myself as a historical storyteller. There are so many amazing tales about the history of this place.

Uh, and I just love. Leading hundreds of people around downtown Marquette in a tour. I put together a, a series of videos, uh, every year featuring little snippets, little stories about [00:03:00] history. And we also do, uh, indoor shows, uh, fundraising shows where we sit in coffin auditorium and that tell really bad history jokes to 800 people and.

Six of them laugh and the rest of them go away happy. So it’s, it’s cool that way. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And I’ve heard you refer to yourself as an urban archeologist as well. 

Jim Koski: Yeah. And that’s one of the things that I love doing on these tours because, uh, Marquette has undergone, uh, transformation several times. Uh, since it was founded in 1849, you know, going from one kind of community to another kind of community to a third kind of community.

Uh, and there are a lot of places where people can walk past every day and notice like an old. Part of an old wall, you know, and they ignore it ’cause it’s part of an old wall. But if you know what used to be there one Marketa ago or two Marquettes ago, you know, that was the foundation of one of the rail lines that fed the first dock into Lower Harbor, uh, back in 1851.

And [00:04:00] most people don’t realize the fact that you can just walk down the street and see history until you, someone points it out to them. So that’s why I kind of call myself an urban archeologist. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. And you left for a bit and came back. Right. 

Jim Koski: There’s a, a joke among people who are born here that everyone wants to leave once they graduate high school.

They want to explore the world. But the smart ones come back. I don’t know that I would call myself smart, but yes, I did come back. I, uh, I went to school downstate and I was working at a couple of TV stations, uh, down there. And there is a huge difference between Lansing or Flint. And Marquette, uh, the hills of Marquette, uh, the, the friendliness of the people of Marquette, and for me, especially importantly, the giant lake sitting just a couple of blocks from where we’re sitting here.

And I, I came home one weekend for something and I just looked around and I [00:05:00] thought to myself, why? And a month and a half later I moved back. Haven’t left since. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. And the friendliness in the lake, are those your favorite things of about living here or other things do? Oh, geez. 

Jim Koski: Uh, there are a lot of great things, uh, about living in Marquette.

Like I said, the community, it’s a, a very welcoming of very open-minded, uh, a very artistic community. And you don’t get that in a lot of places. Both for the people who were born here and over the past 10 or 15 years, the people who have moved here because, uh, probably since the, the turn of the century there’s been a, a, a, a change if, if that makes any sense.

And, uh, it, it, there’s just a vibe here that you get in a lot of places that, that are bigger. Like, like in Austin or in Portland or something. And you can see the, the seeds of that here as well. But yeah, I would have to say that the, the lake is probably one of the big reasons that I moved [00:06:00] back. I realized that there are times in January or February when I cursed the lake because there’s a cold wind whipping off of it.

And it’s like, why are you doing this to us? But just this past weekend when it was 90 degrees here in Marquette, you just go down to the water and it’s, you know, 90 degrees on one street, uh, three blocks away. You go to the lake, it’s 70, and it’s like, yeah, this is why I’m here. Okay. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And why do you think everybody should visit?

Jim Koski: Uh, the, the three things that made me move back, the people, the hills and the lake, uh, not necessarily in that order, but there is so much natural beauty here. Uh, so many places, uh, are just, uh, nothing more than a, you know, a strip mall, a building, a strip mall, a building, a strip mall, a building. And there there are places like that in Marquette where you can go to.

But, uh, you just wander down around the lake or through any of the parks, uh, and you just [00:07:00] see all of this green, all of this beauty, and it’s just a chance for you to, uh, take a deep breath, you know, and go, yeah, this is not bad. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: What do you think people need to know about Marquette’s history to understand where it is today?

Jim Koski: I think that people need to realize that Marquette was founded for one particular thing. But it has, as I mentioned before, changed several times back when Marquette was founded in, uh, 1849. It was founded not because of iron nor mines, which was the reason that this whole part of the up, uh, was, uh, opened up to exploration, but Marquette didn’t have, or the land that became Marquette didn’t have any iron ore.

But what it did have was two large natural deep water. Harbors and back in the 1840s and the 1850s, of course there were no, uh, there were no trucks, there were no train lines. Uh, even there was no way to get the [00:08:00] ore that they were mining In Nani and Ishma and all these other small towns, there’s no way to get that ore.

Two ports, uh, or two, uh, down to Detroit or down to Cleveland, or down to Chicago. Uh, you had to ship it out. So you needed, uh, a shipping port and well, that’s, that’s what we have here is, uh, two natural shipping ports. So over the next, uh, 100 years, that’s what Marquette did. Uh, rail lines were built all throughout.

Uh, the city, uh, and, uh, there were at one time six docks in Lower Harbor and two docks in Upper Harbor, and that’s what they did 24 hours a day, they shipped iron ore out. Uh, but of course as things changed, um, the shipping aspect of Marquette started to cut down. Uh, the last time they ever shipped iron ore out of lower Harbor was 1971, so it was 54 years ago.

They’re still shipping. Ore out of Upper Harbor. Uh, but once they stopped shipping ore out of, uh, lower Harbor in [00:09:00] 1971, that’s kind of when the next Marquette started to, uh, appear. Took a couple decades. But, uh, since then, uh, it, Marquette no longer is basically known as the shipping community, even though we still do some, uh, air North shipping.

But all of a sudden it’s morphed into education and medicine and arts. So it’s, uh, when you think of a transformation, when you go from industrial grunge to intellectual property, that’s, that’s about as big of a change as you can get. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. And I, I definitely have a couple more questions about that too.

Yeah. But, um, before we get too far into that, um, before the settlement in the, uh, mid 18 hundreds, could you tell us a little bit about what life was like for the people who lived here and who lived here before that? Before the European show? Yeah, before the European arrival. 

Jim Koski: Yeah. Actually around Marquette’s, what we now call Marquette Lower Harbor. Uh, there were anywhere from five to seven small native communities and, uh, uh, they didn’t [00:10:00] necessarily live here the entire part of the year because, you know, it does get kind of nasty in winter. Mm-hmm. Uh, but they would have, uh, summer settlements up here and, uh, they would, uh, hunt and fish and, uh, gather berries and grow crops.

Um. At that time, this entire area was forested, and so it was teaming with game and everything that, uh, the, in, uh, Anishinabe, uh, needed to live during the summer. And, uh, having spoken with several, uh, Anishinaabe historians, it seems like, uh, once the Europeans showed up, they basically clear-cut this entire area.

Uh, they needed wood for houses and woods, for building woods for mining. And that, uh, for a long time, uh, basically made the indigenous people, uh, switched to a more European lifestyle and. Uh, there’s still some debate among, uh, Anishinaabe scholars and historians as to whether or not that was a good thing.[00:11:00] 

Not being indigenous myself, I don’t wanna like, have to speak on, you know, whether or not it was, but, uh, having done work with, uh, scholars, it’s like that was a huge change for the people who were here before the Europeans as well, so. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then, um, what, how would you say the human relationship to land has changed over history?

Jim Koski: Uh, I think that the human relationship with the land has changed markedly. Uh, in the 176 years that Marquette’s been a community, uh, like I said, when the Europeans first came in, they basically clear-cut everything. They just basically dug up the land, threw whatever they needed to throw away into the river, uh, into the lake, uh, which then went into the lake.

But that’s how, uh, industrial progress, uh, happened. Up until like 1960s or the 1970s when people all of a sudden realize that you can’t keep abusing the land [00:12:00] without having some kind of, uh, feedback. Uh, and I, I think once that realization started, especially after they stopped shipping ore out of lower harbor in the early 1970s, uh, people looked at all of that post-industrial grunge that was left down there and said, uh, maybe we wanna do something about this.

Uh, there was a, a, a giant, for instance, there was a giant coal yard in Lower Harbor Park that was the size of about five football fields. It was. Basically ships would come in, they’d dump their load of coal. There was a giant gantry that would then load the coal from, uh, the piles onto trucks where they would take it out to power plants or homes or whatever.

And the, because it was sitting right on the lake, not only would the coal fall into the water. And, you know, damaged fisheries, but it was just sitting in big piles. And if the wind blew a certain way, it would blow coal dust all over a certain part of Marquette. There were even tails of people who couldn’t put their [00:13:00] laundry out on the line because when they brought it in, it would be black with coal dust.

And, uh, once they stopped shipping coal into Marquette in the 1970s, a a group of people. Tried to figure out what to do with the property that the coal yard sat on and the spear family who owned the land donated to the city and a bunch of people got together, raised a lot of money. And where that coal yard now once sat, now sits one of the crown jewels of Marquettes Park system, the low Elwood Matson, lower Harbor Park, and it’s just changes like that that have shown.

How people in Marquette now respect the land, respect the environment. Uh, they, uh, another example is once they stopped shipping ore downtown, uh, there were train lines that sat there for 20 some years until, uh, Canadian nationals sold that land to the city of Marquette and the city. Then tore out all of the train lines, put bike paths in.

They tore [00:14:00] out a, a rail yard, uh, by the lake, turned it into Founder’s Landing, which is a park in a housing complex. They, uh, took the, uh, old, uh, roundhouse in the middle of the city, uh, which was basically just a bunch of train lines and a bunch of old steel buildings, uh, turned part of it into a park. The rest of it’s now where our new hospital sits.

So. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. So even though Respect Marquette from Travel Marquette has only been around for a a few years, but it seems like it’s a iteration of what’s been going on for a while. 

Jim Koski: It’s basically a reflection of the community’s values the past couple of decades. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s funny when I’m, sometimes, when I’m giving tours, I will make the joke that if someone had left Marquette 50 years ago, uh.

They might not even recognize the place the way that it’s today. They, they’d recognize buildings, they’d recognize streets, but they might not recognize the city as it’s become. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And when would you say tourism came on the scene? Even if you look back at [00:15:00] who the first visitors might have been back in the industrial age?

Jim Koski: Well, there, there was always. A group of people who would come to visit, of course, back in the 18 hundreds, even the early 19 hundreds, uh, it was hard to get here. I mean, it was really hard to get here. Uh, you could only get here by ship or by rail, but you would always have rich people who wanted to summer somewhere cool.

And, uh, they would talk to their friends. Their wealthy friends from Marquette like John Longyear or Peter White or uh, Louis Kaufman, and they’d say, yeah, come up here. You know, it’s cold in the summer. You get away from the city’s heat. Even back in the, uh, 1890s, there was an attempt to market Marquette as a, a haven for, uh.

People who wanted to get away from it all. They built a huge hotel in South Marquette called the Hotel Superior. Uh, I mean, this was a big seven story building sitting on top of a mountain. They spared [00:16:00] no expense. The guy who designed the Michigan State Capitol designed this building. Uh, they had their own farm, they had their own orchestra and everything, and it was marketed to rich people from Chicago who wanted to cure their hay fever.

Two problems with that. There weren’t a lot of people in Chicago who had hay fever and even fewer of those wanted to come up to Marquette to cure it. So the hotel was just like out of business five years later. Um, but that was kind of the, the beginning of trying to market Marquette as a tourist destination.

And then in 1925, uh, con US Congress authorized us 41, which. Runs through Marquette, and that started to get a lot of people to come up and visit. Uh, they tried to market the up as a whole, as a tourist industry. They even called it Cloverland because there are catches of clover throughout every, uh, the up.

And they thought it sounded nice. Uh, but it wasn’t actually until after World War II when, uh, [00:17:00] people started to drive a lot that Marquette started to become a tourist haven. Uh, you would get a lot of, uh, motor, hotels, motels, campgrounds and stuff around here that people would come to visit. Uh, so that, that was like one iteration of it.

But then it wasn’t until, oh geez, probably the, the start of the 21st century that Marquette really became a destination, because, like I said, pull out all the post urban industrial grunge put in bike paths. Um, in 2004, 2005, the city bought the. What was then called the Heartland Property. Uh, and they developed the south trails south, uh, south trail system with amazing bike paths everywhere in bike racing.

Uh, the same with the, the north side of Marquette. And in the past, oh geez, 20 years, tourism has basically become one of the mainstays of the economy up here. So, 

Sara Raymond de Booy: yeah. And how have, how has it changed in your lifetime? How do you remember tourism [00:18:00] as a kid versus now? 

Jim Koski: I hope this doesn’t sound snarky, but I remember as a kid actually being able to get into a downtown restaurant on a summer night without having to wait two hours.

Um, no, I I actually think that, uh, the, the change in tourism in my lifetime has been astounding, uh, because when I was a, a kid, like in the seventies, uh, I don’t remember the. Amount of people who would come up here for a weekend or for a week. Uh, but I think that it’s, uh, especially in the pa like I said the past 10 or 15 years, it’s become a, a, a great change for a couple of reasons too.

I mean, not only because it’s, uh, economically a good for the city as well, but you get people, we get a lot of people from different countries. Who will come to visit Marquette, you’d be amazed by the, uh, uh, amount of, uh, people who have been on one of my tours who are from the UK or from France. I led a German tour [00:19:00] group around Marquette, uh, a couple of years ago.

We get a, a lot of tourists from, uh, Japan and Korea, even China, uh, surprisingly, and if nothing else, uh, having locals meet people from different countries, uh, is a great thing as well because you can never have. Too much of a diversity of knowledge and opinion in your life. So, 

Sara Raymond de Booy: yeah. And are there any amenities that, um, visitors have made possible or the tourism economy has made possible that you have now that you might wish that you had when you were a kid?

Jim Koski: I don’t know if one has led to the other, but I, I keep, uh, coming back to the fact that we have this. Amazing trail system in Marquette that we have all of these now amenities by the water. And I don’t know if those were made possible by the tourists or if that made tourism possible. Uh, but like I said, when I was a kid, there was a lot of grunge around here.

There’s not anymore whether or not that has to do with tourists or because of [00:20:00] tourists. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. 

Jim Koski: Up in the air. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Do you have any thoughts on what this place might be like without tourism? 

Jim Koski: Yeah, it would probably end up, uh, being like some other up communities. I think places like, geez, I don’t know, just off top like Iron Mountain or Esken, but places that people drive through, uh, you stop and you get gas and you move on to whatever your destination is.

I would tend to think that economically, that would take a huge, huge chunk out of what Marquette is. Uh, as an example, during, uh, COVID, uh, when everything was shut down, you know, Marquette was for the, that March, that April, and most of that May, it was a ghost town. Not only because of the fact that. Uh, there, there was a lockdown.

You were supposed to stay home, but just the energy that you have usually have in a community like this wasn’t there. And the up was the, uh, the first place, uh, in Michigan to be opened for tourism. And the first couple of [00:21:00] weekends there were thousands of extra people in Marquette. And while a lot of people were going, is this gonna be safe?

Everyone else was like, yes, this is what this city is supposed to be like. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. And do you think tourism is, uh, an industry that might give younger generations a, a reason to stay here? 

Jim Koski: You know, I, I honestly think so because there are a lot of little businesses popping up. Uh, people could, uh, you know, have.

Become a bike tour guides, you know, they’ll take people around the south trails or the North trails, they’ll show them around. Uh, we have, uh, uh, people who will do some hardcore biking with, uh, GoPro on their helmet and post it, uh, uh, online or, you know, monetize their video. More importantly though, I think that tourism.

People who come up here as tourists to bike or just to visit. There is a not insignificant chunk of them who [00:22:00] fall in love with the place and thanks to remote working because they visited here, they come up here and they go, this is really awesome. And they’ll say, okay, I’m leaving Cleveland. I’m moving up to Marquette.

’cause I can still work. I can spend, you know, eight hours at behind my keyboard. Then I can hit the trail. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: So, switching gears for a bit, could you tell us about your tours and how you, uh, you share your passion with visitors as you explore 300 people on the sidewalks? Oh. And try to not get ’em hit by cars.

Yeah. Um, 

Jim Koski: the tours that I give are, they’re blast. Um, I, I come up with a theme and I then. We’ll become what one business owner has called the Pied Piper of downtown Marquette. As I’m leading all of these people around, uh, we, uh, and we do different, do all kinds of different stories. There’s one that’s called and put up a parking lot, which we tour all of the parking lots of downtown Marquette, but look at [00:23:00] the awesome sandstone buildings that used to be there.

Um, I will explore different parts of the city. I, I did one a couple of years ago called Burn, Baby, Burn: The Infernos of Downtown Marquette. In which we talk about all the buildings that burned down and, uh, what, uh, took place. Um, we did one on Founder’s Landing, which is, uh, one of the new parks in Marquette and how that used to be at one, an industrial area, and two, how, uh, that also used to be the home of a lot of Marquette’s ranches.

Ranches were a local term for where working women would apply their trade. It and uh, for some strange reason, a lot of people on that tour had a lot of fascination with prostitutes, but that’s led to some other things as well. But it’s just fun because not only does it, uh, allow us to share a lot of the history of market, but let’s us get outside during the summer, which is always a great thing in Marquette.

Sara Raymond de Booy: [00:24:00] Yeah. And how often do visitors join in on those events? 

Jim Koski: I have been stunned in that the past five or 10 years there’s been a marked increase in tourists who are on these tours. I would say when we, the first one I did was like back in oh eight or oh nine, it was all local people, only like 40 people, but we thought, oh wow, 40 people.

That is so cool. Um, but they were all local and now we’re doing two or 300, and I would guess that probably 40% might be tourists. It’s, I try to talk to as many people as I can, both during and after the tour, and I’ll get a lot of people coming up to me and, uh, tourists and say, I had no idea that Marquette was this, or Marquette was that.

So if we’re helping, uh, educate people on what this great place is like just a bonus. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. And how do you think understanding the history here can change someone’s perspective on the place or maybe give them lessons to go home with? 

Jim Koski: I think that being on a tour of a place where you have [00:25:00] never been or aren’t familiar with, uh, just opens your eyes a lot, uh, to the fact that it’s more, Marquette, for example, is more than just a pretty place.

Uh, it actually has something behind it. There’s a reason that this city sits where it sits. And if we can explain not only that, but if we can explain, uh, how it became Marquette, how it’s evolved over the years, how it’s incorporated, uh, the peoples who were here before the Europeans, or how it, uh, it’s incorporated some of the natural features of this terrain.

Uh, they can look at Marquette going. Okay, I see the fact that there are four ridges of mountains or four ridges of hills throughout the city. I didn’t know the glaciers formed then, but I can also see why people built stuff there or built stuff in the valleys. So, 

Sara Raymond de Booy: um, so how do you think the modern day, uh, or with the modern day community here in Marquette, how would you describe some of their values, whether or not they’ve been [00:26:00] on a tour of yours and understand the places as much as you?

Jim Koski: Do you mean just the city as a whole? Yeah, the city as a whole. I alluded to this before, uh, I would say that they are maybe among the friendliest people that you’re ever gonna meet, even if it’s just walking down the street, uh, they’ll say morning or, hi. Um, I give these tours where I take 200 people across the street and invariably the first someone will just stop, wave you through.

And once we even had someone who was just walking. On the other side of the street, jump out in the street, stop traffic so we could all, uh, get across the street. So they’re friendly in that way. They’re, uh, wickedly talented too. Uh, there’s a joke that everyone in Marquette has two gigs. They have their main job and they have their artistic side gig, whether they’re painters or photographers or sculptors or writers or whatever.

It seems like everyone here. Uh, has some kind of [00:27:00] artistic slant to them. And then like most artistic people, most of the people in Marquette are welcoming and they don’t care how you live your lifestyle. They don’t. You know, they’re not gonna be in your face about much of anything. Uh, they’re very passionate about, uh, the environment.

They’re very passionate about, uh, people, and they just wanna make sure that we’re living the best possible life that we can live. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And what role do you think storytelling plays in how they view themselves? 

Jim Koski: I would, I would hope that storytelling or the historical storytelling that I do gives them a little perspective.

Oftentimes when you go through your life, you’re so focused on your little part of the world, you may not realize exactly how many other things went into the making of your little world. Uh, and I would hope, I don’t know if this actually happens, I would [00:28:00] hope that realizing that, um, you know, because someone decided that they needed to build a railroad 170 years ago.

That’s why, uh, you are living in a community that has a bike path. You know, whether or not people pick that up, I’m not sure, but that’s kind of sort of the point that we try to get across. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And what do you think Marquette’s history can teach people about caring for the environment? 

Jim Koski: I think if people go back and they realize, uh, just what building an industrial community is like, and look at some of the old pictures that we show on one of the tours, I show a picture.

Uh, what is now Marquette’s Lower Harbor? Uh, it’s, you know, a pri pristine lake. It’s clean, it’s gorgeous. You know, people sail in it, they fish in it, they swim in it. They paddleboard in it. They kayak in it. I show them this picture from the 1880s in which it was filled with, uh, fishing shacks and logs and boulders, and burned out [00:29:00] docks and steel pipes just sticking out of the water.

A couple of wreckages. Of ships just floating in the water. And I point out to them, this is what this was like 140 years ago. And I always get this. Ah, and, um, I think that that allows people to realize the, not only the change in the mindset, uh, of. Humanity collectively in the past 140 years, but specifically how we have come to realize that not only Lake Superior, but the land around Lake Superior is something really special.

And for it to stay special, we need to take care of it. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And how do you think taking care of that makes, uh, economic sense? What are your thoughts there on how that can bolster the economy here? 

Jim Koski: Well, if we had a dirty, crappy, grungy lake, we wouldn’t have people who come up in their boats. We wouldn’t have people who come up to kayak or a paddleboard or to watch the [00:30:00] sailboat RA sailboat races every Wednesday, or just to enjoy some of the awesome beaches that we have.

Because actually up until the seventies of the eighties, there was so much stuff in the water that we’d often have algae blooms that would come on shore, and some of Marquette’s beaches would have to be closed because there was just stuff in the water and it. You get rid of that, you can enjoy the beach anytime you want.

Sara Raymond de Booy: What responsibilities do you think residents or I guess visitors have to take care of a place like this? 

Jim Koski: I, I think residents and visitors alike respect what we have and realize that it’s. It falls upon all of us to make sure that it doesn’t go back to the way that it was 50 or a hundred years ago. And that even extends to, uh, volunteers who every, uh, year.

Once beach season is over, we’ll go to a place like Bacardi’s Cove, which is one of the popular beaches in Marquette, [00:31:00] and pick up 10,000 cigarette butts that people left in the sand. Uh, that, uh, extends to, uh, a gentleman who’s on a lot of my tours, actually, who gets up every morning, I think it’s six o’clock, goes for a walk along the bike path, brings a garbage bag with him and just.

Picks up the trash that careless people might have thrown away. And I have noticed that, uh, tourists will often comment on this is a really clean place. And I think that they then buy into the vibe that they just can’t throw their takeout box on the sidewalk or somewhere they actually look for trash receptacle, or they’ll even recycle it because that’s what we do here.

Sara Raymond de Booy: And do you see the history tales that you’re, you know, informing people of and educating of? Mm-hmm. Do you see that shaping the way people care for this place today? 

Jim Koski: You know, I would certainly hope so. Um, because one of the things Marquette does have is an amazing history. There aren’t a [00:32:00] lot of places that have simultaneously, uh, given us such natural beauty, such quirky people.

And at the same time, uh, a couple of individuals who literally shaped this country the way that it is. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: What do you think some of the challenges being faced by the community right now are? 

Jim Koski: Um, there, there, there are a lot of challenges that any community faces, especially Marquette. Um, we had talked about, uh, the, the growth of tourism in Marquette and part of that explosion has led.

And anyone who lives in Marquette will tell you. This has led to a housing crunch. Uh, like a lot of communities, there is a lack of affordable housing in Marquette. Uh, part of that is just because of the fact that everyone seems to want to live here. Uh, but part of it is also because, and I hope I’m getting this number right, uh, somewhere between three and 400 housing units in Marquette had been converted into Airbnb.

Uh, over the [00:33:00] past 10 years and, uh, if you take that big of a chunk of the housing market out where people are gonna live, uh, a lot of the housing that is being built in Marquette is, uh, uh, admittedly upper end as well. It’s, uh, condo, uh, it is townhouse and there is, while there is a concerted effort. To have more affordable housing built.

Uh, it’s, it’s a slow process. And at the moment it seems like we’re in a, a bit of a bottleneck as to where to put all the college students, where to put all the tourists, where to put, uh, the medical professionals that, uh, duke LifePoint is trying to bring into Marquette. Um, physically Marquette is not a huge city.

There’s not a lot of land left in Marquette and you know, we’re having to build up instead of out. So it’ll, I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years the bottleneck will be reduced, but I’m not a housing [00:34:00] expert, so fingers crossed. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And do you think Marquette can grow without losing its soul? Actually, I, I think it can.

Jim Koski: Yeah. We’ve kind of been doing that over the past 20 years. Uh, I, I, I think the US Census Bureau will say that Marquette’s grown by like 1500 people since 2000. You know, so not a big chunk when you consider there are 22,000 people or whatever, uh, in Marquette, but that growth, which is brought in a lot of people from outside does not seem to have changed Marquette very much.

In fact, if anything, it’s kind of added to the unique atmosphere that the city has these days. I’m sure that there are probably people in their eighties who will say, well, this is the Marquette I grew up with. And that’s true. But the Marquette that they grew up with was a hundred percent, uh, industrial.

It was a hundred percent white. It was a hundred percent male, uh, dominated and. All organisms have to [00:35:00] grow. They have to evolve, they have to change, and I think that Marquette has been doing a great job of that. And I think that over the next 20 or 30 years it, it may evolve into the next Marquette and I actually really look forward to seeing what that looks like.

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. Any inklings of what it… 

Jim Koski: I’m not a prognosticator, but I would probably guess that it would stay on the same path that it is now. I think it’s probably gonna be a lot more high tech oriented. Uh, there, there are the beginnings, the rumblings of, uh, a lot of, uh, cybersecurity work, uh, coming into Marquette.

A lot of it work, which you can do remotely. And I think the combination of high tech knowledge and the lifestyle. Uh, that Marquette affords it. It’s hit a sweet spot among a lot of young people, and I think that they’re going to be coming into Marquette. They’re bringing their families, they’re raising their families here.

And so I have a feeling that Marquette is actually. [00:36:00] Demographically probably in the next 20 years actually gonna be younger than it is now. I think it’s going, probably going to be greener than it if you can get much greener, more greener than it is now. And I, I think that it’s just going to be a, a place where you can work and play and escape all at the same time.

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. Are there any programs or community actions right now that you’re most impressed by that give you hope? I, 

Jim Koski: I am impressed by how organizations like Northern Michigan University and some of the economic development corporations are actively pushing, uh, high tech in this area. Like I was just saying, they’re actually playing up the fact that you can play and work in the same day, and I think that there aren’t a lot of places in the country where you can do that.

With any luck, uh, those recruitment efforts for both the businesses and the individuals will pay off in the, the next few years. Uh, there are also a couple of development [00:37:00] areas that I think could help the city a lot. Uh, over the past two years, they’ve been tearing down the old market, general hospital complex, and while now it’s just basically acres and acres of land, there are a lot of possibilities for both housing and, uh, other economic development issues.

That can take place right in the heart of the city and that could revitalize, not that it needs revitalization, but that could change that part of Marquette. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And I know you mentioned that the next Marquette might be coming. 

Jim Koski: Yeah. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: If you could write a letter to the people of Marquette from, in 50 years, let’s say you used 50 years as an example for, what would you say?

Jim Koski: The first thing I would tell them is, I hope we didn’t screw it up for you because. This city is a constantly changing organism and I would say, hi, it’s Jim from 2025. Um, you know, over the past 175 years, we’ve gone through [00:38:00] three different versions of Marquette and we did this, we did this, and now we’re doing this.

And I really look forward to seeing what you do with the city we’ve enjoyed. The green, the lake. We’ve enjoyed the hills, we’ve enjoyed the bike paths. We’ve enjoyed this. We’ve enjoyed that. We hope that you get that much enjoyment out of it, and we hope that you do so something extra special with the fact that you’re sitting on 12% of the world’s largest fresh water, you know, right outside your door or something along those lines.

I would just basically want to wish Marquette residents of 2075, the best of luck and. Please keep this the magical place that it is. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: What, is there a part of the past that you hope those future generations never forget? 

Jim Koski: Um, actually all of it, uh, because I think you get an appreciation of what you have by realizing what was here before.

And that’s one of the things that I really try to [00:39:00] get through, uh, on these tours is that, you know, Marquette wasn’t always a pretty place. Marquette always wasn’t a playground. Marquette’s basically here because they needed to ship iron ore from 15 miles away. If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have these playgrounds that you have.

You wouldn’t have this amazingly beautiful city. Without that, I don’t know that I’m gonna leave a legacy. I don’t think I’m that important. But if I do leave a legacy, even for just one person, it’s that you have to realize what came before here so that you can build upon. The changes that have occurred, Marquette’s taught me a couple of things.

One, it’s taught me that there is a place like home and, and I don’t mean that in the sense that, oh look, you were born here, your family’s here. But it’s taught me that there is at least one place for every person where they feel at home. [00:40:00] They feel like they belong here and. I, I can’t speak for any of the other 20 some thousand people in Marquette, but I know that I feel at home here, this is where I was meant to be, which is why I guess I’ve ended up doing so many varied things.

Uh, I just want to give back. You know? This is the place that makes me feel like I belong. So if I can do anything to make it better, that’s what I want to do. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. My, I know, I know we’ve been talking a lot about tourism. Yeah. And respecting the environment and. Um, you know, being patient with people too.

Um, are there any stories, uh, from Marquette’s past or, I’d say one story because of time, um, like your favorite story from Marquette’s past that we might be able to learn from? Uh, in, in which, in just anything that might have come to the top for any of the topics that we chatted through. 

Jim Koski: I don’t know that there’s one story in particular.

It’s, it’s just the gradual accumulation of [00:41:00] little stories. That, uh, you know, someone will clean up a beach. Someone will decide that a certain part of Marquette needs a little redevelopment. Someone will say, I’m gonna open a business here and maybe other people will follow. It’s the accumulation of those little stories that make the much bigger story of how Marquette has transformed over the past 175 years and will hopefully.

Undergo even a more amazing transformation in the next 175 years, if, if that makes any sense. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And my final official question. Okay. What makes you most proud to live here? 

Jim Koski: I guess the one thing that makes me most proud to live here, because this happens a lot, uh, I can be giving a tour or I can just be talking to someone who’s not from the area and they will say.

This is a cool place. I wish I could be here. I wish I could live here. And [00:42:00] that makes me proud. Not only because I live in, I get to live here where they don’t. But because I’d like to think that I have an insanely small part in making it the place that it is, and that’s just kinda like a pat on the back going, 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Hey, good job.

Well, thank you very much for sitting down with us. Okay. I really appreciated learning so much. 

Jim Koski: Okay. Hope you got at least 10 seconds of good stuff on.

Sara Raymond de Booy: This has been Travel Beyond presented by Destination Think, and that was Jim Koski, historian, urban archeologist and radio personality from Marquette, Michigan. Special thanks to the Marquette Regional History Center for providing a recording space for this interview. For more resources and show notes, visit our website at destinationthink.com.

This episode was hosted and produced by me, Sara Raymond de Booy. It has theme music composed by my co-producer, David Archer. Lindsay Payne, Danny Gariepy, and Cory Price provided production support. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to give us a five star rating. It helps more people find our show.[00:43:00] 

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with more from Marquette next week when we speak with local filmmaker Aaron Peterson, about the role of authentic storytelling in responsible marketing.