Why Only Four U.P. Counties Are on Central Time (and Houghton Isn’t)

We’ve all crossed into Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, or Menominee County and watched our phones jump back an hour. And like the line for where Up North starts, the time zone boundary doesn’t follow the map the way most people would expect.

On a map of the U.P., Houghton sits on the Keweenaw Peninsula and Menominee sits on the shore of Green Bay. Geographically, Menominee (87.61 degrees west) sits almost a full degree of longitude to the east of Houghton (88.57 degrees west). And Ontonagon (89.31 degrees west) sits even farther west.

Yet when it’s noon in Houghton and Ontonagon, it’s 11 a.m. in Menominee and Iron Mountain (88.06 degrees west).

How does this make sense?

Most of us were told it’s because those four counties touch Wisconsin. That’s true, but it doesn’t explain why Ontonagon, which sits farther west than three of them, runs on Eastern.

By one published count, from 99.1 WFMK, the westernmost point of the Eastern Time Zone in the United States is where the Ontonagon-Gogebic county line meets Lake Superior — about 800 feet south of the mouth of the Carp River, at roughly 89 degrees 53 minutes west. That spot rests a sliver east of the 90th meridian, which historically served as the federal benchmark for Central Time.

Because local solar time shifts by four minutes for every degree of longitude, true solar noon in Ontonagon arrives around 12:57 p.m. EST, in Houghton around 12:54 p.m., and down in Menominee around 11:50 a.m. Central (ignoring the seasonal wobble).

Longitude made the case for Central. It didn’t decide which counties got it. The answer is in the Federal Register: petitions from our county boards, two federal rules, and a switch timed so the four counties didn’t have to touch a clock.

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The Era When Michigan Was Legally Central

Back in 1885, the Michigan Legislature made Central Standard Time the legal time statewide. According to Northern Michigan History, the Interstate Commerce Commission approved Michigan’s request for Eastern time in 1936 but left the U.P. out, drawing the line up Lake Michigan, around the Upper Peninsula and across Lake Superior to the Canadian border. The Lower Peninsula went Eastern; the Upper Peninsula remained officially Central.

When the U.P. asked for Eastern in 1969, the petitioners pointed out that “historically a large portion of the Upper Peninsula had observed eastern standard time.” The legal line and the clocks on our walls didn’t always match.

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1969: When the Entire Peninsula Went Eastern

The modern time map began taking shape in the late 1960s, driven by the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966.

That law required every state to observe daylight saving time unless the state legislature enacted a law exempting the entire state. Michigan chose to opt out: the legislature passed Act No. 6 of 1967, which declared Eastern Standard Time the legal time throughout the state and rejected daylight saving, though it was suspended pending a referendum. After a petition drive and a statewide referendum, voters upheld that exemption in November 1968.

Early in 1969, most of our county boards asked Washington to put the whole peninsula on Eastern.

In February 1969, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it was considering shifting the federal boundary to place the entire Upper Peninsula into the Eastern Time Zone. The petitions came from the boards of supervisors of “a majority of the counties in the Upper Peninsula,” along with chambers of commerce, labor unions and ordinary citizens.

They said it “would provide uniform time throughout the State,” that the two zones caused “intrastate communications problems,” and that people had already picked Eastern “in straw ballots and polls.” When DOT asked for comments, the boards of 11 of our 15 counties favored the change, three didn’t respond, and one said no.

Only Gogebic County’s board went the other way. The 1969 rule says it “favored central time with advanced (daylight) time in the summer.” Washington couldn’t give it that: Michigan had voted itself off daylight time statewide, and DOT said it had “no administrative authority to change or except any part of the State.”

Four years later, Gogebic got exactly what it had asked for.

Washington went with the majority. On March 24, 1969, Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe issued a formal rule moving the time zone boundary to the Wisconsin state line. Effective at 2 a.m. on April 27, 1969, the entire Upper Peninsula was officially in the Eastern Time Zone.

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1973: Daylight Time Comes Back, and the Wisconsin Line Petitions

The all-Eastern U.P. lasted four years.

In 1972, Michigan voters repealed Act No. 6, meaning Michigan would adopt daylight saving time in 1973.

From 1969 through 1972, all of Michigan kept Eastern standard time the year round. Along the Wisconsin line that worked out in summer, because Eastern standard reads the same on the clock as Central daylight time: Menominee and Marinette matched from April to October and were an hour apart only in winter.

Once Michigan started springing forward in 1973, the border counties would be an hour ahead of Wisconsin all year.

The Board of County Commissioners of each of the four counties along the Wisconsin line (Menominee, Dickinson, Iron, and Gogebic) petitioned the Department of Transportation to move them from the Eastern zone to the Central zone, and DOT published the proposal on March 15, 1973.

In the April 12, 1973 Federal Register rule, DOT summarized the two reasons the four counties gave: they had “closer commercial relations with neighboring communities in the State of Wisconsin, which is in the central zone, than with the rest of the State of Michigan,” and Michigan had recently decided to observe daylight time beginning in 1973.

DOT gave people 22 days to write in and held a public hearing in each of the four counties. About 1,500 people commented, roughly 90 percent in favor, and the comments from every one of the four counties “overwhelmingly” favored the change.

North Central Airlines, the only certificated air carrier in interstate commerce in the four-county area, backed it too.

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The Switch That Didn’t Move a Clock

When Transportation Secretary Claude S. Brinegar issued the rule on April 10, 1973, DOT timed the boundary move so no one in the four counties had to reset a clock.

Daylight saving time in 1973 began at 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 29, and Secretary Brinegar ordered the boundary change for the four U.P. counties to take effect at that exact same moment.

The 1973 federal rule spelled out why:

“since eastern standard time is the same time on the clock as central advanced time, they will not have to change their clocks”

While the rest of Michigan sprang forward an hour on that April Sunday, people in Menominee, Iron Mountain, Crystal Falls, and Ironwood left their clock hands alone and woke up on Central Daylight Time, matching Green Bay, Marinette, and Hurley.

The tz database, the time-zone data behind most phone and computer clocks, records that Dickinson, Gogebic, Iron and Menominee counties “switched from EST to CST/CDT in 1973.”

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Why Houghton and Ontonagon Stayed on Eastern

Which brings us to the question we started with. Houghton and Ontonagon sit farther west than Menominee and Iron Mountain. Why didn’t they, or Keweenaw, go to Central?

DOT also invited comments on whether any U.P. counties next to the four should go to Central too.

The 1973 rule explains what happened:

“Since very few persons addressed themselves to this, only the four counties named are being placed in the central zone at this time.”

Many people, the rule says, wanted the line much farther east, splitting the peninsula between Alger and Schoolcraft counties on the west and Luce and Mackinac counties on the east. That proposal would have put 12 U.P. counties into Central Time, including Houghton, Ontonagon, Keweenaw, Baraga, and Marquette, on the argument that the western 12 counties were closely tied economically to Wisconsin while the eastern three (Chippewa, Luce, and Mackinac) were tied to the Lower Peninsula.

DOT said it “recognizes the validity of these contentions.” But moving the line that far east “was not within the scope of the proposal” it had published, so it said it would weigh those arguments later, as it watched how the four-county change worked out.

Under DOT’s procedure, a change has to be requested by the area’s highest political authority, which for a county is its board, and it has to serve “the convenience of commerce.” DOT normally holds a hearing in the community, and only the Secretary of Transportation can make the change.

In 1973 the record shows petitions from only four boards: Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee. A federal time zone change starts with a request from the county’s own board, so the line went around the four counties that asked. That’s why the legal boundary in 49 CFR 71.5 follows county lines instead of a meridian. It runs south along the west line of Ontonagon County to the north line of Gogebic, turns along Gogebic’s north line, skirts around Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee counties, and runs down Menominee County’s east line to Lake Michigan.

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Two Clocks, One Peninsula

Living with a time line drawn along county borders is something we get used to across the U.P., much like learning that freighters at the locks run on Soo time.

Menominee and Marinette have shared a clock since 1973. Jacqueline Boudreau, then executive director of the Marinette Menominee Area Chamber of Commerce, told Capital News Service in 2017 that the shipyard at Fincantieri Marinette Marine drew half its workforce from Michigan. “We share a workforce, no doubt,” she said.

Up the line in Dickinson County, the hour shows up on the commute. Lynda Zanon, then director of the Dickinson Area Chamber Alliance in Iron Mountain, told Capital News Service in 2017 that her husband worked in Escanaba, an hour’s drive away in the Eastern zone. To be at work by 6 a.m. Eastern, he got up at 3:30 a.m. Central.

Charly Loper, then city manager of Bessemer, the Gogebic County seat, told Capital News Service in 2017, “On a daily basis, it doesn’t affect things much.” When it does, she said, it’s usually someone from an Eastern county showing up at the wrong time. “Oftentimes, people just forget.”

On our side of the line, summer evenings run long. DOT’s 1973 rule noted that this far west, Eastern daylight time leaves “daylight on some days as late as 10:30 p.m.” Tom Nemacheck, then executive director of the Upper Peninsula Travel and Recreation Association, told Capital News Service in 2017 that visitors to Ontonagon “love the extra daylight.”

The rest of the U.P. had asked for Eastern in 1969, and in 1973 the record shows no other board asking to leave it.

Lynda Zanon put it best in 2017: “It’s crazy, but it works. Yoopers are very adaptable.”