By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, mining had begun a slow decline and many could now foresee a time when mineral production would no longer sustain the Lake Superior mining region as the primary industry. Many residents, as well as out-of-area speculators and promoters, had begun to see the potential of the region’s natural resources beyond those of iron and copper.

While mining companies across the Upper Peninsula were facing rising production costs in the face of decreasing mineral content, they were also increasingly faced with labor shortages as more and more men had become dissatisfied with working conditions, dependence on corporate paternalism, petty mine bosses and the realization that there was little opportunity for upward mobility. Logging and lumber were becoming significant contributors to the regional economy at a time when mass production was lowering prices on consumer goods, making it affordable for thousands of mine workers to find employment above ground.

Logging in the early 20th century did not focus on selective harvesting, but rather placed emphasis on maximum profit. In their drive for profit, logging companies often clear cut vast swaths of timberland, leaving thousands of acres of stumps in their wake, and were quick to sell the now (seemingly) worthless cutover lands to whoever wanted them. Cheap cutover lands appealed to thousands of people, primarily Finnish immigrants, who saw them as an ideal opportunity to acquire and establish farms.

Northern Michigan University’s Recorded in Stone: Voices of the Marquette Iron Range, states that Roger M. Andrews started a promotion for settlement of the cutover lands throughout the U.P. starting a publication called Clover-Land in 1911. It was, states NMU, a regional promotion and development organization, established by business representatives across the U.P.

The Upper Peninsula Development Bureau (UPDB) sought economic and land-use diversification and began promoting the U.P. as “Cloverland” to attract farmers, settlers and vacationing urban dwellers. Clover-Land assisted the UPDB in its endeavors to highlight the U.P.’s tourist and recreational advantages and give the Upper Peninsula a new regional identity.

Frank Leverett, of the Michigan Geological Biological Survey, in his 1910 annual report, mentions the UPDB, writing:

“This organization embraces in its membership many hundreds of Upper Peninsula citizens and has for its purpose the advertising of the latent resources of the peninsula, particularly the agricultural resources, and the dissemination of useful and reliable information regarding them among the citizens of Michigan and other states.”

Leverett, in his report, criticized the misconceptions and unreliable information regarding the Upper Peninsula.

“The average layman pictures a great metal mining region as one of rugged and mountainous relief, more or less barren and inhospitable,” Leverett wrote. “Mining and agriculture are commonly supposed to be each dependent on widely different natural conditions, one set the antithesis of the other, and therefore, not found in the same area.

The Michigan State Board of Agriculture’s Farmers’ Institute report for 1913 noted that tracts of many thousands of acres of land were being reclaimed in Houghton County, known as the Sturgeon River Flats. On the land, large ditches were being constructed that year, which was to drain the land. After applying 200 pounds of potash to the acre, the lands would be used to produce cauliflower, celery, Spanish onion, and would produce an enormous revenue of money per acre. The report also mentioned that the agricultural region in Houghton County had been given the nick-name “Cloverland.”

Clover-land, the report says, stands unique in “her” transportation facilities as there “are two trunk lines east and west, and two north and south which connect with and are supported by numerous local lines, so there is not a county but what is supplied with excellent shipping facilities, and with her thousands of miles of shoreline, where some of the best harbors on the lakes exist, it places her in a position to deliver the products of the field and factory to an unlimited market at very reasonable charges.”

Within a radius of 300 miles, the report boasted, there were 80 million people and “a market is always a place where there are people who have money.”

Clover-land is not a rough mining country and a great snow bank, the report says, but an inviting location with every opportunity to become prosperous.

The Escanaba Press, on Feb. 3, 1914, reported officers of the Copper Country Commercial Club promoting “the advantages of Cloverland.” They included 220 million pounds of annual copper production, among the world’s greatest iron ranges, and the world’s greatest ore docks.

“A majority of our visitors are well aware that we grew the largest and best potatoes in the world,” George Price, Commercial Club secretary told the Press, “and the most of them to the acre; they know the quality of our wheet [sic], oats, rye and other cereals and the size of the yield per acre; know (why) our glorious country was given the name ‘Cloverland;’ they know that no less an authority than ex-Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson has stated that Cloverland is destined to become America’s greatest dairy region, which statement lately was confirmed by (Ira) Elburtus Hubbard, who, if he is to be believed, is some criterion himself.”

On November 29, 1913, the Milford Times reported that, according to Leo M. Geismar, of the Michigan State Experimental Station, in Chatham, Houghton County led the world in potato production that year, yielding 200 bushels to the acre. Average yields approximated 105 bushels per acre, but 1913 was a productive year.

A publication named The Lake Superior Farmer, on January 17, 1914, reported on the organization of the Houghton County Potato Growers’ Association. The object of the association was to begin growing and marketing seed potatoes that were to be raised and shipped under a “rigorous system of inspection” for the purpose of enabling the association to guarantee all potatoes were free from diseases. Membership was limited to members of the Houghton County Farm Bureau.

“Realizing that farmers almost everywhere pay exorbitant prices for seed potatoes which frequently are neither pure nor free from the diseases,” the publication stated, “the association will endeavor to deal directly with farmers rather then with dealers.”