Elderly Take to Michigan County, Despite Harsh Winters and Isolation : Upper Peninsula: Keweenaw County is a land of hardwood forests where black bears roam. It averages 240 inches of snow a year, but it’s home.

While Arizona bakes and Florida melts, far to the north in Michigan’s Keweenaw County the summer heat is tempered by cool breezes off icy-blue Lake Superior.

This time of year it’s easy to see why people would retire to this beautiful but isolated hinterland on the northwestern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a land of rolling hardwood forests where black bears roam. It’s easy to see why the percentage of the population 65 and older is greater in Keweenaw than in any other Michigan county.

Easy, that is, until you come across . . . The Thermometer.

Actually, it’s a sign in the shape of a thermometer, beside the highway north of Mohawk. About 35 feet high, it records not temperatures, but snowfall.

In the winter of 1978-79, it proclaims, Keweenaw County had a staggering 390.4 inches of snow. Granted, that was the most on record. But the annual average, 240 inches, is no picnic.

Long, bitter winters and remote location are two reasons that Keweenaw’s population--1,701--is the smallest of Michigan’s 83 counties. The average low in January is around 7 degrees; the typical winter has 23 days of below-zero temperatures.

The area was a beehive of activity during the copper mining heyday of the last century and early 1900s. Now, the anemic local economy is built around tourism. Many jobs are seasonal; unemployment regularly tops 20% in winter.

There are no shopping centers here; no bus, train or air service. A resident of Copper Harbor, at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, must drive 35 miles to reach the nearest hospital in Calumet. The county has no nursing home and just one small residential home for older people.

Seemingly, it doesn’t add up to an elderly-friendly place.

But according to the 1990 Census, Keweenaw County’s population could fairly be labeled oldest in the state. Nearly 30% of its residents are 65 or older, the most of any Michigan county. And its median age, 46, is tops statewide. The share of its population age 80 and older, 5.8%, is second only to 6% in Iron County.

Even in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix and the Sun City retirement mecca, only 12% of the population is over 65 and the median age is 32.

A surprise? Not to Marilyn Winquist, the Keweenaw County clerk.

“When I first saw those numbers, I said, ‘Is that all?’ ” she said. “At one time I’d have sworn we were older than that, but a lot of the older people are dying off.”

A big reason for the high elderly population rate is the relative scarcity of children and young adults. Career opportunities are few; there’s little here to attract young families.

But there are other explanations. Some elderly people just like Keweenaw, snow and all.

Perhaps they were born here and never left, or have returned to their childhood home after making careers elsewhere. Some fell in love with the area while vacationing. Those who can afford it often spend at least part of the winter elsewhere.

Barbara J. Foley, proprietor of Country Village Shops in Copper Harbor, says it’s not hard for the elderly to live here year-round.

“If I ever get ready to retire, the last place I’ll go is Florida. The heat and all those snakes and bugs--thanks, but no thanks.”

The county does have young residents. The one-room schoolhouse in Copper Harbor is still open, although only five children were enrolled this year. After eighth grade, they’ll cross into Houghton County to attend high school in Calumet.

Foley says she expects more young families to arrive as people flee the stress and crime of city life.

Harold (Jim) Wescoat isn’t a Keweenaw native, but he may as well be. Born in Detroit, he was 13 when his family came north.

Wescoat has been a saloonkeeper, farmer, postmaster and local politician. At 73, he’s still going strong. His latest project: renovating a ramshackle building to make a “conference center,” where folks can drop by to chat.

The small wooden building is cluttered with antiques, including the bar and stools from the long-gone Michigan House hotel in Calumet, which Wescoat once owned.

Charlotte G. Catoni, 85, traces her Keweenaw roots to her grandfathers, one of whom arrived in the 1890s as state geologist. The other left home in Maine and wound up in Eagle River, where he became a land agent.

Like many area natives, Catoni headed for the bright lights as a young woman. She met her husband, Richard, a travel agent, in New York. Through the years they lived in St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and Minneapolis, but frequently vacationed in Keweenaw.

“We just loved it and wanted to come back here to live,” she said. Upon retiring, they returned to the family homestead in Eagle Harbor.

A short distance away from the main house, on a quiet bay concealed by thick woods, they have a rustic cabin made of hand-hewn white pine and cedar planks. The chimney was fashioned from large, smooth stones from the nearby Lake Superior beach.

Here, Charlotte Catoni can sit by a window and watch for foxes and beavers, or take her binoculars to the boat dock and observe the ducks and bald eagles. It’s so quiet, you can easily hear the chirp of a sparrow far down the shoreline.

“It’s just heaven,” she says. “Winter? Oh, that’s no problem. There’s always plenty to do--shovel snow, for one thing. I ski too. I love seeing animal tracks in the snow when I’m out skiing.”

Reddish sunset splashes across the western sky as Mary Erickson, Mirian Mikkola and Dorothy Browns sit in a porch swing on the lawn of Keweenaw Pines in Mohawk, the county’s lone senior housing complex.

Erickson, 67, and Mikkola, 75, were born in the area and spent years elsewhere before returning. Browns, 57, was a frequent summer resident before moving into the Pines three years ago.

“All my friends have gone away and then come back,” Mikkola said.

Erickson left Keweenaw at 15 for Chicago, where she married and worked in a factory. Two years ago, she heeded a sister’s advice to return home.

It wasn’t an easy decision after a half-century in the city, she said. But she feared crime.

“I had been robbed several times, people grabbing my purse. Then somebody robbed the beauty parlor when I was there. Made us lie on the floor. . . . I raised my head and he hit me with the gun.”

Safety, the women agree, is perhaps the biggest incentive for living here. The area isn’t crime-free, but violence is rare enough throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula to make front-page headlines in the Houghton newspaper.

Life here isn’t perfect, they say. It sometimes seems winter will never end, and summer brings black flies.

But for Aleda Balowaara, 82, a lifelong Keweenaw resident now living in the Pines, there’s nowhere better.

“It’s home. It’s the most comfortable place you can be.”

Even in winter?

“Sure. If you don’t want to go outside, you don’t have to.”