Northwest Lower Michigan, International Cover Girl

We're WORLD famous!

By Lynda Wheatley | Nov. 19, 2021

Maybe it’s about time our pretty lil’ region got itself an agent.

Only one year after National Geographic dropped its stunning December issue with a view of Lake Michigan (as seen from Leelanau County’s own Empire Bluff) on the cover, the Essential World Atlas has seen fit to put our area landscape on its cover.

The eighth edition of the distinguished Oxford University Press atlas features a satellite image of Michigan’s pinkie jutting out into Lake Michigan. Much of Leelanau County and Grand Traverse County, as well as Old Mission Peninsula and the Manitou islands, are showcased in the shot.

Considering this latest 264-page edition touts its new satellite imagery section, which boasts 10 full-page satellite images — of Berlin, Canberra, Kingston, Madrid, Orlando, Philadelphia, Shanghai, Tehran, Toronto, and Venice — we think the fact that our neck of the North was selected to shine on the cover is something worth bragging about, especially if you’ll be sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with your big-city cousin who always likes to ask, “What’s new in the middle of nowhere, Bro?”