WPA Writers’ Program — American Guide Series2.0

Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State was published in 1941 as the American Guide Series volume for Michigan, compiled by workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Michigan and sponsored by the Michigan State Administrative Board. The volume opens with an introduction by Abner E. Larned, the State Administrator, who called the finished guide a creditable achievement — one that offers the tourist and the citizen alike both practical information about the State’s highways and byways and a succinct account of its history and many-sided development.

Larned was candid that the book’s significance exceeded its merits as a work of reference: its compilation had given employment to needy writers and research workers, keeping their skills unimpaired against the day they would return to private work. A foreword by the Michigan-born author Paul de Kruif and a preface by the State’s Writers’ Project staff round out the front matter, setting a guide to the Wolverine State within the wider purpose of the national project.

Following the series plan, a first part gathers essays on the general background — the contemporary scene, the natural setting, archeology and the Indians, history and government, State development, conservation and recreation, social institutions, racial elements, a chapter of Great Lakes marine lore by Ivan H. Walton, artists and craftsmen, literature, music, the theater, and a survey of architecture by Emil Lorch.

A second part describes the cities, from Ann Arbor and Battle Creek through Detroit and Grand Rapids to Marquette and Sault Ste. Marie; a third lays out twenty numbered motor tours with their lettered branches, reaching from the southern border to the Upper Peninsula and out to Beaver Island, Isle Royale, and Mackinac Island. A chronology, bibliography, 1940 census figures, and index close the book — a thorough portrait of the State between the Great Lakes.