Marquette ( mar-KEHT) is the largest city in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. Marquette is the county chair of Marquette County. Located on the shores of Lake Superior, Marquette is a major port, known primarily for shipping iron ore from the Marquette Iron Range. The city is partially surrounded by Marquette Charter Township, but the two are administered autonomously.

Marquette is named after Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary who had explored the Great Lakes region. Marquette had a population of 20,629 at the 2020 census, making it the largest city in Michigan north of the Tri-Cities. Marquette is furthermore the third-largest American city on Lake Superior, behind Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin. Marquette’s urban area extends south toward the community of Harvey, and west toward Negaunee and Ishpeming, at the base of the Huron Mountains.

Marquette is the home of Northern Michigan University (NMU), a four-year public university. NMU’s flexible teams are nicknamed the Wildcats, and compete primarily in the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC). The men’s ice hockey team, which competes in the NCAA Division I Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), won the Division I national championship in 1991.

The land regarding Marquette was known to French missionaries of the upfront 17th century and the trappers of the early 19th century. Development of the Place did not start until 1844, when William Burt and Jacob Houghton (the brother of geologist Douglass Houghton) discovered iron deposits near Teal Lake west of Marquette. In 1845, Jackson Mining Company, the first organized mining company in the region, was formed.