Isle Royale National Park is a national park of the United States consisting of Isle Royale, along with more than 400 small adjacent islands and the surrounding waters of Lake Superior, in Michigan.
Isle Royale is long and wide, with an area of , making it the fifth-largest lake island in the world. In addition, it is the largest natural island in Lake Superior, the second-largest island in the Great Lakes (after Manitoulin Island), the third-largest in the contiguous United States (after Long Island and Padre Island), and the 33rd-largest island in the United States.
Isle Royale National Park was established on April 3, 1940. It later received additional protections from development by a wilderness area designation in 1976, a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve declaration in 1980, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 as the Minong Traditional Cultural Property. The park covers , with of land and of surrounding waters.
The park's northern boundary lies adjacent to the Canadian Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area along the international border. With 25,894 visits in 2021, it is the seventh least-visited National Park in the United States.
Geography
In 1875, Isle Royale was split off from Keweenaw County, as a separate county, Isle Royale County. In 1897, the county was dissolved, and the island was reincorporated into Keweenaw County. The highest point on the island is Mount Desor at , or about above lake level.
Isle Royale, the largest island in Lake Superior, is over in length and wide at its widest point. The park is made up of Isle Royale itself and approximately 400 smaller islands, along with any submerged lands within of the surrounding islands (16USC408g).
Isle Royale is within about of the shore of the Canadian province of Ontario (near the city of Thunder Bay) and adjacently, the state of Minnesota (near Grand Portage in Cook County), and is from the Michigan shore, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, itself part of Upper Peninsula. There are no roads on the island, and wheeled vehicles or devices, other than wheelchairs, are not permitted. Rock Harbor has wheeled carts available to move personal belongings from the Rock Harbor marina to the cabins and hotel. Also, the National Park Service employs tractors and utility terrain vehicles to move items around the developed areas at Ozaagaateng, Rock Harbor, and Mott Island.
Topsoil tends to be thin, which favors trees that have horizontal root patterns such as balsam fir, white spruce, and black spruce.
Interior lakes Siskiwit Lake is the largest lake on the island. It has cold, clear water which is relatively low in nutrients. Siskiwit Lake contains several islands, including Ryan Island, the largest. Other lakes include: Chicken Bone Lake Lake Desor Feldtmann Lake Intermediate Lake (Isle Royale) Lake Ritchie Sargent Lake Hatchet Lake
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification system, Isle Royale National Park has a mild summer Humid continental climate (Dfb). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the Plant Hardiness zone is 4b at 1178 ft (359 m) elevation with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of -24.2 °F (-31.2 °C).
There is no weather station in the park, but the PRISM Climate Group, a project of Oregon State University, provides interpolated data for the island based on the climates of nearby areas.
History
Prehistory The island was a common hunting ground for native people from nearby Minnesota and Ontario. A canoe voyage of thirteen miles is necessary to reach the island's west end from the mainland.
Large quantities of copper artifacts found in indian mounds and settlements, some dating back to 3000 B.C., were most likely mined on Isle Royale and the nearby Keweenaw Peninsula. The island has hundreds of pits and trenches up to 65 feet (20 m) deep from these indigenous peoples, with most in the McCargoe Cove area. Carbon-14 testing of wood remains found in sockets of copper artifacts indicates that they are at least 6500 years old.In Prehistoric Copper Mining in the Lake Superior Region, Drier and Du Temple estimated that over 750,000 tons of copper had been mined from the region. However, David Johnson and Susan Martin contend that their estimate was based on exaggerated and inaccurate assumptions. The Jesuit missionary Dablon published an account in 1669–70 of "an island called Menong, celebrated for its copper". Menong, or Minong, was the native term for the island, and is the basis for Minong Ridge. Prospecting began in earnest when the Chippewas relinquished their claims to the island in 1843, starting with many of the original native pits. This activity had ended by 1855, when no economic deposits were found. The Minong Mine and Island Mine were the result of renewed but short-lived activity from 1873 to 1881.
Isle Royale was given to the United States by the 1783 treaty with Great Britain (formerly part of the Indian Reserve disputed by the United States) but the British remained in control until after the War of 1812, and the Ojibwa peoples considered the island to be their territory. The Ojibwas ceded the island to the U.S. in the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe, with the Grand Portage Band unaware that neither they nor Isle Royale were in British territory. With the clarification to the Ojibwas of the 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty that was signed before the Treaty of La Pointe, the Ojibwas re-affirmed the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe in the 1844 Isle Royale Agreement, with the Grand Portage Band signing the agreement as an addendum to the 1842 treaty.
In the mid-1840s, a report by Douglass Houghton, Michigan's first state geologist, set off a copper boom in the state, and the first modern copper mines were opened on the island. Evidence of the earlier mining efforts was everywhere, in the form of many stone hammers, some copper artifacts, and places where copper had been partially worked out of the rock but left in place. The ancient pits and trenches led to the discovery of many of the copper deposits that were mined in the 19th century. The remoteness of the island, combined with the small veins of copper, caused most of the 19th-century mines to fail quickly. Between the miners and commercial loggers, much of the island was deforested during the late 19th century. Once the island became a national park in 1940, logging and other exploitive activities ended, and the forest began to regenerate.
The island was once the site of several lake trout and whitefish fisheries, as well as a few resorts. The fishing industry has declined considerably, but continues at Edisen Fishery. Today, it has no permanent inhabitants; the small communities of Scandinavian fishermen were removed by the United States National Park Service after the island became a national park in the 1940s. About 12 families still have lifetime leases for their cabins and claim Isle Royale as their heritage, and several descendant fishermen fish the Isle Royale waters commercially.
Because numerous small islands surround Isle Royale, ships were once guided through the area by lighthouses at Passage Island, Rock Harbor, Rock of Ages, and Isle Royale Lighthouse on Menagerie Island. The western tip of the island is home to several shipwrecks that are very popular with scuba divers, including the SS America. The NPS Submerged Resources Center mapped the 10 most famous of the shipwrecks contained within the park, and published Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park; The Archeological Survey, which gives an overview of the maritime history of the area. The area's notoriously harsh weather, dramatic underwater topography, the island's central location on historic shipping routes, and the cold, fresh water have resulted in largely intact, well preserved wrecks throughout the park.
In January 2019, the entire island chain was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the federal government. On the Register it is called 'the Minong Traditional Cultural Property.'
Angelique Mott
In 1845, an Ojibwe woman named Angelique and her voyageur husband Charles Mott were left on Isle Royale, as hires for Cyrus Mendenhall and the Lake Superior Copper Company. They were hired and carried to Isle Royale by Mendenhall's schooner, the Algonquin, first to scout for copper. Angelique found a large mass of copper ore. She and her husband were hired to stay and guard it until a barge could come to retrieve it, promised in no more than 3 months' time. They were dropped off in July and were left stranded there until the following spring. They were left with minimal provisions, which consisted of a half-barrel of flour, six pounds of butter, and some beans. A supply boat was promised to arrive after the first few weeks, but it was never sent out.
The full events were chronicled in a footnote as told by Angelique, in the first printing of a book called "The Honorable Peter White" by Ralph D. Williams in 1907; Angelique's story was pulled from the subsequent printing, thus making it the only written record that survives. Humans have not normally settled year-round on Isle Royale. For about three thousand years, Native Americans used the land for copper and fish. These Native Americans usually limited their visits to the island in the summer. Americans in the nineteenth century did likewise.
Natural history A number of habitats exist on the island, the primary being boreal forest, similar to neighboring Ontario and Minnesota. Upland areas along some of the ridges are effectively "balds" with exposed bedrock and a few scrubby trees, blueberry bushes, and hardy grasses. Occasional marshes exist, which are typically the by-product of beaver activities. There are also several lakes, often with wooded or marshy shores. The climate, especially in lowland areas, is heavily influenced by the cold waters of Lake Superior.
Flora According to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. Potential natural vegetation Types, Isle Royale National Park has a Great Lakes Spruce/Fir (93) potential vegetation type and a Northern Conifer Forest (22) potential vegetation form.
The predominant floral habitats of Isle Royale are within the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province. The area is a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome transition zone between the true boreal forest to the north and Big Woods to the south, with characteristics of each. It has areas of both broadleaf and conifer forest cover, and bodies of water ranging from conifer bogs to swamps.
Conifers include jack pines (Pinus banksiana), black and white spruces (Picea mariana and Picea glauca), balsam firs (Abies balsamea), and eastern redcedars (Juniperus virginiana).
Deciduous trees include quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides), red oaks (Quercus rubra), paper birches (Betula papyrifera), American mountain ash (Sorbus americana), red maples (Acer rubrum), sugar maples (Acer saccharum), and mountain maples (Acer spicatum).. There are over 600 species of flowering plants found in Isle Royale National Park such as wild sarsaparilla, marsh-marigold, wood lily and prickly wild rose.
Fauna
Isle Royale National Park is known for its wolf and moose populations, which are studied by scientists investigating predator-prey relationships in a closed environment. There is a cyclical relationship between the two animals: as the moose increase in population, so do the wolves. Eventually, the wolves kill too many moose and begin to starve and lower their reproductive rates.National Park Service. Retrieved May 10, 2014. This is made easier because Isle Royale has been colonized by roughly just one third of the mainland mammal species, because it is so remote. In addition, the environment is unique in that it is the only known place where wolves and moose coexist without the presence of bears.