Rock and Isle Royale

Chippewa Harbor in Isle Royale, Circa 1960 (Postcard by National Park Concessions, Inc. Isle Royale National Park. Photographer: J. Wellington Young)

“Isle Royale is an impressive, provocative land surrounded by wild lake waters. It has distinguished cultural resources that are often overlooked in lieu of its stark beauty, mammals and fish.” (From “Isle Royale, A Good Place to Live,” Michigan History Magazine May/June 1990.)

Being an inveterate city girl, places like Isle Royale capture my imagination from the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment. All I know about the island: it is located in Lake Superior, it is a national park, and my late Uncle Clyde from Lake Linden, Michigan, probably visited the island as much as I went to Windsor, Ontario for dim sum. Tim Cochrane’s Michigan History magazine article, “Isle Royale, A Good Place to Live,” is a short, readable history of the island. It added to my knowledge and practically convinced me to put Isle Royale on my list of Michigan vacation spots.

“The Rock” (and Other Names)

Here is an excerpt from Cochrane’s article:

“The Island,” as Isle Royale is regionally known, is a Lake Superior archipelago that inherently seems to arouse peoples’ imagination. Poetic place names for Isle Royale like, “the floating island,” “a wilderness archipelago” and “the copper island,” illustrate our tendency to enliven descriptions of what old-timers devilishly called “the rock” or “a menace to navigation.” In contrast, the Ojibwa name, for Isle Royale, Minong, meaning “a good place to live,” projects the island as a favored environs….

Isle Royale’s dramatic land and seascapes, isolation and charismatic megafauna (once woodland caribou, now moose) prompted efforts to protect it from development in the 1920s. A movement of influential downstate citizens, spearheaded by Detroit outdoor writer Albert Stoll, led to the establishment of the Isle Royale Park Commission on 3 March 1931. With the creation of the commission, the park could legally exist. Using “work relief” funds available during the Great Depression, officials began purchasing land from private owners. Final title to all private lands reached Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes on 3 April 1940. Other federal lands, like the perimeter lighthouse islands and the Gull Islands, have since been added. In 1976, Congress further protected Isle Royale by designating 98 percent of the land mass wilderness.

Recent American use pales in comparison with prehistoric Native Americans who ventured to Isle Royale for over four thousand years. Small parties of prehistoric Indians came to the island to mine copper, fish and hunt. These earliest users were from different cultural groups who left behind pottery types and worked stone and campfire middens. The historic Ojibwa paddled to Isle Royale to harvest island resources such as trout, whitefish, sturgeon, herring, suckers, pike, woodland caribou, beaver and loons. Traditional Ojibwa—coming from what is now the Minnesota and Ontario shoreline – used “Minong” as a sanctuary from white-induced change.

Some More History

French Jesuit Missionaries gave the island the name Isle Royale in honor of their royal patrons (c. 1670). While the island was part of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the British controlled the area until after the War of 1812. By the Treaty of La Pointe (1842), the Ojibwas ceded their Isle Royale territory to the United States federal government. That treaty had to be reaffirmed with the Grand Portage Band in 1844. Isle Royale became part of Michigan and was attached to these counties: Ontonagon (1843), Houghton (1846) and Keweenaw (1861).

The economic development of the island is familiar: copper mining, logging, and commercial fishing. From 1875 to 1897, Isle Royale’s population and activity gave it Michigan county status (It re-united with Keweenaw County in 1897.). The island’s first resort, the Johns Hotel, was built in 1892. Other resorts – promising bowling, golf, tennis and dancing – followed. However, periods of economic depression resulted in less people settling on the island. The establishment of the Park Commission (1931) and subsequent buying of land from private owners changed the landscape forever. A forest fire in 1936 encouraged national park support. Members of the CCC fought the fire and built part of the infrastructure used today. Isle Royale National Park was established on April 3, 1940. The park was formally dedicated in 1946, (after the end of World War II).

Links:

Isle Royale National Park Web Site

“The Campaign to Preserve Isle Royale” by Patricia Zacharias (Detroit News, August 11, 1998)

Postcard of Rock Harbor Lighthouse, Isle Royale, circa 1920