BERGLAND AND LAKE GOGEBIC

Region: Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

Photography by James Marvin Phelps

The sun rises over Lake Gogebic.

Today this tidy village bisected by M-28 along the north shore of Lake Gogebic is the area's social and tourist hub. The entire township population is about 550.

The town has a reliable restaurant with long hours, several churches, a park, and Nordine's, one of those general stores with gas stations that can still survive in small, isolated U.P. communities. North of Bergland, the 15 miles to Lake Superior is all Ottawa National Forest land. The national forest encompasses most of the Trap Hills, a long ridge of exceptionally high bluffs and long views alternating with moist valleys and streams. And most of all, Bergland is the town that services those who come to giant Lake Gogebic, popular for fishing in summer and snowmobiling in winter.

Lake Gogebic is known for yellow perch and walleye. A walleye planting around 1905 replaced one of the Midwest's finest bass fisheries with a healthy walleye fishery, enough of decent size that anglers frequently make their limit. The state often harvests walleye eggs from the lake. For fishing information, stop at the Maple Ridge Motel and Bait Shop (906-575-3265) on M-28/M-64 in Bergland. The knotty pine walls of the rather charming bait shop show off taxidermist Nettie Pietila's work: lots of mounted yellow perch and other species. Her husband and partner, Gus, hand-paints jigs and invented the "Teeter Pig" ice fishing bobber for perch, for sale here. He guides for perch and black bear, too. Maple Ridge rents ice-fishing shacks, tents, heaters, and more.

Here as elsewhere, development has increased fishing pressure. Houses and small resorts with lawns line most of the lake, which has a wilderness feel along little of its shoreline. Modest older cottages are being torn down for year-round homes, some of them quite impressive.

The big lake is relatively shallow, so it warms up fairly quickly in summer, a plus for swimming. (However, boaters should be aware that Lake Gogebic's shallow depth means storms can quickly create small, sharply dangerous waves.) Its rocky lake bottom means that there's generally no natural sand beach, and resorts have small sand beaches at best. The state imports sand for the long swimming beach with a gradual drop-off at Lake Gogebic State Park, on the southern part of the west shore, and many resorts are near it.

MERRIWEATHER, another village at the north end of Lake Gogebic, is three miles west of Bergland on M-64. It was settled around a barrel factory in 1920.

Halfway down Lake Gogebic is the Ontonagon/Gogebic county line, which happens to separate the Eastern and Central time zones. A local tradition is to celebrate the New Year's twice, first at the Hoop n' Holler Tavern in Merriweather, then moving south down the lake to Gogebic Lodge or Root Cellar to welcome in the new year an hour later on Central Time. Visiting snowmobilers enjoy this immensely.

A spectacular segment of the North Country Trail system is nearby in the Trap Hills, part of the Ottawa National Forest. Old Victoria, a museum of log miner's houses from 1900, can be reached by the remote Victoria Road - an adventure in itself. (Old Victoria is a point of interest in the "Porcupine Mountains/Ontonagon" part of our web site.) More Ottawa National Forest land southwest of Lake Gogebic includes many small lakes. (The best idea of what's here is conveyed by the big map of the national forest, sold at its offices on U.S. 2 in Ironwood and at the Watersmeet Visitor Center.) Most of the national forest land near Lake Gogebic is managed as high-quality recreational land, with few ugly clear-cuts. Planting and good management practices have restored the cutover abandoned by lumber companies.

Porcupine Mountain State Park is 25 miles north via M-64 through White Pine; within another 40 miles are the Ironwood area's waterfalls to the west and the pristine lakes of the Sylvania Wilderness Area to the east. Longer day trips can get you to the Keweenaw Peninsula or - an attraction for young people - the go-kart tracks, wildlife parks, and minigolf of Minocqua, Wisconsin.

Lake Gogebic has become an attractive area for retirees, especially Chicago-area people. They liked it that Michigan doesn't tax the first $40,000 of their state pensions, although all that may change under Governor Rick Snyder's budget-balancing measures.

Resort owners and businesses work to promote the area with events like fishing tournaments. They cater to snowmobilers but cooperate to keep rowdy sledders out and promote the lake as a quiet boating and snowmobiling destination. Residents and businesses work together in the revitalized Lake Gogebic Improvement Association for water quailty, community projects, and low taxes.

Evidence of Bergland's origins as a early 20th century sawmill town are still around. There are some tiny houses from that era on M-28 and the old storefronts along the original main street, Pine Street. It intersects with M-28 and goes down the hill to the lake and the railroad.

Sawmill towns typically withered when the forests were cut over. Ontonagon County towns suffered particularly difficult fates. By 1900 Ontonagon County's old-growth pine had already been cut and the Diamond Match Company had pulled out of the area. Abandoned towns and townspeople were left to deal with the results of the company's destructive logging practices. Diamond Match departed leaving large areas scarred by fires that were probably preventable. Forest fires swept through Matchwood, Ewen, and the entire town of Ontonagon. The topsoil itself burned in some areas, leaving land infertile. Hemlock and hardwoods remained.

Bergland enjoyed a happier fate, thanks to its location on Lake Gogebic and on the railroad, and thanks to the principles of its Norwegian founder, Gunlak Bergland. One benefit of his ideas was that most workers' homes in Bergland were owned by individual people. (Other sawmill towns had company housing.) That put the town in a much better position to sustain itself after the lumber was cut and to take advantage of its potential as a tourist and fishing destination. By 1905 or so, two little steamers already plied Lake Gogebic, taking anglers and sightseers to the White House Hotel on the lake's south end.

Return to Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

PLACES AROUND BERGLAND AND LAKE GOGEBIC TO

Eat Sleep Camp