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CHAMPION
POINTS
OF
INTEREST
Van Riper State Park. This 1,044-acre park, mostly north of U.S.41, began as the popular local swimming beach on Lake Michigamme. Now it includes camping, varied hiking trails (one over rock outcrops with grand views, one along the Peshekee River to big pines) and an outdoor mini-museum about moose habits and Operation Mooselift here, which brought moose back to the U.P. ...
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McCormick Tract Wilderness Area. Only one trail, 3 miles to White Deer Lake, on 27 square miles of rugged uplands and high wetlands, uncut for 100 years. This was the grand camp of Cyrus McCormick of reaper and International Harvester fame. Some white pine 300 years old. Off-trail hiking, snowshoeing, camping. ...
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McCormick Tract Wilderness Area
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 | | Photo from 1920s of one of the five cabins on White Deer Lake. None remain. |
The 27 square miles of the McCormick Tract, about 10 miles north of Lake Michigamme and south of the Yellow Dog River, were assembled and developed as the wilderness hunting retreat of Cyrus Hall McCormick, Jr. He was president of the immensely successful Chicago agricultural implements firm founded by his father, famous for his improvements in the design of reapers.
The high wetlands, rugged terrain, and lakes here are on the divide between the watersheds of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. Pine logged in most of the area was conveniently carried to Michigamme by Baraga Creek and the Peshekee River. But in places, rugged rock outcrops defied loggers. Today they shelter scattered clumps of white pines perhaps 300 years old. Mostly the area is maple, with some oak and birch on the uplands, and spruce, balsam, and cedar in the wet areas. No trees have been cut for a hundred years.
County Road 607 (the Peshekee Grade) cuts across the southwest corner, providing the only vehicle access to the McCormick Tract, or McCormick Wilderness Area as it's been known since 1987 when it became part of the Ottawa National Forest. No trails effectively exist today except for one three-mile trail from the road to White Deer Lake, rated moderate in difficulty. The paths which once connected the McCormicks' wilderness retreat with the homes of their friends in the Huron Mountain Club are now grown over.
This was never a fishing camp. There aren't many fish in these nutrient-poor lakes and streams.
Today this unusual expanse of land is for people who really want to get away from it all — hikers, backpackers, and snowshoers. Winter is the best time to get around, because of course there are no bugs. If you venture off the trail, bring a compass and USGS map or GPS device and know how to use them, says Forest Service employee Tom Strietzel. Swamps make you change directions, so it's easy to get lost. Leave-no-trace camping is permitted unless there's a current fire ban. Camps should be at least a hundred feet from a stream.
A Princeton botany professor interested in watershed divides first drew McCormick's attention to the area in 1884, the year his father died and he took over the business. But it wasn't until 1902, after return visits left him stunned by the effects of logging, that he bought the core of his future rustic retreat on White Deer Lake.
By then the era of the Great Camps had begun in the Adirondacks. In the U.P. Right next door to McCormick's tract is the famous, exclusive Huron Mountain Club founded in the 1890s on Lake Superior—50 dwellings on 13,000 acres of magnificent forested hills and streams. These rustic lodges, surrounded by forests and lakes, were a vigorous wilderness alternative to elegant society resorts like Newport, and to genteel church-based summer camps like Bay View outside Petoskey.
The McCormick Tract and the psychology of the Grand Camps are vividly evoked in "Rough Camp," a nonfiction piece grouped with stories on writer Dick Bentley's interesting self-named web site. "Rough Camp" was written with Marquette historian Fred Rydholm. Dick Bentley drew on the 1902 diary of Cyrus Bentley, McCormick's friend and attorney, who, at that time, was helping him put together the International Harvester Corporation. They developed the McCormick Grand Camp together, starting with a tent camp on a blueberry-covered island in White Deer Lake. By 1905 they had built an immense lodge for their two families.
These two hardy industrialists waded through swamps, lifting stone and cutting trails alongside their workers. They embraced the challenges of wilderness life. Very much in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, it was a vigorous, romantic relationship to nature, "a complex blend of assertiveness over the natural environment and submission to it, reflecting the contradictory attitudes of the nation itself as the wilderness was opened and tamed."
Interest in rustic retreats was also fueled by male desire to escape the publicty and pretense of society's summer resorts like Newport and even Charlevoix and Harbor Springs. They flourished in the Adirondacks, the Thousand Lakes of the St. Lawrence, the Upper Peninsula, and Wisconsin. "Camp craft, Indian lore, hunting and fishing, survival in the wilderness were the emblems of the revolt," wrote Bentley and Rydholm. "The camps that were established in true wilderness were also, the captains of industry noted, physically removed from reporters, social climbers, salesmen, extortionists, and the social hierarchies created by women." The challenge of buildling in such a difficult setting was also alluring.
McCormick continued to increase his landholding, buying land for $10 to $15 an acre from logging companies who had cut it, or buying old-growth forest using intermediaries. The McCormick Grand Camp came to encompass 20,000 acres.
Bentley loved trail work. He "hacked out miles of trails along streams, across swamps, and to various lakes and lookout points. One went dozens of miles to where the Big Huron entered Lake Superior."
At first, according to "Rough Camp," the McCormicks and Bentleys spent evenings at their camp simply, reading or playing games. But by the 1920s, entertaining wealthy and famous guests had moved the camp's atmosphere toward luxury: electricity, an English butler, a French chef, boots in every size for guests, fancy touches like monogrammed leather map cases.
The camp core was built in 1905; 12 additional purchases expanded the tract to 2,933 acres by 1920. Heir to a great fortune, he had several unusual log cabins built on an island on White Deer Lake off the Peshekee Grade. They were in the fashion of the great rustic resorts built in the Adirondacks by other wealthy families. Cabins, boathouses, dining hall, and lodging for help and guests were all handmade by the best log butchers, along with miles of hiking trails and footbridges.
"Dr. Paul Van Riper and his wife [parents of northwoods storyteller Cully Gage] were frequent guests to his wilderness resort and enjoyed the reminders of a lifestyle far removed from Champion's. Dr. Van was frequently called to the McCormick estate to treat Cyrus McCormick and later his son, Gordon. Both Cyrus and Gordon (who had no heirs) were encouraged by Dr. Van to donate the estate to the state or federal government. This was eventually done. Although the forest service allowed the destruction of the magnificent log buildings, contrary to Gordon's request, the lakes and virgin timber stands are now open to the public as the McCormick Wilderness."
Five McCormick cabins have been disassembled, numbered, and stored. Visit the web site of Richard Hendricksen, Marquette real estate broker of waterfront property, for many photographs of the original buildings, and for cabin drawings. More info and photographs of the McCormick forest estate are on the site of Thomas Foye of Marquette. Finally, fiction writer, reviewer, and creative writing teacher Dick Bentley's interesting self-named web site features "Rough Camp," an account set here in 1902, before McCormick began buying the land.
To read "Rough Camp," Google "dick bentley rough camp" and download the pdf file.
From U.S. 41 at the Peshekee River on the east end of Lake Michigammee, take CR 607 northwest about 12 miles to Baraga Creek and look for the trailhead. (906) 852-3501. TTY: (906) 852-3618. No fee. Not wheelchair-accessible.
Return to Champion
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