Kingston Plains Burns
This area, part of the Lake Superior State Forest, is the best known of the eerie, striking stump fields. They were created when forest fires burned off so much of the soil's humus that the forest couldn't regenerate as it usually would. Some stumps here had already been cut and later were burned. In other cases, fire killed the trees, whose trunks broke off irregularly at different levels.Some stump fields were caused by forest fires before loggers came. Lightning could strike a very tall tree and kill it, or a windstorm could topple many trees. When dried, these dead, resinous pines would easily ignite.
Pine resins within stumps have preserved pine stump fields as ghost forests, which provide an unusual visual record of the old-growth forests here before settlement. Stumps show the pines' density and size. It's not uncommon to see big stumps, two feet in diameter, every ten feet. Only now, some hundred years after the area was logged, are the stumps breaking apart and decaying. The north part of the Fox River Pathway (see Seney section of this web site) passes through these stump fields.
In the Kingston Plains today, lichens are the principal living plant. Reindeer lichen "can form large mats carpeting the ground," wrote Richard Holzman in Scenic Highlights at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, unfortunately out of print. "Walking on the lichens is like walking on sponges in wet weather or potato chips on a dry summer day. Spring is the most colorful season here, when everything is green with fresh growth touched by spring flowers. By summer the porous soil is dry, and browning vegetation most evident. Grasshoppers can be especially abundant, hundreds fleeing with each step."
Slowly the land will recover, and future attempts to replant these areas will meet with more success than similar projects in the past. Some state foresters are working to preserve stretches of stump fields as visual records of the pineries that provided so much of the basis for Michigan's later industrial wealth.
Where H-58 turns west, south of Kingston Lake and the campground there, take the Adams Truck Trail east two miles.
Return to Grand Marais
POINTS OF INTEREST
Grand Sable Bank & Dunes. Vast dunes seen from the trail here create a dramatic view, especially when the sun is low ... more
Harbor entrance, range lights, pier & beach. Fish from the long stone pier jutting far out into Lake Superior, protecting the harbor. Or walk the long beach and enjoy the range light, & 2 museums, one in the old Coast Guard station, draw people to Coast Guard Point ... more
Wreck of Mary Jarecki. See a 130-year-old shipwreck lying on the shore of Lake Supeior ... more
The Marketplace. A showroom for a members of Grand Marais Cottage Industries. You'll find photographs, handknits, lamps, novelties, art glass, carvings ... more
Grand Marais Maritime Museum. In the former Coast Guard station the National Parks Service installed this spare museum with photos and a few artifacts ... more
Old Post Office Museum. The 1882 Grand Marais post office still has the old postal boxes and clerk's window up front and historical photos and items in back ... more
Light Keeper's House Museum. Built by the Coast Guard in 1908, This 1908 Coast Guard keeper's house houses a hands-on local museum strong on stories. ... more
Goewey’s Garage. Lee and Betty Goewey make very popular fish carvings as well as art glass windows ... more
Crystal Pine Cone. Beach stones become landscapes and maritime scenes, or animals and people. The Woropay family’s studio/gallery is in a cabin among pine trees ... more
Pickle Barrel Museum. A summer house in two giant barrels for the creator of the long-lived Teenie Weenie cartoons. Now saved from rot and open to the public with historical displays and period rooms circa 1930. ... more
The Campbell Street Gallery. A spiffy collection of many media in Grand Marais' oldest building ... more
Gitche Gumee Agate & History Museum. Agates, rockhounding, geology, commercial fishing, and the self-sufficient local lifestyle after the lumber company left – Karen Bryzs's heartfelt museum tells these stories ... more
Grand Marais Wi-fi Hotspot. Bayshore Market has wi-fi 7 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. ... more
Sable Falls. Take a walk through the woods to the top of this delightful waterfall. Go down a stairway to a rocky agate beach and wander east for awhile ... more
Grand Sable Visitor Center. A good place for information on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, regional nature and history books, and a 2-mile trail through a shady beech-maple forest ... more
North Country Trail/Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Hike the trail connecting the lakeshore's prominent sights to experience them more fully than a drive-up-and-go-on view. Plan your hike so a shuttle bus can take you back ... more
Log Slide Overlook. Almost 300 feet above Lake Superior, there are splendid views to the Au Sable Lighthouse and the immense expanses of the Grand Sable Dunes. Exhibits show the scene when loggers rolled logs down for loading on ships ... more
Au Sable Point Lighthouse. A picture-perfect lighthouse on the rocks, a tower to climb on scheduled tours, shipwreck skeletons in the sand ... more
Twelvemile Beach & White Birch Trail. Walk the long beach or head inshore along a 2-mile nature trail through an unusual forest of old white birches ... more
Kingston Plains Burns. The best-known of the U.P.'s eerie stump fields or ghost forests created when forest fires across the cutover were so hot they burned off the soil's humus and the forest couldn't grow back. Pine resin preserved giant stumps. Some still remain ... more
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