Tahquamenon & Seney, Grand Marais & Whitefish Point

The Seney Stretch of M-28 between Seney and Shingleton is flat and straight as an arrow because the roadway is built up across the Great Manistique Swamp.

The land south of the Lake Superior shore between Grand Marais and Whitefish Point contains some of the most remote and inaccessible land to be found in the eastern United States. In this age of global exotic ecotourism, its relative proximity to downstate population centers and its gentle topography can obscure its wilderness allure. But there it is - a place to be alone in, much of it off the electrical grid, and a challenge to hikers who can't count on coming to a highway or bridge to find their way if lost. The skeleton of a hunter wasn't found until two years after he was reported missing. A DNR field forester recalls the time it took his crew two hours to drive seven miles on a road to fight a forest fire along the Two Hearted River south of Pretty Lake.

The wilderness portion of the Eastern Upper Peninsula doesn't have mountains, but it does have Lake Superior. Yet it's only two hours from the Mackinac Bridge. Better-known visitor destinations in the area have seen tremendous real estate activity, however. In places the road from Paradise to Whitefish Point seems to bristle with "for sale" signs. There are even some showy gated entrances, the greatest affront to indigenous U.P. culture among people who grew up freely roaming the woods and streams. The breathless ads of North Coast Realty have alluded to "prestigious Whitefish Bay" and "exclusive living on the Lake Superior shoreline, . . . high in desirability as well as providing remoteness and sophistication." The latter refers to a widely despised subdivision of trophy homes east of Grand Marais, originally surrounded by a tasteful New England-style white picket fence. For 80 hard-to-reach acres 15 miles from Paradise as the crow flies the asking price in fall, 2000, was $75,000. The property was described as having "plenty of high ground, yet patches of standing water swamp adds to the charm."

Most of the interior terrain in these parts is low-lying and often marshy. Exceptions are some clusters of glacial hills south of Grand Marais at the headwaters of the Sucker and Two Hearted rivers. There a hilltop reaches almost 600 feet above Lake Superior.

This is one of the least productive agricultural areas in the Upper Peninsula, the dairying country north of Engadine being an exception. Soil is often sandy or wet. Pine forests covered much of the land before the lumbering era. Aside from logging and the prison in Newberry, tourism is the major economic activity these days, from fishing and sightseeing in summer to snowmobiling in winter.

This part of the eastern Upper Peninsula is the biggest beneficiary of what was announced as "the largest conservation project in the state's history" in December, 2004. A major landholder, the Kamehameha Trust (one of the world's wealthiest charities, set up by the sole surviving member of the royal family for a private school to help students of Hawaiian ancestry to achieve their highest potential), put nearly 400,000 acres of Upper Peninsula land up for bids in 2002. If a future buyer would subdivide much of it into small parcels - as many large landowners have done - it would have far-reaching implications for wildlife habitat for fish and large mammals, for recreational trails (especially snowmobile trails), for public access for hunting and fishing (which is allowed by law on private "commercial forest reserve" land), and for the Upper Peninsula timber products industry, its biggest employer. The Nature Conservancy bid but lost to the Forestland Group, a timberland investment management organization.

Refusing to give up, the Nature Conservancy worked a deal with the state of Michigan to acquire a working forest easement on 248,000 of those acres, using Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund money from oil and gas leases, together with grants from many of Michigan's largest private foundations. 23,338 acres, mostly on the Two Hearted River watershed, were purchased outright. The easements mean land stays in private ownership and on local tax rolls and that timber harvesting will continue under a "widely recognized sustainable forestry certification program." Only 40 private homes can be built. The easement protects public access for hunting and fishing, and for designated snowmobile trails. Under the Commercial Forest Reserve Act, berry and mushroom pickers and birders, however, must obtain written permission from the landowner. New easements fill in and extend public land and protect watersheds held by state and national forests, Pictured Rocks National Park adjacent to public land at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and Tahquamenon Falls State Park. More money must be raised to complete the deal. It's way too early for land managers to discuss future plans for this land.

To see maps of the project areas, visit the Nature Conservancy web site, www.nature.org, click on "Where we work" on the horizontal blue bar, and get to Michigan. When the "big deal" ceases to be front-page news, search for "Northern Great Lakes Forest Project."

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