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The red fox is often seen on trails and near campgrounds within Isle Royale National Park.
remote conditions soon caused the copper companies to leave. Commercial logging was beginning around the same timeframe. The island became heavily deforested by the early 1900s.
Fisheries have been Isle Royale’s most lasting commercial endeavor, with lake trout, lake herring and whitefish plentiful around the island. The industry remained active on Isle Royale for nearly 200 years. Evidence is still present all around the main and surrounding islands. Old fishing boats, shanties and fish houses sit abandoned, slowly succumbing to the elements. Today, one fishery is preserved intact for historical reasons (Edisen Fishery, which operated commercially from 1910 to 1975).
In April 1940, under the Franklin Roosevelt administration, Isle Royale officially became a national park. The park encompasses 850 square miles, of which 209 square miles are land consisting of Isle Royale itself (206 square miles) and more than 400 small surrounding islands. At 50 miles long and 9 miles wide, Isle Royale dwarfs the adjacent islands in the archipelago. In fact, it is the fourth largest lake island in the world and the second largest within the Great Lakes. The main island
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holds many freshwater lakes of its own, some of which have islands within them as well. Protection exists as a national park, as a national wilderness area and as a UNESCO biosphere reserve. As a result, the island rebounded from deforestation a century ago and now hosts roughly 20,000 visitors a year.
So close and yet so far
Early in our parenthood journey, my wife and I agreed it would be great to get our two kids to all the official national parks within the continental U.S. However, one of the closest to our Wisconsin home kept eluding us. We were 18 years and 46 parks into our journey before neighboring Michigan’s Isle Royale National Park finally fell into place for us.
Visiting IRNP can be challenging because one cannot simply drive through its gates. No major airline hubs are nearby and even proximate general aviation airports are limited. The challenge is compounded by the very short season in which the northern Lake Superior park is open. Officially open April 16 through Oct. 31, it is more realistic to consider the typical tourism season to be early June through Labor Day. Outside of those dates, services are still spooling up or are already winding down for the
Moose have been present on Isle Royale since the early 1900s. Their population has ranged from a low around 500 to a high around 2,500.
PHOTO CREDIT: @THENATIONALPARKTRAVELERS/UP TRAVEL
PHOTO CREDIT: LINDSEY WELCH/IRNP