Hiawatha National Forest

Hiawatha National Forest is a north-woods sprawl across Michigan's Upper Peninsula, split into two separate units and famous for one thing above all: it's usually credited as the only national forest that reaches three of the Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, and Huron. Between the big-lake shoreline you'll find over a hundred inland lakes, cold trout streams, black bears, loons, and -- once winter comes -- some of the deepest lake-effect snow in the eastern US. Cool twist: the name comes from Longfellow's famous poem, which accidentally hung the name of a historical Iroquois leader onto a hero actually built from Ojibwe stories -- a beautiful mix-up now stamped across the map.

The place

Hiawatha National Forest sits up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and it's really two separate blocks of woods on one map -- a western unit in the Munising and Rapid River country and an eastern unit down around Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace, with private land and small towns filling the gap between them. Together it's close to 900,000 acres of National Forest System land (the outer 'proclamation' boundary drawn on the map runs bigger, well over a million acres, with private ground woven in). What makes it special is water: this is the national forest that actually reaches three of the Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, and Huron -- usually credited as the only one that pulls off that trifecta. Expect big-lake shoreline, over a hundred inland lakes and cold trout streams, a north-woods mix of hardwoods and pine and spruce, and -- fair warning -- some of the deepest lake-effect snow in the eastern US once winter sets in.

History

The Forest Service stood up Hiawatha National Forest in 1931, back in the era of hard-cut, burned-over 'stump land' that the government bought back and let the woods reclaim; the two-unit forest you drive today also folded in older east-side national-forest ground (the Marquette National Forest traces back to around 1909). The name rides Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic 'The Song of Hiawatha,' one of the most popular American poems of its century -- the reason 'Hiawatha' got stamped on so many Great Lakes places. Here's the tangle worth knowing: Longfellow built his hero largely out of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) stories, especially the culture-hero and trickster Nanabozho, gathered by the Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft around Sault Ste. Marie -- but he hung the name of the historical Iroquois leader Hiawatha (a real founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, far to the east) onto that Ojibwe character, blending two very different figures for good. So the forest carries a famous name that's really a bit of a beautiful mistake.

Wildlife & plants

This is classic Northwoods habitat. Black bears and white-tailed deer are common -- keep a clean camp -- and gray wolves are back across the Upper Peninsula as a reestablished population, though you're far likelier to hear one than see one. Moose turn up now and then but are really more of a western-UP animal, so don't count on them here. The lakes and skies belong to common loons and bald eagles, and spruce grouse haunt the thicker conifers. The forest is stitched with cold water: brook and lake trout, salmon, and walleye, depending on which lake or stream you're standing beside. The trees shift as you go -- sugar maple and beech in the northern hardwoods, tall red and white pine, old hemlock in the shady hollows, and boreal spruce and fir leaning toward the big lakes.

Notable features

The water is the headline. Hiawatha touches three Great Lakes, and on Whitefish Bay off Lake Superior it keeps the Point Iroquois Light Station, a historic lighthouse-and-museum that once helped guide ore boats toward the locks at the Soo. Out of Munising the forest manages Grand Island National Recreation Area, a big, cliff-edged island in Lake Superior laced with old roads and quiet beaches (you take a short ferry to reach it). The western unit runs right up against Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore -- that one's run by the Park Service -- and the North Country National Scenic Trail, the longest of the country's national scenic trails, threads across the forest. Inland it's a maze of lakes and rivers with quiet campgrounds most travelers never hear about.

Cool to know

• Hiawatha is usually credited as the only national forest that reaches three of the Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, and Huron.
• The name is a famous mix-up. Longfellow's 1855 'Song of Hiawatha' hung the name of a historical Iroquois leader onto a hero actually built from Ojibwe stories about Nanabozho -- two different figures, blended by a poem, then stamped all over the map.
• The forest keeps a real lighthouse. The Point Iroquois Light Station on Lake Superior's Whitefish Bay once helped guide freighters toward the Soo Locks and is now a museum you can visit.
• Grand Island, a cliff-ringed island in Lake Superior near Munising, is a National Recreation Area managed by the forest -- you catch a short ferry to get out to it.
• Winter here is no joke. Lake-effect storms rolling off Lake Superior bury parts of the Upper Peninsula under some of the deepest snow in the eastern US.
• Much of this is 'second-chance' forest -- hard-logged and burned a century ago, bought back by the government as worn-out 'stump land,' and grown back into the north woods you camp in today.