Region 3:

Porcupine Mountains and Ontonagon

Far and away the leading attraction of the far western Upper Peninsula is the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. Of its 60,000 acres, 30,000 have never been logged. This is one of the Midwest's few great remaining wilderness tracts, with expanses of old-growth trees, mostly huge sugar maples, Eastern hemlocks, and yellow birch. Here long, high ridges made the interior forests too inaccessible and too expensive to log.
The ridges are the eroded remnants of once-towering mountains, formed by volcanic eruptions and uplift. Today the high point, Summit Peak, is 1,958 feet above sea level, and 1,360 feet above Lake Superior. The mountains' distinctive profile, seen from distant shorelines, led local Ojibwa to call the area kaugabissing, "the place of the porcupines."

Photography by James Marvin Phelps

Overlooked Falls.

Some places, like Lake of the Clouds Overlook, are much visited by people who come in automobiles and campers, while other places can only be reached by foot. The Porkies trails and the North Country Trail in the adjacent Trap Hills (within the Ottawa National Forest) are top Midwestern destinations for hikers and backpackers.
The vast park is the largest state park east of the Mississippi. It includes:
♦ short hikes and scenic overlooks
♦ Lake Superior beaches and kayaking
♦ over 90 miles of hiking trails, mostly in roadless areas with primitive campsites
♦ modern and rustic campgrounds near Lake Superior
♦ inland lakes, streams, and over two dozen scenic waterfalls, some accessible by short paths, others deep in the back country
♦ rustic trailside cabins for 4-6 people, reachable only by foot, snowshoes, or skis. Rented, with firewood during winter, currently for $60 a night. Many are near lakes and streams.
♦ Winter near Lake Superior's west-facing shores usually brings lots of lake-effect snow. Groomed cross-country ski trails, 42 kilometers in all, offer many lake views, as do many of the downhill ski runs, on slopes with up to 640' vertical drops.
♦ snowmobile routes along scenic M-107 (closed to vehicular traffic past the ski hill) to Lake of the Clouds Overlook, along South Boundary Road (also closed to vehicular traffic), and up CR 519 to Presque Isle waterfalls. (No sleds on wood bridges!)
♦ mountain biking with views on designated ski trails

The rest of Ontonagon County also has its charms for people who enjoy getting off the beaten path. It experienced an early copper boom followed by logging. The village of Ontonagon (pronounced "AHN-toe-NAH-gun') has a mile of beautiful, sandy Lake Superior beach in its township park, quite an interesting historical museum, a restored lighthouse, and a noteworthy rock and mineral shop. Finnish immigrants worked reluctantly in the mines; many loved the self-sufficiency of farming. Ontonagon's major highways pass through landscapes that are surprisingly rural.

Photography by James Marvin Phelps

A view from Summit Peak.

Some of the Keweenaw region's earliest European mining took place around Rockland, Mass City, and Victoria in eastern Ontonagon County. Europeans prospected for mass copper outcrops and pits made by much earlier native miners. The Ontonagon Boulder, a great mass of copper well known by native people, created a sensation and ended up in the Smithsonian. It sparked the area copper boom. Stories about the mis-named boulder created great excitement starting with 17th-century missionary-explorers and 18th-century British fur-trader Alexander Henry. The boulder actually came from Victoria, south of Rockland, at a place near the West Branch of the Ontonagon River. Now the site is covered by the reservoir of the Victoria Dam. The quaint, scenic village of Rockland, once a mining boomtown, is an interesting place to explore on the way to the Old Victoria Restoration, which has rebuilt and furnished miner's houses to approximate the way they were in 1900 and 1920. A few miles to its northeast, the Adventure Mine in Greenland offers an excellent tour of an underground copper mine circa 1900. The Caledonia Mine outside Mass City mines for mineral specimens and makes available, for a fee, yards of rock of potential mineral-bearing quality for visitors to search through. A well-developed segment of the North Country Trail (http//Xnorthcountrytrail.org) goes through this area all the way to the Sturgeon River Gorge near Baraga.

Just south and east of the Porkies, between Bergland and Lake Gogebic on the south and Victoria and Mass City on the northeast, are the Trap Hills—for hikers, not for motorists. They make up a long ridge where high knobs and rock perches offer spectacular vistas, alternating with streams, waterfalls, and moist valleys where wildflowers and occasional rare plants thrive. The North Country Trail segment through the Trap Hills offers long views with very few hikers. It's becoming better known among backpackers and hikers; Superior Shores Resort (906-884-2653) outside Ontonagon offers a dropoff/pickup service for hikers within Ontonagon County. For people without time or stamina for a long-distance Trap Hills hike, see http//Xeric-hansen.com for detailed directions to short hikes in the Trap Hills. For Eric, author of Hiking Michigan's Upper Peninsula and several other outdoors books, the Trap Hills stand out among all Midwestern hiking destinations.

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PORCUPINE MOUNTAINS AND ONTONAGON: THE TOP ATTRACTIONS (to locate, see MAP)