Ottawa National Forest spans 993,010 acres across Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula, where rugged terrain, abundant water, heavy snowfall, and glacial history have shaped a landscape of thin soils, wetlands, boreal forest, and notable waterfalls along the Black and Presque Isle rivers. Long before federal protection, Ojibwa communities lived and traded here, and after the fur trade declined, most of the land was sold in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe, though descendants remained around Lac Vieux Desert. Railroad access in the 1890s opened the region to large-scale logging, and after much of the cutover land was abandoned, the federal government created the forest in 1931 and expanded it in 1933 and 1935. Today it is valued for recreation, wilderness protection, and visitor education.