Escanaba River State Forest occupies forested land across Alger, Delta, Marquette, and Menominee counties in Michigan’s central Upper Peninsula. Managed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, it consists of scattered parcels rather than one continuous tract. The forest grew out of the Upper Peninsula’s logging era, when old-growth timber was cut and many clear-cut lands lost private value, then passed to the state through unpaid taxes. Michigan reorganized these abandoned cutover tracts into a public forest. Today the land serves both recreation and working-forest purposes, supporting hiking, canoeing, fishing, hunting, and the production of second-growth wood for paper pulp tied to Escanaba’s papermaking industry.