…the Forest for the Trees

For centuries, regional forests supported the traditional lifeways of indigenous people. In the treaties of 1837 and 1842, the U.S. government obtained rights from the region's Chippewa tribes to commercially harvest the forests of northern Wisconsin. By the 1850s, the relative ease of transporting logs on Lake Superior drew loggers to the Apostle Islands region, and over the next 75 years its wood helped build Midwestern cities, lined shafts in the region's iron mines, and provided millions of cross ties for the nation's railroads. Logging camps and mills employed hundreds of people, but decades of logging and fires reduced the supposedly unlimited supply of forest products, and most large lumber companies closed by the late 1920s. Afterward, small logging operations continued harvesting hardwoods for furniture and pulpwood for paper, with families such as the Hokensons operating small sawmills. Five generations of logging shaped regional culture and dramatically changed the landscape, yet forests grew back, trees gradually came to be valued as scenery and habitat as well as lumber, and by 1970 the islands had recovered enough to receive national lakeshore designation.

Russell, Wisconsin · United States