Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness is a 14,729-acre protected, roadless area in Michigan’s Ottawa National Forest, established by Congress in 1987. Centered on the federally designated Wild and Scenic Sturgeon River, it preserves a rugged river corridor where the river cuts a gorge about 300 feet deep and passes over Sturgeon Falls on its way toward Lake Superior. The landscape is a second-growth boreal forest shaped by logging before 1910, with hemlock, aspen, sugar maple, paper birch, basswood, and some returning white pine. It also shelters wildlife such as black bear and white-tailed deer within one of the Upper Peninsula’s more dramatic backcountry settings.