Drummond Island: The Last British Holdout

At the far eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula, across a narrow channel, lies Drummond Island — the second-largest freshwater island in the United States (after Isle Royale) and a place with both a curious border story and a globally rare landscape.

After the War of 1812, the British didn’t entirely let go of the area. They held a fort on Drummond Island until 1828, when a boundary survey finally confirmed the island was U.S. soil and they handed it over — making it, for a stretch, the last British outpost on American territory. It’s also the only island in the vast Manitoulin chain (home to Manitoulin Island, the world’s largest freshwater island) that belongs to the U.S. rather than Canada.

Then there’s the ground itself. Parts of Drummond are covered by an “alvar” — a rare grassland of hardy plants growing on thin or nonexistent soil over flat, glacier-scraped limestone, sometimes called limestone pavement. Alvars exist in only a few places on Earth: parts of the Baltic region, western Ireland, and the Great Lakes basin. Drummond’s Maxton Plains are considered among the finest examples anywhere.