Grand Island: A Tycoon's Private Kingdom on Lake Superior
For ninety years, 13,500 acres off Munising were one iron magnate's private kingdom; today it's a wild National Recreation Area.
Just half a mile off Munising in Lake Superior lies Grand Island. Its 13,500 acres of sandstone cliffs and deep woods were, for ninety years, one rich man’s private playground.
In 1900, the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company and its president, William Gwinn Mather, bought the whole island (about $93,000) as a personal retreat and game preserve. Mather was a conservationist. He protected the old-growth forest and stocked the island with game behind a fence — the story goes that armed agents watched the winter ice for wolves trying to cross. He ran a maple-sugar operation, built a roughly 23-mile carriage road for guests’ buggy rides, and opened a resort hotel. It was a Gilded-Age island kingdom, minus the crown.
After Mather died in 1951, the company logged about 80% of the forest he’d worked to preserve, and the hotel closed. Then in 1990, the U.S. Forest Service bought the island. Congress made it the Grand Island National Recreation Area, part of the Hiawatha National Forest. Today it’s mostly quiet wilderness — hiking, biking, primitive camping. There are only a handful of grandfathered private cottages, and no cars for visitors.
Where to see it
A short ferry runs from a dock on M-28 west of Munising to Williams Landing; a narrated bus tour covers the history, and the wooden East Channel Lighthouse is visible from the water.