Higgins Lake's other story: the nursery that helped replant Michigan

Higgins Lake is best known for its clear, cold water. But it also holds a remarkable piece of conservation history on its north shore. Starting in 1903, the state ran a tree nursery here. It grew into one of the largest seedling nurseries in the world. It raised the young pines used to replant Michigan’s forests after the logging era stripped them bare. In the 1930s the federal Civilian Conservation Corps set up a camp at the nursery. Michigan’s CCC crews went on to plant hundreds of millions of trees statewide — more than any other state.

That history is preserved at the Higgins Lake Nursery and CCC Museum, run by the Michigan History Center. It has exhibits and a reconstructed CCC barracks. The museum sits inside North Higgins Lake State Park, on the lake’s north shore just over the county line in Crawford County. That’s about a 15-minute drive from the village of Roscommon. (The Roscommon-county side of the lake has its own state park, South Higgins Lake State Park.)

For anyone settling near Higgins Lake, it’s a good reminder. The woods and parks you’ll enjoy here were largely planted by hand within the last century. And a museum a few minutes away tells exactly how.