50 Fun Facts About Isle Royale National Park

Isle Royale National Park lies in which of the Great Lakes?

The main island is the largest natural island in that lake and the second-largest in all the Great Lakes after Manitoulin.

Isle Royale is about 15 miles from Ontario and Minnesota, but how many miles from the Michigan shore?

The nearest Michigan land is the Keweenaw Peninsula on the Upper Peninsula; Thunder Bay and Grand Portage are far closer.

How long is Isle Royale?

It is 9 miles across at its widest, and at about 207 square miles is the fifth-largest lake island in the world.

In which year was Isle Royale National Park established?

Congress authorised it in 1931 and Franklin Roosevelt made it official on April 3, 1940; wilderness designation followed in 1976.

Isle Royale is the only US national park to do what every winter?

It shuts from November 1 to April 15 because of the brutal lake weather, which makes the crossing deadly.

Among contiguous-US national parks, where did Isle Royale rank for visitors in the 2010s?

Only three remote Alaskan parks got fewer visitors; annual visits averaged about 19,000 from 2009 to 2018.

Which two animals are the subjects of the world's longest-running predator-prey study on Isle Royale?

Neither species is native to the island; the study began in 1958 and is famous because no bears complicate the picture.

How are wolves believed to have first reached Isle Royale in 1949?

Possibly a single pair crossed during a harsh winter, which is why the population has suffered severe inbreeding ever since.

Genetic evidence suggests moose reached Isle Royale in the early 1900s how?

Island moose are most closely related to those of far northwestern Minnesota, and the Washington Harbor Club owned railroads that could have shipped them.

By 2016 inbreeding had reduced the island's wolf population to how many animals?

Meanwhile the moose herd had exploded to about 1,600; by November 2017 a single female wolf was left.

How many wolves did the Park Service relocate to Isle Royale between September 2018 and September 2019?

They came from Minnesota, the Upper Peninsula and Ontario after the agency approved moving 20 to 30 animals; about 14 survived by April 2020.

The virile male wolf that crossed the ice from Ontario in 1997 was nicknamed what?

Designated M93, he was the first adult to join the population since the study began; his descendants soon inbred with one another anyway.

What was the highest number of wolves ever counted on Isle Royale, recorded in 1980?

The population crashed to 14 by 1982; the moose peak was 2,450 in 1995.

Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich, the lead wolf-moose researchers, are professors at which institution?

A 2017 study by the team found island moose skulls had shrunk 16 percent over 40 years, consistent with warming winters.

With birch and aspen browsed out, balsam fir made up what share of Isle Royale moose diet?

They have even been seen eating lichen, which Peterson compared to eating dust.

Which two large mammals lived on Isle Royale for 3,500 years until humans wiped them out shortly before the park began?

The last caribou was seen in 1925 and the lynx were gone by the 1930s; the snowshoe hares the lynx hunted remain.

Roughly what fraction of mainland mammal species have colonised remote Isle Royale?

Red foxes, beavers, red squirrels, mink and ermine are among those that made it; foxes prowl the campgrounds at dawn for scraps.

What is the highest point on Isle Royale, at 1,394 feet?

That is only about 800 feet above the lake; the 40-mile Greenstone Ridge Trail passes over it.

How long is the Greenstone Ridge Trail, the longest in the park, running the length of the island?

Most hikers take four or five days and catch a boat shuttle back to their starting point; the park has about 165 miles of trail in all.

What is the largest body of water on Isle Royale itself?

Its cold, clear water is low in nutrients and holds several islands, the biggest of which is Ryan Island.

The Moose Boulder hoax claimed that Ryan Island, in the biggest lake on Isle Royale, held what?

That would have made it the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake; in 2020 it was confirmed the pond does not exist.

Wheeled vehicles are banned on Isle Royale with what single exception?

There are no roads; the Park Service uses tractors and UTVs only in the developed areas, and carts are lent for luggage at the marina.

What is the name of the National Park Service ship that carries visitors from Houghton to the island?

At 165 feet it is said to be the largest piece of equipment in the park system; the crossing takes six hours and it makes two round trips a week.

The island's southwest developed area, formerly Windigo, was renamed what Native name?

Ferries from Grand Portage, Minnesota land there; those from the Upper Peninsula dock at the northeast end.

How many designated wilderness campgrounds does the park have?

Many offer three-sided screened shelters; most ban campfires and all water must be filtered, treated or boiled.

Which Upper Peninsula port sends the ferry Isle Royale Queen to the island in about three hours?

Grand Portage, Minnesota, offers the fastest crossing at about an hour and a half aboard the Sea Hunter.

Copper artifacts show people were mining Isle Royale at least how long ago?

Hundreds of ancient pits and trenches up to 65 feet deep dot the island.

What native name for the island did a Jesuit missionary record in 1669-70 as famed for its copper?

The name lives on in a ridge and a mine, and the whole island chain was listed on the National Register in 2019 as the Minong Traditional Cultural Property.

Which Native nation ceded Isle Royale to the United States in the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe?

The Grand Portage Band did not realise the island was not British; they reaffirmed the deal in an 1844 agreement after the border was clarified.

Whose mid-1840s report as the state's first geologist set off the copper boom that opened the island's first mines?

Most 19th-century mines failed fast because the veins were small and the island remote; a brief revival ran from 1873 to 1881.

Angelique Mott and her husband were left on the island in 1845 to guard what?

Promised supplies never came; abandoned from July to the following spring with half a barrel of flour, six pounds of butter and some beans, only Angelique survived to tell it.

What is chlorastrolite, found as beach pebbles on Isle Royale?

Also called Isle Royale greenstone, it has a turtleback pattern and fills gas bubbles in the ancient basalt; collecting it in the park is illegal.

The island's ridges are built mainly of what rock, laid down as about 100 individual Precambrian flows?

The Portage Lake Volcanics stack up at least 10,000 feet thick, and glaciers later sharpened the ridge-and-valley grain.

Which packet steamer sank in Washington Harbor off Isle Royale in 1928 and remains a favourite of divers?

Built in 1898 for a Lake Michigan packet run, she later carried mail, fish and passengers between Duluth, the island and Thunder Bay.

Why are the park's shipwrecks so well preserved?

The Park Service mapped the ten most famous wrecks; the island sat on busy shipping lanes with notoriously harsh weather.

The first lighthouse on Isle Royale, completed in 1856, is a stone-and-brick tower how tall?

Congress had voted $5,000 for the Rock Harbor light in 1853 as lake shipping grew; Passage Island, Rock of Ages and Menagerie Island lights followed.

What kind of families did the Park Service remove from the island after it became a park?

About a dozen families still hold lifetime cabin leases, and some descendants fish the waters commercially.

Which historic fishing station near the northeast end, with a 1900 fish house, is on the National Register?

Its seven log buildings include a net house, cabins, a chicken coop and a whaleboat.

Isle Royale briefly formed its own county; when was that county dissolved?

It had been split from Keweenaw County in 1875 and was folded back in when it proved pointless.

In which year did UNESCO declare Isle Royale an International Biosphere Reserve?

The 1976 wilderness designation had already covered most of the land; the park totals 894 square miles, mostly water.

Which predator lived on Isle Royale from about 1905 until wolves arrived in the 1950s, then vanished?

Wolves outcompeted them quickly; before that, lynx had been the island's main hunter of hares.

What kind of Canadian protected zone adjoins the park's northern boundary along the border?

The international border runs along the park's northern edge, with Thunder Bay about 15 miles away.

Roughly how many species of flowering plants grow on Isle Royale?

They include wild sarsaparilla, marsh marigold, wood lily and prickly wild rose in a boreal forest of spruce, fir and birch.

Where do most of the island's ancient copper pits and trenches cluster?

Some are up to 65 feet deep, and the old pits guided 19th-century prospectors to the veins they then tried to mine.

Isle Royale is the only known place where wolves and moose coexist without which animal?

The island's isolation means only about a third of mainland mammal species ever colonised it.

In which year did Isle Royale receive federal wilderness area designation?

It was later named a UNESCO biosphere reserve and, in 2019, added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Isle Royale is the second-largest island in the Great Lakes, behind which one?

It is also the fifth-largest lake island in the world and the third-largest island in the contiguous United States.

Which schooner carried Angelique and Charles Mott to Isle Royale in 1845?

The couple were hired by Cyrus Mendenhall of the Lake Superior Copper Company to scout for ore.

Ferries from Michigan dock at which developed area, home to the park's only lodge?

Ferries from Minnesota land at the other end of the island, where rustic camper cabins are the only beds.

On which date does Isle Royale reopen each year after its winter closure?

The park shuts on November 1 for weather and safety, the only US national park to close entirely.