Lake Superior

About

Lake Superior, Michigan — Anishinaabe Chippewa, 1840s Iron Range, 2010 GLRI. Lake Superior drains to Lake Huron by way of the St. Marys River, the outlet at the southeastern corner of the basin. For paddlers, the lake is not run as a single line but broken into designated segments — the Hiawatha Water Trail, the Isle Royale National Park Water Trail, the Western U.P. Water Trail, and the Lake Superior East Water Trail — each managed as its own coast. The lake carries the designation of a Designated Water Trail under private management, and roughly 200 miles of its shoreline remain pristine.

The human story on this coast reaches back well before Euro-American contact. Lake Superior was the homeland of the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe of the western Great Lakes, who called it Gichigami — great sea — in Anishinaabemowin. Its shoreline sustained major communities at Sault Ste. Marie, Marquette, and Keweenaw Bay, and along the southern shore from Sault Ste. Marie to Duluth. The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, and many other tribal nations maintain cultural connections to the lake. The 1842 Treaty of La Pointe, the 1847 Treaty, and the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe ceded most of the Michigan Upper Peninsula shoreline.

Sustained contact arrived with industry. The 1840s copper-mining era at the Keweenaw and the 1844–1855 discovery of iron at the Marquette Iron Range opened the coast to Euro-American settlement. From the 1840s through the 1920s, the shoreline was logged to feed that expansion — the 1850–1910 Marquette Iron Range mining timbers, the 1860–1910 Escanaba sawmill operations, and the 1865–1920s Lake Superior lumber schooner trade. The Marquette, Escanaba, and Munising sawmills and a schooner fleet moved white pine across the water until the 1910 exhaustion of the pine stands, the 1915 start of state forestry conservation, and the 1920s shift to Pacific Northwest lumber ended large-scale logging.

The lake was mapped as it was worked. The 1840s–1850s US Lake Survey, the 1850s–1880s US Coast Survey hydrographic surveys, and the 1880s–1920s USGS Great Lakes water-level gauging laid the foundation. The 1850–1880 Keweenaw Point lighthouse and survey system and the 1880–1910 Marquette water-intake surveys followed, and by the 1960s–1970s Great Lakes water-quality studies had identified the major pollution challenges. The 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was the first major modern response.

Fish and cleanup define the present. Lake trout restoration began in the 1950s, coinciding with sea lamprey control under the Great Lakes Fishery Commission Lake Superior Committee. In 2010 the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative — a federal program of more than $3 billion — began funding over 5,000 projects to clean up Areas of Concern, prevent invasive species including sea lamprey, and restore native coaster brook trout. The 2015 Michigan Clean Water Plan, the 2019 Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors Water Resources Compact, and the 2024 GLRI Reauthorization followed. Today Lake Superior is the cleanest of the Great Lakes, supporting a world-class fishery and a continental water reservoir of staggering proportion.