Lake Superior

About

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, 1970 — Lake Superior Wisconsin. The story of this shoreline begins in deep time. Superior's basin took shape over a billion years ago, when an ocean of magma poured out and the Earth split apart, leaving behind the depression that now holds the lake. The result is a body of water on a scale few can match — roughly 31,700 square miles of surface, a maximum depth of 1,333 feet, and an average depth of 483 feet that makes it the deepest of the Great Lakes. The water stays stubbornly cold, averaging 40°F through the year and rarely climbing past 55°F even at the height of summer.

Long before federal maps or lighthouse lenses, the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior flowed through the ancestral territory of Indigenous peoples, including the region's historical tribal nations. The waters served as a primary travel corridor, hunting ground, and gathering place. The framework that would reshape that relationship came through the 1800s-era treaties, the 1830 Indian Removal Act, and the 1840s–1890s allotment era, which together established the cession framework across the region.

European presence arrived and grew through commerce. Father René Menard named the islands in 1660 for the Twelve Apostles. Commercial fishing — especially whitefish and lake trout — along with lumber and shipping took hold from the 1830s onward. The first white settler, John Jacob Ackerman, established a fishing camp on Outer Island in 1836. From the 1830s through the 1920s, the surrounding watershed was logged to feed the 1850–1910s regional timber industry and the 1860–1910s railroad expansion, worked by local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations. The 1910 exhaustion of the old-growth stands, the 1915 start of state forestry conservation, and the 1930s establishment of state forests brought the large-scale cutting to a close.

As the timber era waned, the science of the lake advanced. The 1870s–1890s USGS survey, the 1880s–1910s establishment of gauging stations, and the 1910s–1930s state geological survey streamflow assessments produced the first comprehensive hydrological studies of the Wisconsin waters. Later, the 1950s–1970s state water pollution control studies and the 1972–2000 Clean Water Act assessments took stock of more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts, feeding into modern restoration and TMDL programs.

Protection came in stages. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore was established September 26, 1970, gathering 21 islands and 12 miles of mainland centered on the Bayfield Peninsula. Its six historic lighthouses — among them the 1857 Raspberry Island Light, the 1881 Sand Island Light, and the 1883 Michigan Island Light — count among the oldest and best-preserved in the Midwest. In 1986, 80 percent of the park's 69,000 acres was designated a Wilderness Area. Today the shore carries a Designated Water Trail under the Wisconsin Northwest Regional Planning Commission, with paddling sections stretching from St. Louis Bay to Superior Bay, through Chequamegon Bay and Madeline Island, and along the Lake Superior Water Trail from the City of Superior to the Montreal River. Restoration continues: since 2010 the Wisconsin DNR, working with local watershed partnerships, has carried out streambank stabilization, native fish restocking, nutrient reduction, and water-quality improvements along the frigid, ancient vastness at Wisconsin's northern edge.