Michigan has a national park with wolves, no roads, and one way in: a ferry

Isle Royale’s wild side takes some work to reach

Most national parks have a parking lot. Isle Royale has a ferry dock, and if you miss the boat, you wait for the next one.

The park sits in Lake Superior, 56 miles from the Michigan shore, covering 894 square miles of forest, ridge, inland lake, and open water. No cars.

No roads. No cell service worth mentioning.

About 30 wolves live here, and on a clear night, you can see the Andromeda Galaxy with your naked eye. Getting there takes half a day.

It’s worth every hour.

The Ojibwe called it “the good place” for good reason

Long before it was a national park, the Ojibwe called this island Minong, meaning “the good place,” and they mined copper here for thousands of years.

In the 1840s, a copper boom pulled miners out to the island, but the remote location and thin veins finished most of them off fast.

By the 1920s, a Detroit News journalist named Albert Stoll Jr. was visiting and pushing hard for the island’s protection. President Franklin Roosevelt made it a national park in 1940.

In 1980, UNESCO named it an International Biosphere Reserve.

Three ferries, one seaplane and a six-hour crossing

You have choices for getting there, and none of them are quick. The ferry out of Houghton, Michigan, takes about six hours one way.

The Copper Harbor crossing cuts that to about three and a half hours. From Grand Portage, Minnesota, you get the fastest boat option.

If you’d rather skip the water entirely, a seaplane out of Hancock can put you on the island in under an hour.

The park runs from April 16 through Oct. 31, but transportation and lodging schedules run shorter, so check before you book.

The Greenstone Ridge Trail runs 40 miles along the island’s spine

The park has over 165 miles of trails, ranging from moderate day walks to routes that will test you.

The Greenstone Ridge Trail covers about 40 miles from Rock Harbor on the east end to Windigo on the west, crossing six peaks and topping out at Mount Desor, the island’s high point at 1,394 feet. Most hikers take three to five days to finish it.

Along the way, you move through boreal forest, open meadows, and rocky ridgelines where Lake Superior opens up on both sides.

The trail is named after chlorastrolite, Michigan’s state gemstone, which turns up as small green pebbles on the shoreline below.

Day hikes that show you the island’s best angles

Not every trip here requires a multi-day push. The Stoll Memorial Trail near Rock Harbor does a four-mile loop out to Scoville Point, and the shoreline along the way is some of the best the island has.

Tobin Harbor Trail runs three miles along a quiet stretch of water where otters and aquatic birds tend to hang around.

Near Windigo, the Grace Creek Overlook trail covers 3.6 miles and puts you above Grace Harbor and Lake Superior at the same time.

In late summer and fall, wild thimbleberries and blueberries grow along most of these trails. Pick as you go.

Wolves and moose in the world’s longest predator-prey study

Since 1958, researchers from Michigan Technological University have tracked wolves and moose on this island in the longest-running predator-prey study in the world.

The setup is almost perfectly controlled: wolves are the only predator of moose here, and moose are essentially the only thing wolves eat. The numbers shift every year.

The most recent count puts the wolf population at around 30 and the moose population at about 840.

Between 2018 and 2019, the National Park Service brought 19 wolves to the island to keep the pack from dying out entirely.

Foxes, eagles, loons and moose at the water’s edge

Wolves are hard to spot. Moose are not.

Your best chance at seeing one is near an inland lake or a wetland, where they wade in to feed. The island also supports red foxes, beavers, snowshoe hares, mink, and ermines.

Bald eagles and loons nest here too. The park runs junior, youth, and adult ranger programs, plus guided wildlife viewing tours if you want more structure.

And each year, citizen scientists come to help researchers track moose remains across the backcountry, covering ground that staff alone can’t reach.

Paddle the bays and portage into the island’s interior

The island’s protected bays and harbors make for good paddling, and Five Finger Bay and Tobin Harbor are two of the calmer options with solid wildlife along the way.

If you want to go deeper, a chain of inland lakes connects through portage trails, giving canoeists a route straight through the island’s interior.

Paddle-only campgrounds put you away from the hiking trail crowds and into spots most visitors never reach. Rock Harbor Marina and Washington Harbor Marina both rent canoes and boats if you didn’t bring your own.

Twenty-five shipwrecks line the bottom of these waters

The park holds 25 shipwrecks, covering 70 years of Great Lakes maritime history, and 10 of them sit on the National Register of Historic Places.

The SS America, a passenger freighter that went down in 1928, rests in water as shallow as two feet in places. You can see parts of it without even diving.

The Chester A. Congdon hit Canoe Rocks in 1918 and now sits at about 75 feet, reachable for experienced scuba divers.

Four historic lighthouses also stand in the park, all on the National Register, with the Rock Harbor Lighthouse being the oldest and most visited.

Cast a line in waters that hold 40 species of fish

The park’s waters hold over 40 fish species, including lake trout, brook trout, northern pike, yellow perch, and walleye.

You don’t need a fishing license for the inland lakes, but you’ll need a Michigan license to fish Lake Superior. Only artificial lures are allowed anywhere in the park, which keeps non-native species out of the water.

All brook trout are catch-and-release only, including the coaster brook trout native to Lake Superior. Inland lakes like Richie, Chickenbone, and Siskiwit draw anglers looking specifically for northern pike.

No streetlights, no headlights and the Milky Way overhead

The island sits in the middle of Lake Superior, far enough from any city that the sky goes fully dark at night. On a clear evening, the Milky Way runs edge to edge.

Meteor trails show up easily, and with a decent night, you can spot the Andromeda Galaxy without a telescope. Northern lights appear sometimes, especially in the fall and spring.

Everyone on the island gets around by headlamp after dark, not headlights, which means the darkness stays intact. The park has 36 campgrounds, more than any other top-rated stargazing national park in the country.

Thirty-six campgrounds and one rule: get there first

Isle Royale’s 36 campgrounds cover both ends of the island and most of the trail between them, and all of them work on a first-come, first-served basis for groups of six or fewer.

Some sites along Lake Superior have shelters with walls, picnic tables, and boat docks. Smaller inland sites have outhouses and water sources, but nothing more.

Groups of seven or more need a reservation and a group camping permit arranged in advance.

If you want to go completely off-grid, a special cross-country permit lets experienced campers sleep outside any designated site entirely.

Plan your trip to Isle Royale National Park in Michigan

You can reach Isle Royale by ferry from Houghton or Copper Harbor in Michigan, or from Grand Portage in Minnesota, or by seaplane from Hancock, Michigan. The park opens on April 16 and closes entirely on Oct. 31.

Rock Harbor on the east end and Windigo on the west end are the two main entry points, each with a visitor center. July through September give you the most stable weather for hiking, paddling, and camping.

Ferry reservations and lodging fill up fast, so book well ahead of your trip. Check the official website for current schedules and availability.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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