The Evolution of a Maple Sugaring Landscape on Lake Superior’s Grand Island

When examined within their historic context, vernacular landscapes inform us about the behaviors, beliefs, and interrelationships of ordinary people and their surroundings. Through the integration of historical research with a landscape archaeology approach, this paper examines the evolution and abandonment of a landscape of maple sugar and syrup production in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, USA. Beginning with Native American occupation, through early Euro-American settlement, to commercial and corporate expansion by the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company, the history and landscape evolution of the Grand Island maple sugarbush refl ect changing cultural practices, settlement patterns, land use, and land tenure in a portion of the Lake Superior region. Like much of rural America, continued changes in the technology and organization of the maple sugaring industry over the last fi fty years are resulting in an increasingly rapid loss or replacement of the landscape and material record of maple sugaring. With abandonment nearly fi fty years ago, the Grand Island sugarbush provides an opportunity to examine historic aspects of this unique forest-based food production landscape. INTRODUCTION Since the 1850s, the state of Michigan has consistently been the sixth or better maple-producing state in the United States, occasionally ranking as high as third, behind the better-known maple-producing states of Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Ohio.1 However, the history of maple production in Michigan begins with the state’s fi rst indigenous residents, long before the fi rst tabulation of maple production statistics. Once an important activity in the Native American seasonal round, the tapping of maple trees and boiling of maple sap into maple sugar was carried out each spring in all parts of the state. In the nineteenth century, General Land Offi ce surveyors throughout the state frequently noted and mapped the locations of Native American sugarbushes and sugar camps. Today, many sugarbush owners 1. Based upon an analysis of total maple sugar and maple syrup production statistics reported in the United States Census Reports for Agriculture. In the 1960s and 1970s, the state of Wisconsin crept into the top fi ve states with the development of large scale Central Evaporator Plants (Reynolds 1998). 136 MICHIGAN ACADEMICIAN are quick to claim that their sugarbush was once tapped each spring by one of the local resident Native American tribes. As is shown in this study, that very continuity was the case with the sugarbush on Lake Superior’s Grand Island (Figure 1), a maple production landscape that has evolved with the successive settlement and land use of the region. FIGURE 1. Location of Grand Island in Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula of