The One Minute Geographer: Two Islands, Two Different Worlds

The Upper Michigan Peninsula is shown at the bottom of the map. Isle Royale is in the northwest corner in Lake Superior. Drummond Island is in the southeast corner in Lake Huron. Screenshot taken by the author from Google Maps here. Red circles added by the author.

Isle Royale and Drummond Island are both in northern Michigan but they are on different lakes and they are different worlds. Isle Royale, 45 miles long and five or so miles wide, is in the northwest corner of Lake Superior, just east of the ‘nose’ of Minnesota. Drummond Island, a bit smaller in area, is a projection of the Upper Michigan peninsula into the northwest corner of Lake Huron.

In contrast to the sedimentary rocks of Drummond Island, much of Isle Royale is underlain by volcanic rock and igneous rock. Photo from Wikimedia Commons in public domain here.

I’ll call them ‘different worlds’ because Isle Royale is entirely within a National Park and is a wilderness area. No vehicles are allowed on the island. Drummond Island is more commercialized and crisscrossed with ORV/ATV trails (off-road vehicles or all-terrain vehicles).

Map of Isle Royale from Wikimedia Commons. In public domain here.

We’ll look at Isle Royale first. From my examination of Google satellite views I doubt there are more than twenty buildings on the island, all clustered around either end of the island: Rock Harbor on the west and Windigo on the east. There’s a lodge and a visitor center. Each cluster (they are too small to call them a ‘town’ or…