The Garden Peninsula is a peninsula of 22 miles (35 km) in length that extends southwestward into Lake Michigan from the mainland of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by Lake Michigan on the east, and by Big Bay de Noc on the west. The base of the peninsula is served by U.S. Highway 2, and the peninsula's west shore is reached by M-183. The largest settlement on the peninsula is the village of Garden.[1]
Many of the peninsula's hardwoods were cut down for use in the charcoal-fired iron furnaces operated by the Jackson Iron Company in 1867–1891 at what is now Fayette State Park, on the peninsula's western shore. With its access to Great Lakes shipping, the remaining lumber of the Garden Peninsula was largely logged by the 1890s. However, the area is still home to endemic plants and disjunct populations.[2]
After the conclusion of the old-growth logging era, homesteaders tried to develop an agricultural economy on the cleared land; but these efforts largely failed in the 20th century, the main exceptions being fruit such as strawberries. Much of the peninsula reverted to second-growth woodland within the Lake Superior State Forest.
Most of the peninsula is part of Delta County, although a small portion in the east is part of Schoolcraft County.
- ^ Michigan Atlas and Gazetteer (10th ed.). Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme. 2002. pp. 90–91.
- ^ Emmet Judziewicz and David Kopitzke (September 1999). "Wisconsin's Lake Michigan Islands Plant Survey-II" (PDF). Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Endangered Resources. Retrieved 23 January 2019.