The Birth of Reforestation

Near the end of the logging era, there was a realization that our forests were not the inexhaustible resource that was once thought. Throughout the United States there was an effort to reforest the cutover lands and develop a new system of modern forestry. In Michigan this began to happen in the Grayling-Higgins Lake-Roscommon area of the northern Lower Peninsula.

In this episode of the North Country History with Rob Burg podcast I go on location to the Historic Higgins Lake Nursery and the Beal Plantation where some of the early efforts of Michigan's reforestation movement began. I recorded these remotes in May 2024 during a vacation that took me from Higgins Lake to the central Upper Peninsula.

For more information about the sites visited, please check out these links:

North Higgins Lake State Park:
https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/parksandtrails/Details.aspx?id=478&type=SPRK

Higgins Lake Nursery and CCC Museum:
https://www.michigan.gov/mhc/museums/hln-ccc

Beal Plantation:
https://graylingmichigan.org/listing/w-j-beal-tree-planting-area/46/

Episode Sources:
Botti, William and Michael D. Moore. "Michigan's State Forests: A Century of Stewardship." East Lansing, MI, Michigan State University Press, 2006.

Dempsey, Dave. "Ruin & Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader." Ann Arbor, MI,  The University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Dickmann, Donald I. and Larry A. Leefers. "The Forests of Michigan." Ann Arbor, MI, The University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Hotchkiss, George W. "History of the Lumber and Forestry Industry of the Northwest." Chicago, IL, 1898.

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