“As my plane descended into Chicago, I looked down at Lake Michigan and thought how strange it was that such a large body of water could be fresh.”
— Jerry Dennis, The Living Great Lakes, 2003
Lake Michigan’s name derives from a term used in various Algonquian languages for “big lake.” Indigenous nations that lived along Lake Michigan included the Fox, Illinois, Menominee, Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi and Winnebago. Early encounters with Europeans could be farcical when they weren't tragic: when French explorer Jean Nicollet landed in Green Bay in 1634, he draped himself in a damask robe and fired off muskets in the belief he was about to meet Chinese officials. Tribal rivalries, exacerbated by alliances with European powers, led to years of warfare in the early 18th century in present-day Wisconsin.
Potawatomi History
European names for the lake evolved during the exploration era. In the early 17th century, Samuel de Champlain called it simply “Grand Lac.” Within a few years, it had become known as “Lake of the Stinking Water,” which legends suggest came either from the stench produced by algae or swamps or from an insult Indigenous guides used to describe a tribe living along Green Bay. By the 1680s, it was mapped as “Lac des Illinois.” By the early 18th century, its identity crisis was over.
The lake’s two largest cities were taking shape by the mid-19th century. Milwaukee (577,222) experienced a heavy influx of German immigrants who’d fled the Revolutions of 1848. They developed a thriving beer industry, aided by the recipes they brought across the Atlantic, a large natural ice supply, nearby farmers who supplemented their grain harvests by growing hops, and high taxes applied on other forms of booze after the Civil War. By the end of the century, brewers like Blatz, Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz were on their way to becoming familiar names.
1879 advertisement for Val. Blatz's Milwaukee lager beer. (Wittemann Bros./Wikimedia)
At the dawn of the 20th century, Chicago (2,746,388) was second in population only to New York (today it’s number three, having been outpaced by Los Angeles). Amid its rapid growth, officials made provisions to protect its lakefront for public use. In 1836, officials set aside a narrow strip of shoreline as “a public ground — a common to remain forever open, clear and free of any buildings, or other obstruction whatever.” The work of mail-order catalogue tycoon Aaron Montgomery Ward and such architects as Daniel Burnham contributed to the development and continuity of Grant Park and the overall waterfront park system, helping Chicago live up to its motto, Urbs in Horto (“city in a garden”).
Lake Michigan boasts the largest collection of freshwater sand dunes in the world — and they have inspired many legends. The Sleeping Bear Dunes near Empire, Michigan, was named after an Indigenous legend about a mother bear and her two cubs. The family swam across Lake Michigan to flee a forest fire, and when the cubs drowned near the shoreline, the Great Spirit Manitou took pity and marked the spots with the Manitou Islands. The spot on a bluff the mother climbed to wait for her cubs became the dune.
East of Chicago, the Indiana Dunes played a formative role in the field of North American ecology due to the pioneering work of botanist Henry Cowles at the turn of the 20th century. His observations of these dunes, with their shifting sands and treelines, helped establish ecology as the study of how environments change over time. Conservationists campaigned to preserve the dunes as industrial and residential growth encroached upon them. Following an outcry over a proposed deep-sea port, Congress established the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966.
(Kerry Kelly/Wikimedia)
Among the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan falls in the middle: second in volume (4,918 cubic kilometres) and population (12 million), third in surface area (57,753 square kilometres) and average depth (85 metres). The only Great Lake contained entirely within the United States, it is bordered by Michigan on its north and east, Wisconsin on the northwest, Illinois on the southwest, and Indiana on the south. Its largest cities are Chicago (2,720,546) and Milwaukee (600,155), which also serve as its major shipping ports. The Illinois Waterway system connects the lake to the Mississippi River via a 541-kilometre route of navigable water marked by a series of canals, lakes, and rivers.
The lake supports active commercial and sport fisheries, though its aquatic diversity has varied over time. Native fish include bass, perch, sturgeon, trout, and whitefish. Overfishing and the invasion of alewives and sea lampreys after the First World War decimated stocks, especially of trout. Attempts to restore the natural balance and attract fishermen included an annual stocking of the lake with salmon and trout. Fears of the invasive Asian carp entering Michigan and the other Great Lakes via the Chicago River have prompted calls for the separation of the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds.
The forest fire at Peshtigo, Wisconsin, 8 October 1871. Wood engraving from a contemporary American newspaper. (Grainger Collection/Wikimedia)
The northern portion of the lake has a mixed-cover forest, shaped by thick glacial deposits, that is home to beech, birch, oak, pine, and sugar maple. Some protected forest areas along the shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula cover the remains of 19th-century mines and boom towns. On the west side of the lake, a transitional savanna boasts basswood, maple, and walnut trees; a tallgrass prairie; and an endangered oak savanna. Sand dunes along the Indiana shoreline provide habitats for over 1,400 species of vascular plants.
St. Catharines mayor Walter Sendzik on Lake Michigan
Flora helped fuel the flames of the deadliest recorded wildfire in world history. Known as the Peshtigo Fire, it hit both sides of Green Bay on October 8, 1871. It might have been caused by a brush fire set by railway workers to clear forest for construction. Encouraged by strong winds and the lingering effects of an unusually dry summer, the blaze affected up to 1.5 million acres of land. Estimates place the death toll as high as 2,500. The town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was destroyed within an hour. Despite the casualties and damage, it garnered less national attention than another, less deadly, blaze that occurred farther south along Lake Michigan that day: the Great Chicago Fire, which, counter to what the legend says, not started by Mrs. O’ Leary’s cow knocking over a lantern.
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