Keweenaw County is a county in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, the state's northernmost county. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 2,156, making it Michigan's least populous county. It is also the state's largest county by total area, when the waters of Lake Superior are included in the total. The county seat is Eagle River.
The Keweenaw Peninsula is the northernmost part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It projects into Lake Superior and was the site of the first copper boom in the United States. As of the 2000 census, its population was roughly 43,200. Its major industries are now logging and tourism, as well as jobs related to Michigan Technological University and Finlandia University.
Chlorastrolite also known as Isle Royale Greenstone, is a green or bluish green stone. Chlorastrolite has finely radiating or stellate (for examples, see crystal habits) masses that have a "turtleback" pattern. The stellate masses tend to be chatoyant, meaning they have a varying luster. This chatoyancy can be subtranslucent to opaque. Cholorastrolite is a variety of pumpellyite: Ca2(Mg,Fe)Al2(SiO4)(Si2O7)(OH)2·H2O. Chlorastrolite was once thought to be an impure variety of prehnite or thomsonite.
The North Shore of Lake Superior runs from Duluth, Minnesota, United States, at the southwestern end of the lake, to Thunder Bay and Nipigon, Ontario, Canada, in the north to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in the east. The shore is characterized by alternating rocky cliffs and cobblestone beaches, with forested hills and ridges through which scenic rivers and waterfalls descend as they flow to Lake Superior.
Rock Harbor is the main access point for visitors landing on Isle Royale in northern Lake Superior. It sits 4 miles from the northeastern end of the forty-five mile long island, the whole of which is protected as Isle Royale National Park. Two structures in Rock Harbor -- the Rock Harbor Light and the Edisen Fishery -- are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American plate. It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton, began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian, about 1.1 billion years ago. The rift failed, leaving behind thick layers of igneous rock that are exposed in its northern reaches, but buried beneath later sedimentary formations along most of its western and eastern arms. Those arms meet at Lake Superior, which is contained within the rift valley. The lake's north shore in Ontario and Minnesota defines the northern arc of the rift. From the lake, the rift's eastern arm trends south to central lower Michigan, and possibly into Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. The western arm runs from Lake Superior southwest through portions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska to northeastern Kansas, and possibly into Oklahoma.
While it originated thousands of years earlier, copper mining in Michigan became an important industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its rise marked the start of copper mining as a major industry in the United States.
Mount Desor is the tallest mountain within Isle Royale National Park. Located on Isle Royale in Lake Superior and with an elevation of 1,394 feet (420 m), it is the third highest peak on the lake.
Michigan consists of two peninsulas that lie between east longitude, and are separated by the Straits of Mackinac, and some nearby islands. With the exception of two small areas that are drained by the Mississippi River by way of the Wisconsin River in the Upper Peninsula and by way of the Kankakee-Illinois River in the Lower Peninsula, Michigan is drained by the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence watershed and is the only state with the majority of its land thus drained.
The Isle Royale Light, or Menagerie Island Light, is a lighthouse within Isle Royale National Park, in Keweenaw County, northern Michigan, USA.
Washington Island is an uninhabited island in Lake Superior. It is within the boundary of Keweenaw County and Isle Royale National Park, a national park located within the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the westernmost point marked on most maps of the elongated archipelago that makes up this park. However, a small islet called Bottle Island and an even smaller shoal that breaks the lake surface, Rock of Ages, are located further westward.
The Greenstone Ridge Trail is a 40-mile-long (64 km) hiking trail on Isle Royale, in Lake Superior, northern Michigan. The island is within Isle Royale National Park.
Isle Royale Queen IV is a passenger ferry operating on Lake Superior between Copper Harbor, Michigan, and Isle Royale National Park, the largest island on Lake Superior and the State of Michigan's only national park. The ferry operates from mid-May to the end of September each year. In the months of June, July, and August the ferry operates nearly every day. The crossing distance between the port of Copper Harbor and the Smithwick Channel entrance to Rock Harbor at Isle Royale is 53.9 miles (86.7 km). The Queen IV makes this crossing in three hours, fifteen minutes, depending on weather conditions on Lake Superior.
The Superior Shoal is a geologic shoal of approximately 20 square miles (52 km2) located 50 miles (80 km) north of Copper Harbor, Michigan in the middle of Lake Superior, the highest point of which lies only 21 feet (6.4 m) below the lake's surface. The shoal is a hump of Keweenawan basaltic lava flows with ophitic interiors and amygdaloidal tops in an otherwise deep part of the lake, and though fishermen had known of its existence for generations it was only officially charted in 1929 by the United States Lake Survey. It has been theorized that the World War I French minesweepers Inkerman and Cerisoles, which disappeared during their maiden voyage on Lake Superior in mid-November 1918, may have run aground on this shoal and some have theorized that it may have been to blame for both the disappearance of the "Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes" on November 21, 1902 and the sinking of the "Titanic of the Great Lakes" on November 10, 1975. It is one of the known off-shore spawning and foraging habitats for the juvenile lean lake trout.
