Alpena County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the population was 28,907. The county seat is Alpena. It is considered to be part of Northern Michigan.
Alpena is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Alpena County, and is the only city within the county. The population was 10,197 at the 2020 census, making it the third most populated city in the Northern Michigan region, after Traverse City and Cadillac. The city is surrounded by Alpena Township, but the two are administered autonomously. It is the core city of the Alpena micropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Alpena County and had a total population of 28,907 at the 2020 census.
The protected areas of Michigan come in an array of different types and levels of protection. Michigan has five units of the National Park Service system. There are 14 federal wilderness areas; the majority of these are also tribal-designated wildernesses. It has one of the largest state forest systems as well having four national forests. The state maintains a large state park system and there are also regional parks, and county, township and city parks. Still other parks on land and in the Great Lakes are maintained by other governmental bodies. Private protected areas also exist in the state, mainly lands owned by land conservancies.
Michigan Underwater Preserves or Michigan Bottomland Preserves are protected areas of the Great Lakes on Michigan's coast. The thirteen designated areas, comprising a surface area of over 7,000 square miles (18,000 km2), are considered to be "Underwater museums" and serve to protect concentrations of shipwrecks, unique geologic features and other submerged sites through awareness and public interest. The program is currently receiving no funding from the state and does not offer any extra legal protection for the sites in the preserves. However, it is a felony to remove or disturb underwater artifacts in the Great Lakes. Persons apprehended and convicted of removing or willfully damaging underwater artifacts risk confiscation of their equipment, stiff fines and up to two years imprisonment. The Michigan Underwater Preserve Council advocates on behalf of all of Michigan's Underwater Preserves.
The Sturgeon Point Light Station is a lighthouse on Lake Huron in Haynes Township, Alcona County, northeastern lower Michigan. Established to ward mariners off a reef that extends 1.5 miles (2.4 km) lakeward from Sturgeon Point, it is today regarded as a historic example of a Cape Cod style Great Lakes lighthouse.
The SS Samuel Mather was the first of seven U.S. merchant ships to bear that name. The wooden Mather sank in 1891 after she was rammed by the steel freighter Brazil in heavy fog in Whitefish Bay 8 miles (13 km) from Point Iroquois, ending the Mather's 4-year career. Her intact wreck is a rare of example of wooden freighters that plied the Great Lakes and she is a popular scuba diving site. Although there was no loss of life when the Mather sank, her wreck claimed the lives of three scuba divers more than 100 years after she sank. Artifacts from her wreck were illegally removed in the 1980s by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. The artifacts are now the property of the State of Michigan and are on display as a loan to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The wreck of the Mather is protected as part of an underwater museum in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve.
SS Myron was a wooden steamship built in 1888. She spent her 31-year career as lumber hooker, towing schooner barges on the Great Lakes. She sank in 1919, in a Lake Superior November gale. All of her 17 crew members were killed but her captain survived. He was found drifting on wreckage near Ile Parisienne. Her tow, the Miztec, survived. Myron defied the adage that Lake Superior "seldom gives up her dead" when all 17 crewmembers were found frozen to death wearing their life jackets. Local residents chopped eight of Myron's sailors from the ice on the shore of Whitefish Bay and buried them at the Mission Hill Cemetery in Bay Mills Township, Michigan.
Miztec was built as a three-masted schooner in 1890. She was later converted to a schooner barge and served as a consort for lumber hookers on the Great Lakes. She escaped destruction in a severe 1919 storm that sank her longtime companion, the SS Myron, only to sink on the traditional day of bad luck, Friday the 13th in May 1921, with the loss of all hands. She came to rest on Lake Superior's bottom off Whitefish Point near the Myron.
Rockport State Recreation Area is a 4,237-acre (17.15 km2) state park located along the shore of Lake Huron in Alpena and Presque Isle counties in the state of Michigan. It is operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and was established in 2012. The park contains limestone formations and an old limestone quarry. There is a deep water boat launch that can accommodate all sizes of watercraft. The park is located along the Lake Huron Flyway and is used to gauge the health of Lake Huron and its shoreline environment. Several ship wrecks can be found off-shore in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary including the Portland and the Portsmouth. The park was previously known as "The Rockport property" and is not far north of Alpena, Michigan.
SS D.R. Hanna was a 552-foot (168 m) long American Great Lakes freighter that operated on the Great Lakes from November 12, 1906 to her sinking on May 16, 1919 after a collision with Quincy A. Shaw. D.R. Hanna was like many other freighters, and was used to haul bulk cargoes such as iron ore, coal and grain.
SS Choctaw was a steel-hulled American freighter in service between 1892 and 1915, on the Great Lakes of North America. She was a so-called monitor vessel, containing elements of traditional lake freighters and the whaleback ships designed by Alexander McDougall. Choctaw was built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. She was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in 1894 and spent the rest of her working life with it. On her regular route between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette, and Cleveland, she carried iron ore downbound, and coal upbound.
The following index is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Wikipedia's articles on recreational dive sites. The level of coverage may vary:
SS Ohio was a wooden hulled Great Lakes freighter that served on the Great Lakes of North America from her construction in 1875, to her sinking in September 1894 when she collided with the schooner barge Ironton which also sank in the collision. Ironton was being towed by the steamer Charles J. Kershaw, which was also towing the schooner Moonlight. Ohio was found upright in 2017, over 122 years after her sinking in over 200 feet of water off Presque Isle, Michigan. In March, 2023, it was announced that Ironton had been located in 2019. The researchers who discovered Ohio plan to nominate her for a listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
Middle Island is an island in Lake Huron, located in Alpena Township, Alpena County, Michigan. The island is positioned little over a mile and a half from the community of Lakewood on the mainland. The Middle Island Light, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and built in 1905, lies on the eastern edge of the island. It used to be home to a Life-Saving Station. The light house was automated in 1961, and regular staffing ceased. The island is within the boundaries of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It preserves the lighthouse along with the shipwreck Portsmouth (1867).
SS Russia was an iron-hulled American Great Lakes package freighter that sank in a Lake Huron gale on April 30, 1909, near DeTour Village, Michigan, with all 22 of her crew and one passenger surviving.
SS Vernon was a wooden-hulled American passenger and package freighter that sank in a Lake Michigan storm on October 29, 1887, near Two Rivers, Wisconsin, with the loss of between 36 and 50 lives, making her one of the deadliest shipwrecks ever to have occurred in Wisconsin. Only one of the people on board survived.
The Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary is a national marine sanctuary administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce; NOAA co-manages the sanctuary jointly with the State of Wisconsin. It is located in Lake Michigan along the coast of Wisconsin. It was created in 2021 as the 15th national marine sanctuary and protects shipwrecks considered nationally important archaeological resources.
The Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the waters of the United States in southeastern Lake Ontario off the coast of New York. It was designated on September 6, 2024, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It protects the area's maritime cultural history, including historic shipwrecks, and areas of great cultural, historical, and spiritual importantce to Native American peoples of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It offers opportunities for research, community engagement, education and outreach activities, and maritime-heritage-related tourism.
