Summer Island is an island in

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

, 2.5 miles (4 km) miles off the southern tip of the

Garden Peninsula The Garden Peninsula is a peninsula of 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 ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. It can easily be seen from Fairport, on the southern end of Delta County Road 483, the locally maintained extension of M-183, but is not accessible to the public. The island is part of the

Niagara Escarpment The Niagara Escarpment is a long escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States that runs predominantly east–west from New York through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and into Illinois. The escarpment is most famous as the cliff over ...

archipelago in northwestern Lake Michigan. Its highest point is 710 feet (217 m) above sea level, and 129 feet (40 m) above the level of the lake. One of its most prominent shoreline features is Gravel Point, a northern headland that stretches toward the Garden Peninsula mainland. More than half the island is owned by the state of Michigan and administered as part of

Lake Superior State Forest Lake Superior State Forest is a state forest in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is operated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The North Country Trail utilizes this state forest for 43 miles (69 km) of its route. The Lake ...

Summer Island site

On the island's northeast side, two shallow points protect Summer Harbor, a small maritime shelter and site of a former settlement. Summer Harbor is adjacent to an archeological landmark listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

as the

Summer Island site The Summer Island site, designated 20DE4, is an archaeological site located on the northwest side of Summer Island, in Delta County, Michigan. It is classified as a stratified, multi-component site with Middle Woodland (c. 100 B.C–500 A.D.), ...

. Pottery recovered here indicates that the island may have been inhabited since the

Middle Woodland In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...

period (circa 1 CE – 500 CE). During the 19th century, Summer Harbor was a fishing station for the harvesting of

lake trout The lake trout (''Salvelinus namaycush'') is a freshwater char living mainly in lakes in northern North America. Other names for it include mackinaw, namaycush, lake char (or charr), touladi, togue, and grey trout. In Lake Superior, it can also ...

and whitefish, and served as a place to live for a small corps of loggers who harvested the island's timber. In the early 20th century, Summer Harbor was again abandoned. Archeologists excavated the Native American/Euro-American settlement site in 1968–70."Summer Island Collection", Wayne State University Museum of Anthropology, accessed August 1, 200

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References

{{Authority control Islands of Delta County, Michigan Uninhabited islands of Michigan Niagara Escarpment Islands of Lake Michigan in Michigan