North Country History with Rob Burg
Your podcast on the Forest History of the Great Lakes Region. The forests of the Great Lakes have been home to people for centuries and have provided great resources and wealth, shelter, food, and recreation for many. But in the wake of these uses, the region has been environmentally damaged from deforestation, fire, and erosion, and are still recovering to this day. I will be your guide for exploring the forests and sharing stories of the forests and the people who have called them home.
About Rob Burg: Hi! I'm an environmental historian specializing on the forest history of the Great Lakes Region. I am a mostly lifelong Michigan resident and studied at Eastern Michigan University for both my undergraduate degree in History and graduate studies in Historic Preservation. My 35-year professional life has mostly been in history museums, including the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, the Michigan History Museum, and the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. I began my environmental history career with managing both the Hartwick Pines Logging Museum and the Civilian Conservation Corps Museum for the Michigan History Museum system, directing the Lovells Museum of Trout Fishing History, archivist for the Devereaux Memorial Library in Grayling, Michigan, and as the Interpretive Resources Coordinator for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska. I am proud that the first person to ever call me an environmental historian was none other than Dr. William Cronon, the dean of American Environmental History.
North Country History with Rob Burg
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.