Canyon Falls Roadside Park

Highway rest areas aren't usually noted for their hiking opportunities, but the Upper Peninsula has several that feature more than the typical Romtec restrooms and a handicap accessible picnic table or two. Canyon Falls is one of those places.

Canyon Falls on the Sturgeon River

The trail from the parking lot isn't a long one -- maybe half a mile in to where it officially ends and you get to backtrack -- but it's a nice little walk through mixed hardwood forest. There are boardwalks over the boggy areas and a bridge over a small creek. There are some uneven areas (moderately rocky terrain, some protruding roots), but overall it would get an Easy in any hiking guide. It is not handicap accessible, but it comes close. Back when I was a Girl Scout Leader, this was one of the hikes we did when the kids were working on outdoor badges. 

The S.O. leading the way. 

The trail officially terminates at an overlook of the falls. It used to go a little farther from the parking area -- up and over the rock outcrop shown below -- but I'm guessing lack of maintenance money led to the state deciding to cut it short. The information sign in the parking lot is unintentionally funny: rather than making a whole new sign to show the abbreviated trail, the state elected to cut a piece of wood in a shape that fits neatly over where the trail used to go and then painted it to match the existing sign. 

Old trail that continues past official end of trail

You can't really tell in the photo by there were some decaying wooden hand rails to the side of the old trail. The fact the Canyon Falls trail terminates at the overlook, however, doesn't mean that's where a person has to stop. The blue blaze on the tree in the upper left of the photo screams North Country Trail loud and clear. How much of the North Country Trail is complete in this section is a mystery: official Trail maps show it as being in pieces, but I know there are segments that are totally done right down to having Adirondack shelters in place, that are not shown on the website. 

Sturgeon River upstream of the actual falls

We were not out to do a major hike, just enjoying a short break on the drive home, so we did not venture very far past when the end of trail sign was posted. We did, however, diverge from the current marked path a little on our way back to the parking lot. The state redid the rest area a few years ago and in the process moved the trail head. We followed what had been the old trail over toward the highway bridge. 

Old trail head; Canyon Falls has been a roadside park since the 1920s; I'm not sure when this sign dates from

The bridge is nifty one, a lovely Moderne design, and is an engineering landmark. Construction began in 1947, it was complete in 1948. It's significant for its design, steel arch bridges are rare in Michigan, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The main span is 128 feet from pin to pin. It is a gorgeous bridge; MDOT really needs to do a book on a stick to brag about it a little.

Canyon Falls bridge on US 41

A snowmobile trail goes under the bridge (note wooden guard rail at the left side of photo); so do the blaze marks for the North Country Trail. I never really thought much about where the snowmobile trails run in this county, although I guess it makes sense to have some overlap between the hiking trail and the snowmobile/ORV trail in some places. Among other things, the snowmobile trail already has bridges over various creeks and rivers. We were tempted to walk farther along the snowmobile trail, if only to see just how far it paralleled the river, but we weren't prepared for an actual hike. We'd stopped to amble, not to hike, so that's what we did, ambled back to the car while admiring the wild flowers. 

Cowslips blooming next to Bacco Creek

Jack-in-the-Pulpits

Yellow violets

Update: Saw a notice in the local paper that the local North Country trail group has a guided hike planned along a section of the trail from over by the old prison camp on the Baraga Plains to Canyon Falls so it appears my assumption about the meaning of the blue blazes was dead on. They give a rough estimate of 3 to 4 miles for the distance that will be hiked. 

Good news from one of my favorite parks

Ranger Bob let me know yesterday that one of my favorite places on the planet, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, can boast another addition to the National Register of Historic Places. Apostles already boasted an impressive list of historic sites, but effective July 3, 2008, the Rocky Island fishing community was added when it was officially recognized as a unique and historically significant place. The Rocky Island historic district preserves both a type of structure and a way of life that played a significant role in the history of the region.

Apostles is so well-known for its historic lighthouses --there are six light stations within the park's boundaries -- that it's easy to overlook the fact the park also has a rich and deep history in the economic development and history of the upper Great Lakes. Commercial fishing, lumbering, and brownstone quarries are all part of the park's history.

The Rocky Island community began as a summer fish camp used by Norwegian immigrant fishermen and their families. It evolved into a summer recreational community, but with descendants of the same families returning each summer for multiple generations.

The nomination for Rocky has been in process for at least 7 years now, maybe longer -- if you go back to the original nomination of the Hadland Fish Camp, a site that is now considered a contributing element within the larger district, it's been more like 30 -- so it's good to see it finally officially recognized.

The black and white photo is from 1947 and shows the Nelson cabin on its way to Rocky from one of the other islands. The photo right below it shows that same cabin as it looked in July 2006. All photos courtesy Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, of course. The district nomination is not yet available through the National Register website, but I'm looking forward to reading it once it's up.

Sawmill houses

A few months ago I got asked if I'd help with a possible National Register nomination for a house located in the east Texas pine forests, a really nice example of vernacular construction and style. The house is one story on stone piers (probably loose laid, but I haven't taken a close look at them yet) with a hipped roof and a veranda that runs the full width of the facade. It's got the classic deep South windows, the ones that come close to being floor to ceiling in height, front door is centered and there's a stone chimney on each side wall. It's a style I always think of as Acadian, but I'm told is referred to as French Creole. It is, in fact, a considerably down-sized version of the plantation house in the photo -- same general concept with the deep veranda, the big windows, hipped roof, but all done a whole lot smaller and minus the attic dormers. It's an east Texas vernacular farmhouse, after all, not the remnants of a high-style plantation.

The style isn't the interesting thing about the house, though. What makes it potentially NR eligible is that it's sawmill construction, and still looks it. Sawmill construction is a technique that's only possible in situations where load-bearing walls aren't going to be supporting a whole lot of weight. An alternative name for the technique is box construction. Putting it as simply as possible, there are no wall studs. As the above photo of the interior of the Klepzig Mill illustrates, there's a stringer at the top, a stringer at the bottom, and sometimes a stringer across the middle, but no vertical studs. The walls are nailed to each other at the corners. What you're seeing when you look at the vertical planks is the backside of the exterior wall. From the outside it looks like this:

The gaps between the vertical planks would be covered with battens. The technique was widely used across the South. It was fast, it was easy, it was cheap. Lumber companies often built dozens of sawmill houses for use as lumber camps or company towns as a cheap, temporary solution for workers needing housing; settlers moving into rural areas to farm used the same technique for similar reasons. Ozark National Scenic Riverways has three examples I'm familiar with: the Klepzig Mill building and springhouse (interior pictured below) associated with the Klepzig farm, and the Suzie Nichols cabin. Although the written descriptions of sawmill construction always talk about it being a 19th century transition between log cabins and balloon or platform framing, the OZAR structures are all twentieth century.

The house in east Texas in some ways is a totally typical sawmill house, while in others it's rather unusual. Among other things, it still looks like a sawmill house -- it has the original board and batten exterior. I've no doubt Sabine County had quite a few others like it built around the same time, using the same floor plan and materials, but they're all either long gone -- razed because they were too small and too old-fashioned -- or so thoroughly covered up with aluminum or vinyl siding that they're now unrecognizable.

I'll be back in east Texas next week. Here's hoping the house still looks as eligible the next time I see it as it did eight months ago.