Northwoods Legacy
Expanded January 2026.
The Northwoods are a special place. But this place that we call home today is not the same as the Northwoods our ancestors once experienced, nor will it be the same for which future generations will care. As the tagline in our current exhibit, Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (Our Special Place) states, "The Northwoods are the result of a millennia of change - and are changing still.”
When I envision the Northwoods I know, I hear the familiar call of loons echoing across Lake Namakagon. This lake was my first landing spot when I came down from Chequamegon Bay to intern for the Museum in early June of 2015. I felt both removed from life in the big city of Ashland, where I had formerly resided, and equally immersed in the busy resort community that seemingly exploded with activity each summer. The regular loon calls most summer nights helped me feel grounded and connected to a storied history of this unique community. On the few nights boat motors were quiet, I imagined myself on the shores of a lake formerly undeveloped and wild. But when was that?
The lake had already been plenty developed for some time, long before jet skis and rental pontoons populated the water’s surface. Namekaagong, the place of the sturgeon (“Name” is the word for sturgeon in Ojibwemowin), is a place name for the corresponding river, where fish fed Indigenous populations prior to them introducing the river’s bounty to missionaries beginning in the 1830’s. Various material culture – including arrowheads and spearpoints – had been removed from the Lake Namakagon’s beaches, and for some time were even held by the Museum in our collections. This place has long been significant to human experience.
Following the land’s early settlement first by Woodland tribes, then the migrated Ojibwe, and most recently European immigrants, the latter turned their attention to the massive trees that would afford mass amounts of timber to growing communities and change to the land. It was at first natural for me to overlook the immense human impact on the landscape around my seasonal housing. I regularly explored the walking trails uninterrupted, surrounded by massive trees that rivaled any I had seen before. I imagined they were old growth – untouched. They were not.
Now when I imagine the Northwoods of a hundred years ago, I see young hemlocks rising in a regenerating forest - a landscape still marked by the indelible impacts of industrial logging. Perhaps nowhere else in the area is the story of the logging era more beguiling than that of the southern shores of Lake Namakagon, the Forest Lodge Estate.
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| Mary Griggs Burke, self-portrait. On loan from the United States Forest Service. |
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| Hand-tied flies for fishing. On loan from the United States Forest Service. |