How The Ultra Rich Stopped a Huron Mountain National Park in Michigan

Many Michigan residents are at least familiar with, even if they haven't visited, lands overseen by America's National Park Service: Isle Royale, Sleeping Bear Dunes and Pictured Rocks.

What almost no one remembers is that there was another national park planned for Michigan, the Huron Mountains National Park in the central Upper Peninsula between Marquette and L'Anse. But, obviously, it doesn't exist.

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The reason is a shadowy group of the almost certainly uberest of the rich in the state, the owner/members of the Huron Mountain Club. Limited to just 50 members and said to be passed down through the generations of Gilded Age titans of business, the club has ownership of thousands of acres of land with cottages and clubhouses for members to enjoy.

READ MORE: If you can find it and respect it, you can say for free at the rustic Club Superior cabin in northern Michigan

So what does the Huron Mountain Club have to do with a never-happened Huron Mountain National Park?

In a book about the formation of Sleeping Bear Dunes, the NPS notes that in the 1950s several sites were considered for National Parks under a program named Save our Shorelines, or SOS. There were several sites considered including many recognizable today as NPS land like the Indiana Dunes as well as Michigan's two national lakeshores. The Huron Mountains were one of those Save our Shoreline sites studied for a park.

How Michigan's Huron Mountains National Park Died

However it was the efforts of the HMC that killed the park. According to the NPS history,

While the National Park Service was still trying to negotiate access to the private preserve, critics were able to blast the prospect of a significant taking of well-managed private conservation lands. The Huron Mountain Club was able to frame the public debate strictly in its own terms. They were the “wise” husbands of the area and the government was uninformed about the recreational potential of the area. “We know very well,” said Renville Wheat, a club director, that “casual visitors or tourists unaccustomed to such conditions (wilderness) would generally speaking, not enjoy these woods.”

...

Before the park service even knew the battle had been joined, the club engineered a resolution in the Michigan State Senate to condemn a Huron Mountain National Park

And that's why a huge swath of Michigan's Upper Peninsula will almost certainly remain hidden from you with almost no chance to access it. The Huron Mountains do indeed remain forever wild and untamed but under the stewardship of a small cabal of 50 families in the HMC rather than the National Park Service.

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If you're curious about as close a look as you can get to the Huron Mountain Club - this video was filmed right outside the guard shack.

And that guard shack is exactly as far as the Google Street View car made it as well.