Place-names: Relics of the Great Lakes Lumber Era

Abstract

In the last two centuries the Lake States forest has been transformed by a succession of fur trappers, lumbermen, miners, farmers, and finally tourists. Each period of activity has contributed elements to the overlapping pattern of placenames found on present-day maps of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and these names tell us a great deal about the history of the region. Naming topographical features-indeed, even deciding which among countless topographical features should be named-was part of the process of taking possession of the land and imposing economic and cultural meaning on its forms. The scattered reminders on Lake States maps are part of a broader legacy of toponymy in the United States-a legacy that includes overlays of Indian, French, Spanish, English, Scottish, German, and other cultural inputs as well as a rich variety of truly American amalgamations, corruptions, and innovations. The galaxy of placenames not only reinforces unique regional characteristics but records a complex and changing history of land use. Although not the first to inscribe "names on the land," Lake States loggers left the richest legacy upon modern maps of the region.' The names that remain from the colorful lumbering era-the second half of the nineteenth century-hint at the preoccupations of the loggers, their changing technologies, their methods of integrating topography and industry, and their sometimes whimsical memorializations of lumbering events and personalities, both important and mundane. Like old logging road grades, scattered clearings, and scraps