Houghton County Memorial

If you fly a floatplane, Isle Royale is the prize: the least-visited national park in the lower 48, out in Lake Superior 14 miles from the nearest shore, and most people who reach it fly in by floatplane from Houghton (KCMX). It's closed more than six months a year, when ice makes the crossing impossible even by air, and there are no roads; the year-round residents are moose, wolves, and a tiny overwinter staff. The wolves and moose are the famous part, studied continuously since 1958, the longest predator-prey study in the world, now in its 68th year. The 2025 count was 37 wolves and 524 moose, the system finally rebalancing after the herd crashed from starvation. The Greenstone Ridge Trail runs 42 miles down the island's spine, four or five days end to end, and the one lodge has no TV and no cell service.

Twenty-two wild islands scattered off the Bayfield Peninsula at the far northern tip of Wisconsin, in the cold clear water of Lake Superior. The mainland and island shores are lined with red sandstone cliffs that Superior's waves have carved into a maze of sea caves, arches, and chambers. In summer kayakers thread the caves; in a hard winter — when the lake freezes solid enough to walk on, which doesn't happen every year — the caves transform into the famous Apostle Islands ice caves, hung with cathedral-scale icicles and frozen waterfalls, drawing pilgrims across the ice. The islands hold old lighthouses and the largest collection of historic light stations in the Park System; one, Sand Island, still has old-growth forest.

42 miles of multicolored sandstone cliffs rising 50-200 feet above Lake Superior — striped with mineral-stained orange, green, brown, and white from copper, iron, manganese, and limonite. Sea caves, arches, and waterfalls (Miners Falls, Bridalveil Falls, Spray Falls) cascade directly into the lake. From the air, the cliffs are unbelievable — the only comparable scenery is Australia's Twelve Apostles. Lake Superior's clear, cold water makes shipwrecks visible from low altitude in protected waters.

On a 130-foot cliff on Lake Superior's North Shore, 50 miles northeast of Duluth. Built 1909-1910 in response to the Mataafa Storm of November 1905, which sank or grounded 29 ships on Lake Superior in a single November day — including the Edenborn and Madeira, both wrecked within sight of the future lighthouse location. The Mataafa itself, a steel ore carrier, broke in half against the Duluth piers; nine men froze to death on the stern while their crewmates watched from shore. Congress funded Split Rock and three other Lake Superior lighthouses the following year. The light was decommissioned in 1969 when modern shipping switched to GPS. The Minnesota Historical Society now operates the lighthouse and grounds. Every November 10 — the anniversary of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinking — the light is lit ceremonially.