Hartwick Pines State Park
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| Hartwick Pines State Park | |
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| IUCN Category V (Protected Landscape/Seascape) | |
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| Location: | Michigan, USA |
| Nearest city: | Grayling, Michigan |
| Coordinates: | |
| Area: | 9,672 acres (39.2 km²) |
| Governing body: | Michigan Department of Natural Resources |
Hartwick Pines State Park is a 9,672-acre (39.2 km²) State Park in the U.S. state of Michigan, located in Crawford County near Grayling and Interstate 75. It is the largest state park on Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the state's fifth-biggest park overall (the four largest parks are all on Michigan's Upper Peninsula). The park contains an old growth forest of white pines and red pines that resembles the appearance of all of Northern Michigan prior to the logging era.
[edit] Logging museum
The Hartwick Pines are a 49-acre (0.2 km²) old-growth remnant of a pine grove that was withdrawn from logging by a local timbering firm in 1927. At that time, very little old-growth pine remained in northern Michigan. One of the heirs of the firm's original owners, Karen Michelson Hartwick, donated the grove, which was then 85 acres (0.35 km²) in size, and 8,000 surrounding acres (32.4 km²) of cutover land to the state of Michigan as a memorial to the logging industry.
The state accepted the gift and worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to build the Hartwick Pines Logging Museum adjacent to the grove. The museum was erected in 1934-1935. It contains photographs and artifacts of the lumber boom years of northern Michigan. The current state park also contains a replica logging camp, which has begun to cut some of the second-growth timber planted by the CCC in the 1930s on the cutover land.
[edit] The park today
On November 11, 1940, the Armistice Day Storm badly damaged the Hartwick Pines old-growth pine grove. 36 acres (0.15 km²) of old trees were destroyed by windthrow from this and other storms, leaving behind the 49 acres that remain alive as of 2006.
An admission fee is charged to drive into the park. There is a visitor center. Visitors are encouraged to park at the visitor center and walk an accessible trail to the big trees. The Old Growth Forest Trail to the pine grove is a loop 1¼ miles (2 km) long. The tallest white pine in the grove, named Monarch, is 155 feet (47 m) tall. Its age is estimated at more than 300 years.
Hartwick Pines State Park also contains a campground, a day use area, and a network of four-season trails for summer hiking and winter cross-country skiing.
