Summer Creek, Big Betsy, and the Keweenaw south shore:More maps added 2015.03.23, some pictures on 2015.12.01. [The maps and photos linked at bottom of page]This is a website for my land and the surrounding country near Big Betsy, on the south shore of Keweenaw County, Michigan. I bought 40 acres here in 2015 (cutover and thus ~cheap, of course), and now it's my job to care for, protect, and watch it recover. I can't get there for a while, and in fact have never been there except traveling down the Gay-Lac La Belle Road that goes through it, but I can dream via maps (which are also fun for me to make), aerial imagery, and the few pixely photos I have. This is all primarily for my amusement, but may be of interest to others (but the pages have a 'no robots' rule, so probably won't be found via a web search). The great things about this spot: Like my spot at Vermillion, this place is under the full influence of the Lake Superior weather and geography machine. This one is ~150m from Lake Superior at the SE corner (my Vermillion land is about 1200m, which is close enough to hear the waves in rough weather). It's in a relatively ignored area of Keweenaw County, at least as on the road system, and there aren't many houses nearby - and none on the shore. The alarming parcelization and desecration of the shoreline for trophy houses that has marred the north shore is mostly absent on the south. There is very little (aside from a splendid road and beautiful nature) here to attract the sort of busy-ness more common along the main tourist routes of Highways 28, 41, and Brockway Mtn. Drive. A mile or two of the shore in each direction from my place is in CFR, MI commercial forest, so at least for now not for sale and that downward spiral. Most of the interior of Keweenaw County, including near my land, is also commercial forest. So there's a lot of forestry activity here and there, now and then, but also few houses and a lot of peaceful and wild nature. I've been camping in this area off and on for about 20 years, and have gotten some good photography (e.g.), which further convinced me this was the spot. I first lived and worked in the Keweenaw (at Ft. Wilkins State Park in Copper Harbor) over 25 years ago, in 1989 - it's what warped me to pursue the unstable and low-paying field of botany! On the name: Unlike the land I have 90 miles to the SE near Vermillion, and near Eureka, in Alaska, this place isn't really near any ghost town... despite the fact that the Keweenaw is known for its many ghost towns! So I had to come up with a place name - Big Betsy is only about a mile away, but is really a localized place name to the mouth of the river of the same name. So I found this: on the mid-century Michigan Department of Conservation maps there is a combination of error and fact that helps. There is, apparently, an extra creek drafted in the DOC map where only one (Winters Creek) ought to be. There is also one creek named further to the SW that I can't find anywhere else (Spring Creek), which looks although small as if it, or may have been real at least in the last century. So, if the middle two creeks - whether real or imagined - between Spring and Winters Creeks might be similarly named, that'd make mine "Summer Creek", which sounds like a nice place, and the nonexistent one "Autumn Creek" (or perhaps 'Fall', as in fallen off the map). I am not sure this will be the long-term name... as with Cats, a better name may reveal itself in time... I checked der Veb for ["Summer Creek" Michigan] and found only skanky southern MI suburban apartment complexes and the like - eeew! So here I present my latest little nature reserve. 1. Area maps (links right down there): I've just started these; eventually there'll be maps at different scales from the immediate land area to the mainland of Keweenaw County: 3k, 10k, 50k, and 130k scales ("scale" according to the GIS production software; of course the actual scale depends on your computer screen. Most are simple imagery maps without additional lettering, since those the most interesting for me now to see the changes over time (also easiest!), but at some point I will add actual 'made' maps from assorted geodata with proper lettering, etc. and, maybe, some scanned hand-drawn maps (which are always prettier). In any event, there is a graphic scale [scale bar] on each map). They're the same pixel size (the scale bar changes appropriately): 1200x776 for the screen view, and you get the 10200x6600 if you press the screen view picture ... Lots of detail in those big versions! This area has a lot of aerial and satellite imagery available. A lot of it I have to georeference to make them "line-up" in place, so that'll take a while. What's pretty cool is that there is very good quality aerial photos from as far back as 1938 here, and regularly after that. So a good opportunity to see changes over almost 80 years. I've split them by scale, which means each set will stay at the same view, with the maps showing the changes year-to-year. The '3k' are the largest scale, 'zoomed in' on the land; '130k' shows the whole Keweenaw County mainland. They are in order from oldest to newest (as time itself, apparently!) Use the controls above the maps to view manually or automatically in sequence. There are notes of variable or dubious usefulness below the map. The screen maps are ~300-600k so might be slow to load
depending. If the maps are too big and you can't see both
the controls and views on the screen, hit F11 for
fullscreen. OK, finally the links to the
maps - they open in new tabs: As with Vermillion, I'll add the original 1850's land survey maps here too. 2. Miscellaneous photos: Unlike Vermillion, there's not much scientific or other 'literature' for the Keweenaw south shore, so I can't add that here. I'm still looking though... 3. See also: |