List Of Michigan State Parks
This is a list of Michigan state parks and related protected areas under Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) jurisdiction. DNR also operates 16 state harbors on the Great Lakes. Michigan's state parks system was started in 1919 and now contains over 100 parks and recreation areas covering 285,000 acres (1,150 km²). There are 13,500 campsites in 142 campgrounds and 879 miles (1,400 km) of trails. The parks received 21.2 million visitors in 2008.
Two Michigan state parks pre-date the creation of the park system in 1919. Michigan's first state park, Mackinac Island State Park, was created in 1895. It had served as the nation's second national park from 1875. In 1909 Michilimackinac State Park was created in nearby Mackinaw City. Both of these parks, along with Historic Mill Creek State Park are under the jurisdiction of the Mackinac Island State Park Commission.
DNR operates 746 boat launches on 57,000 acres (230 km2) of designated public water access sites. It also operates 16 "harbors of refuge" as well as providing support for the other 61 harbors in the system. The harbors of refuge are approximately 30 miles (50 km) apart along the Great Lakes shoreline to provide shelter from storms and often provide boat launches and supplies. There are 11 state underwater preserves covering 2,450 square miles (6,300 km2) of Great Lakes bottomland and ten of them have a maritime museum or interpretive center in a nearby coastal community.
The state forest system consists of 4,000,000 acres (20,000 km2) of primarily working forest but also includes 138 campgrounds (including a dozen equestrian campgrounds). The Michigan state game and wildlife areas encompass more than 340,000 acres (1,400 km2). DNR also oversees the trail systems in the state. This includes 880 miles (1,400 km) of non-motorized trails, 1,145 miles (1,800 km) of rail-trails, 3,193 miles (5,100 km) of off-road vehicle (ORV) routes and 6,216 miles (10,000 km) of snowmobile trails.
For a discussion of all protected areas in Michigan under all jurisdictions, see Protected areas of Michigan.
Read more about List Of Michigan State Parks: Map, State Parks, Recreation Areas, State Forests, Other Sites
Famous quotes containing the words list, state and/or parks:
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)