Visit Wilderness
Search for a wilderness as the destination for your next outdoor adventure.
Why Visit Wilderness?
Learn more about the diverse ways in which we benefit from wilderness and threats wilderness areas face today.
1
Search for a wilderness as the destination for your next outdoor adventure.
While wilderness can be appreciated from afar—through online content, television, or books—nothing compares to experiencing it firsthand. Activities like camping, hiking, or hunting allow you to fully enjoy the recreational, ecological, spiritual, and health benefits that wilderness areas offer. These areas provide “outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation,” chances to observe wildlife, moments to renew and refresh, and the physical benefits of outdoor exercise. In many wilderness areas, you can even bring your well-behaved dog.
Learn more about the diverse ways in which we benefit from wilderness and threats wilderness areas face today.
The Michigan Islands Wilderness comprises Pismire, Scarecrow, and Shoe Islands, three of the eight islands designated as part of the Michigan Islands National Wildlife Refuge in Lakes Huron and Michigan. Scarecrow Island, the largest of these wilderness isles, is part of one of the smallest units in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Large submerged limestone shoals offshore help protect the rocky, cobbled shorelines.
These islands provide nesting grounds for numerous bird species, including great blue herons, black-crowned night-herons, herring gulls, ring-billed gulls, great black-backed gulls, common terns, Caspian terns, and double-crested cormorants, which gather here in substantial numbers. The primary vegetation includes standing dead green ash trees, accompanied by a dense understory of common elderberry, scattered red-osier dogwood, and various weedy plants. The decline of ash trees is largely due to the high concentration of cormorants. To protect nesting birds, public access to these islands is prohibited.
Pismire Island
45 46'06.08"N
85 24'41.56"W
Shoe Island
45 48'27.64"N
85 17'56.14W
Scarecrow Island
44 54'42.06N
83 19'43.93"W
Digital and paper maps are critical tools for wilderness visitors. Online maps can help you plan and prepare for your visit ahead of time. You can also carry digital maps with you on your GPS unit or other handheld GPS device. Having a paper map with you in the backcountry, as well as solid orienteering skills, however, ensures that you can still route-find in the event that your electronic device fails.
Motorized equipment and equipment used for mechanical transport is generally prohibited in all wilderness areas. This includes the use of motor vehicles, motorboats, motorized equipment, bicycles, hang gliders, wagons, carts, portage wheels, and the landing of aircraft including helicopters.
Date: October 23, 1970
Acreage: 12 acres
(No official title, designates Fish and Wildlife Service wildernesses) - Public Law 91-504 (10/23/1970) To designate certain lands as wilderness within National Wildlife Refuges
For more information (To download or see all affected Wilderness areas) visit our law library for 91-504 or legislative history for 91-504 for this law.
Michigan Islands National Wildlife Refuge, including the Designated Wilderness, is closed to public access except by special use permit or for maritime emergencies.
People who volunteer their time to steward our wilderness areas are an essential part of wilderness management. Contact the following groups to inquire about volunteer opportunities. Groups are listed alphabetically by the state(s) in which the wilderness is located.