Garden Island Harbor

BayGNIS 626638

Coordinates

45.7919° N, 85.5040° WGoogle Maps: Garden Island HarborDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

shippingmaritimeenvironmentgeologysoilswetlandshydrologyforeststreesvegetationplantswildlifeanimalsconservationstewardshipinvasive-speciestourism

Within

Garden Island

Summary

Garden Island Harbor is a bay on Garden Island, connected by a navigable channel to the smaller Indian Harbor. Its physical identity is recorded by GNIS; the local sources provide a more detailed, but twentieth-century, description of how the harbor was approached and used.

A July 1965 Beaver Beacon travel account describes passing the Garden Island passage buoy, avoiding a long rock reef extending from the south side of the harbor, and following the deep channel into Garden Harbor and then Indian Harbor. The account presents inter-island travel as requiring care; it does not provide survey soundings. A March 1962 Charlevoix report records a proposal for dock slips at Garden Island, but no source held here confirms construction.

A May 1988 Beacon note records a later stage of the harbor’s navigation aids: a Coast Guard cutter set a flashing channel marker between Garden and Beaver Island on May 5, and flashing buoys in the harbor itself on May 14, 1988, distinct from the passage buoy the 1965 account describes. An August 1984 note records a Central Michigan University Biological Station fisheries class tagging smallmouth bass “in Garden Island and Indian Harbors on Garden Island,” part of a fourteen-year study supervised by Dr. Herb Lenon, predating the 2017 MNFI fen survey below by more than three decades.

The harbor also appears in local social history. A February 1967 retrospective recalls High Island Israelite community outings to a field along Indian Harbor’s eastern shore, where visitors played ball and returned by boat. The account connects the harbor to the neighboring island communities without treating that recollection as proof of a permanent settlement at the harbor.

Ecological profile

MNFI Report 2017-11 records a 66-acre Garden Island Harbor northern fen occurrence (EO 11804, report p. 102; rank AB, G3G5/S3). The fen is primarily an expansive floating mat with marl pools, marl flats, and a shrubby-fen zone. Its fine-scale ecological zonation follows gradients in soil and water chemistry: sphagnum hummocks and hollows produce changing moisture conditions, while groundwater seepage supplies nutrient-rich growing conditions.

Floating portions have 30–40 cm of peat over water. Grounded portions contain alkaline peat and marl (pH 8.0), generally 10–20 cm deep over wet sands, with inundated peat in local marl pools. Wiregrass sedge, native reed, twig-rush, sweet gale, spike-rush, white beak-rush, beak-rush, Kalm’s lobelia, false asphodel, grass-of-Parnassus, bog arrow-grass, tufted bulrush, pitcher-plant, and several sedges are recorded. Stunted northern white-cedar and tamarack occur in the understory and overstory.

Beaver activity and crayfish burrows were noted throughout the wetland complex. The older fen portions were identified as places to survey for Hine’s emerald dragonfly, a state- and federally threatened species; that recommendation is not evidence of a confirmed observation. Glossy buckthorn was observed west of the fen along a beaver dam. MNFI recommends retaining an intact surrounding buffer, monitoring invasive species, and controlling and monitoring the glossy buckthorn. These are 2017 occurrence-level observations and recommendations, not a current wetland boundary, ownership record, or complete fauna inventory. The occurrence is not a complete survey of Garden Island Harbor.

Added 28 July 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes