North Fox Island

IslandGNIS 633577

Coordinates

45.4759° N, 85.7745° WGoogle Maps: North Fox IslandDownload KML

Eras

Strang era

Concepts

environmentforestsvegetationtreeswildlifebirdssoilsgeologywetlandsconservationStrang eramaritimetoponymy

Within

Beaver Island archipelago

Media

Access and infrastructure of the Beaver Island archipelago · Coasts, harbors, and navigation context of the Beaver Island archipelago · Geology and landforms of the Beaver Island archipelago · North Fox Island access and infrastructure · North Fox Island coasts, harbors, and navigation context · North Fox Island geology and landforms + 8 more

Summary

North Fox Island is a 3.47 km² member of the Beaver Island archipelago in Leelanau County, south of Beaver Island and northeast of South Fox Island. Strang-era sources call it Paros. Its settlement, transport and legal history is tied to Beaver Island even though its modern county jurisdiction differs from the immediate Beaver group.

History

John Farmer’s 1853 Michigan map equates “North Fox I.” with “Paros I.” Strang’s 1854 gazetteer says the Mormons were “just commencing a settlement” on Paros, a smaller counterpart of the South Fox (Patmos) colony.¹ Strang’s Northern Islander marine list records the schooner Dolphin repeatedly clearing Saint James “for Fox Island,” without distinguishing North from South Fox in the surviving entries — evidence of routine vessel traffic to the Foxes generally rather than a North Fox-specific count of passengers or freight.² On 31 May 1855 the Northern Islander printed “An Act to Organize the County of Manitou,” organizing “the several Islands in Lake Michigan known as the Beaver group, the North and South Fox Islands, the North and South Manitou Islands” into Manitou County, corroborated by an 1874 compilation and a modern local-history summary of Charlevoix County’s township records.³⁴⁵ These records tie North Fox into Beaver Island’s Strang-era settlement and shipping network rather than treating it as an incidental offshore landmark.

The 2023 Beaver Island Master Plan continues the broader cultural scope while stating the administrative distinction: North Fox is in Leelanau County, is owned by the Michigan DNR Wildlife Division, was privately inhabited in the past and has an operational paved runway.

1847 survey snapshot. The original GLO field-note pages that begin and continue the North Fox survey record a rocky/pebbly shore, local cliffs, nearly bare lime-pebble ground, and a gravel-beach segment with sugar and beech timber. The continuation also notes low cedar and fir banks and fishing use at Pleasant Point. These are narrow survey observations from 10 August 1847, not a whole-island vegetation inventory or a present landscape description. GLO field-note pages: North Fox Island survey, 1847

A 1898 Benzie County history also names the Fox and Beaver islands together in a mainland-facing small-craft market connection: people the author calls “Indians, hunters, trappers, fishermen” travelled to Frankfort with baskets, other wares, and seasonal berries. The passage is regional and undated; it does not identify a North Fox departure, a traveller, or a particular transaction. Michigan Historical Collections, volume 28, 1898

In September 1905 the Evening Record reported two secretive travelers returning from a North Fox trip with a gunny sack and handbag and hinted that they had recovered a chest. Its alleged treasure was Chicago robbery loot, and the article expressly says it was not Strang’s money. Firestone’s 1996 history preserves a second Northport tradition—$150,000 in Spanish gold in jars inside an iron chest, sometimes attributed to Strang—and connects it to the trip. The trip is probable; the chest and either origin story remain unverified. See North Fox treasure-search trip reported in 1905.

Geography

North Fox lies between the immediate Beaver group and South Fox. Its OSM shoreline has an area of 3.47 km² in Michigan GeoRef. GNIS records it as feature 633577 in Leelanau County.

Ecological profile

The North Fox Island mapped-dune, forest, vegetation, and wildlife evidence adds a modern, source-bounded ecological profile to the historical survey snapshot. EGLE’s MDC 76 covers a 105.4-acre southwestern parabolic-dune system with open dune, boreal forest, mesic northern forest, and sand-and-gravel beach occurrences. MDC 77 is a separate 2.7-acre western offshoot. The report identifies the two complexes as dune systems with forest, beach, and wildlife functions; it does not treat them as a complete island inventory.

The mapped-dune source preserves four occurrence identities rather than one generic “North Fox habitat” record:

The two boreal identifiers are preserved as a source discrepancy, not silently merged or treated as two occurrences. The 2019 MNFI prioritization also prints 6073 for the historical boreal-forest record, so record-level reconciliation is still required before assigning a single canonical identifier.

The boreal forest is cedar-dominated, with paper birch, balsam fir, aspen, sugar maple, and green ash, while the mesic forest is maple-dominated with beech, ash, red oak, basswood, and white-cedar. The source estimates several cedars at more than 200 years, a sugar maple at 236 years, and a cedar at more than 300 years. Canada yew, windthrow, coarse woody debris, pit-and-mound structure, emerald ash borer mortality, and beech bark disease are part of the reported structure and management context.

The open-dune and beach records add marram grass, sand reed grass, beach pea, creeping juniper, sand cherry, milkweed, red-osier, cedar, aspen, balsam poplar, and paper birch. The report also names Fowler’s toad, eastern hognose snake, shorebirds, waterfowl, neotropical migrant songbirds, and bats as habitat-linked fauna. These are source examples and habitat observations, not a complete fauna list or proof of current occupancy.

The soil, geology, canopy, and public-observation crosswalks provide useful island-scale context for this profile. They must remain separate from the four printed occurrence points in the EGLE report: those points are not community boundaries, parcel lines, or soil polygons.

The companion Beaver Island Archipelago wildlife and bird species evidence index, 2017–2024 currently preserves five linked wildlife/bird evidence records spanning 11 taxa for North Fox Island. This includes a dated MDNR distribution-table mark and habitat-linked records; it is not a complete fauna inventory or proof of current occupancy.

The Seven-island ecology connectivity matrix, 2026 adds 22 exact- island tree and woody-vegetation evidence rows spanning 12 taxa, all from the 1847 GLO survey, plus 12 SSURGO map units intersecting about 3.41 km² of the working island frame. Its 2021-to-2023 mean tree-canopy summary changes from 70.68% to 69.77%, while NLCD forest context changes from about 2.86 to 2.86 km². The matrix has zero exact-island plant and older-MNFI occurrence rows for North Fox; that is an index-coverage result, not a claim that North Fox lacks plants or natural communities. The newer EGLE occurrence layer remains the stronger source for those records.

Names

“North Fox Island” is the current GNIS name. “Paros” is the Strang-era variant, explicitly joined to the modern feature on Farmer’s 1853 map.

Significance

North Fox connects Strang-era settlement, commercial and passenger movement, fishing, aviation and state land management across the modern Charlevoix–Leelanau county line.

GLO survey record

The held GLO field-note volume explicitly begins a North Fox Island survey in T35N R13W. The retained pages record its shore-meander work and limited site observations including stone beach, low cedar-and-fir brush, gravel beach with sugar and beech timber, rocky ground, and fishing use. These are observations within an 1847 survey record, not an account of occupation, ownership, or current conditions. GLO field-note pages: North Fox Island survey, 1847

Added 1 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes