South Fox Island

IslandGNIS 1623085

Coordinates

45.4107° N, 85.8443° WGoogle Maps: South 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 · Pre-settlement vegetation of the Beaver Island archipelago, circa 1800 · Soils, wetlands, and terrain of the Beaver Island archipelago · South Fox Island access and infrastructure + 8 more

Summary

South Fox Island is a 14.04 km² member of the Beaver Island archipelago in Leelanau County and the southernmost large island tied to Beaver Island’s Strang-era settlement history. Strang-era sources call it Patmos and document an agricultural Mormon settlement connected by vessel and winter travel to Saint James.

History

John Farmer’s 1853 Michigan map equates “South Fox I.” with “Patmos I.” Strang’s 1854 gazetteer describes farms, a Mormon settlement, a planned cross-island road, good landings and an agricultural subdivision scheme.¹ On 31 May 1855 the Northern Islander printed “AN ACT to ORGANIZE THE COUNTY OF MANITOU,” which organized “the several Islands in Lake Michigan known as the Beaver group, the North and South Fox Islands, the North and South Manitou Islands” into the new Manitou County, with the first election canvass at Saint James.² An untitled item headed “FOX ISLAND” in Strang’s Northern Islander — undated within the held run — puts the South Fox colony at “five men, five women, and seven children,” plus two families and two single men not church members, with the settlement begun “last summer” and twelve more families expected the next spring; it describes corn grown to “twelve feet” and an abundant potato crop, with the settlers occupied that winter “chopping, knitting fish nets, and making cedar staves for fish barrels.”³ The same paper’s marine list records the schooner Dolphin repeatedly clearing Saint James “for Fox Island,” evidence of routine vessel traffic between the Foxes and Beaver Island, though no surviving item in the held run gives a full passenger or freight count.⁴ The 1855 Manitou County organization act is independently corroborated by an 1874 compilation and by a modern local-history summary of Charlevoix County’s township records.⁵⁶

The 2023 Beaver Island Master Plan retains South Fox within the archipelago while noting Leelanau County jurisdiction. It records mixed Michigan DNR and private ownership, Mirada Ranch staff, a paved runway, a private residence and two lighthouses.

1847 survey snapshot. The original GLO field-note page identifies South Fox Island and records free sand with vegetable mould, listed beech, sugar, birch, aspen, cedar and fir, gently rolling terrain, ridges, and sand cliffs. Those observations describe the page’s survey line in 1847, not the whole island or its current ecology. GLO field-note page: South Fox Island survey, 1847

A 1898 Benzie County history 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 South Fox departure, a traveller, or a particular transaction. Michigan Historical Collections, volume 28, 1898

The 2012 Charlevoix Courier describes the historic South Fox light-station complex and preservation work reported by the Fox Island Lighthouse Association. Those reports establish particular structures and preservation actions, not property title, active navigation status, or a complete restoration outcome.

Firestone’s 1996 history also records a South Fox treasure tradition passed down through lighthouse keeper Willis Warner’s family. In one childhood version, $35,000 in a shipwrecked murderer’s payoff was hidden in dishpans; another used a tree with a nail as its clue. This is not a Strang story. It belongs beside Strang treasure traditions as comparative Fox Islands folklore because keeping it separate shows how easily all island treasure stories can otherwise collapse into one.

Geography

South Fox lies southwest of North Fox and south of the immediate Beaver group. Its OSM shoreline has an area of 14.04 km² in Michigan GeoRef. GNIS records it as feature 1623085 in Leelanau County.

Ecological profile

The South Fox Island mapped-dune, forest, vegetation, wetland, and wildlife evidence adds a modern, source-bounded ecological profile to the 1847 GLO description. EGLE’s MDC 75 encompasses the entire island and describes approximately 3,430 acres, 11.6 miles of shore, and a connected system of open dunes, boreal and mesic northern forests, an interdunal wetland, a sand-and-gravel beach, and a clay bluff. The report identifies eight natural-community occurrences and keeps its nine printed occurrence points separate from community boundaries.

The boreal forest is dominated by uneven-aged northern white-cedar on bluffs, blowouts, and parabolic dunes; several western cedars were estimated at more than 400 years old. Inland mesic forest is maple-dominated with beech, white-cedar, paper birch, basswood, red oak, hazel, ironwood, and white ash. Windthrow, senescence, dune erosion, coarse woody debris, emerald ash borer, beech bark disease, and localized deer browse are all source-reported parts of the forest context.

The dune and wetland records name marram grass, sand reed grass, beach pea, creeping juniper, sand cherry, white-cedar, paper birch, rushes, spike-rush, native reed, and sedges. The southern and eastern interdunal wetlands held standing water during the August 2021 survey, while high-water, seepage, landslides, burial, and blowouts shaped the shoreline communities. Fowler’s toad, eastern hognose snake, shorebirds, waterfowl, neotropical migrant songbirds, bats, dragonflies, and other invertebrates are reported as habitat examples or observations; this is not a complete fauna inventory.

The mapped-dune index preserves eight distinct natural-community occurrence identities. The three open-dune rows are separate EOs, not repeated mentions of one polygon:

The 2019 MNFI table identifies 788, 359, 1963, and 1997 as the older known occurrences; the later EGLE index adds the separately identified 2021 mapped occurrences and describes their connected dune, wetland, bluff, and forest context. These records are not equivalent to the nine representative points in the generated GeoJSON layer.

The soil, geology, canopy, and public-observation crosswalks provide island- scale context, not parcel or occurrence geometry. The Master Plan’s inclusion of South Fox supports its cultural and planning connectivity, while the EGLE report supplies the stronger modern forest, vegetation, wetland, and wildlife detail.

The companion Beaver Island Archipelago wildlife and bird species evidence index, 2017–2024 currently preserves 13 linked wildlife/bird evidence records spanning 16 taxa for South Fox Island. These combine distribution, protection, survey, and habitat evidence; they are not a complete fauna inventory or population count.

The Seven-island ecology connectivity matrix, 2026 adds four exact- island tree and woody-vegetation evidence rows spanning four taxa, all from the 1847 GLO survey, plus 13 SSURGO map units intersecting about 13.96 km² of the working island frame. Mean tree canopy is effectively stable from 64.42% in 2021 to 64.43% in 2023, while NLCD forest context is about 10.55 km² in both years. The matrix has zero exact-island plant and older-MNFI occurrence rows for South Fox; that is a source-coverage result, not ecological absence. The separate EGLE mapped-dune index supplies the newer forest, wetland, vegetation, and occurrence evidence.

Names

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

Significance

South Fox preserves one of the clearest reasons not to confine Beaver Island history to the modern Charlevoix County line: it held a Strang-era family settlement, participated in the Saint James transport economy, shared Manitou County government and remains inside the modern local master plan’s archipelago.

GLO survey record

The held GLO field-note volume explicitly names South Fox Island in a T34N R13W survey sequence. The preserved page supplies a checked 1847 survey context; it does not itself identify residents, prove land title, or establish later use. GLO field-note page: South Fox Island survey, 1847

Added 1 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes