The Northern Lake States

R. J. Muckenhirn and K. C. Berger.

The land of Hiawatha is a land of forests, clear streams, and thousands of lakes. It is a land of farms that produce dairy products, potatoes, and fruit; a land of industries that mine copper and iron ore and manufacture a host of products from wood; a land, too, for recreation, with lovely parks, summer homes, and winter resorts.

This northern portion of the Lake States, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, extends about 600 miles from east to west and 250 miles from north to south. It includes more than 50 million acres in about 80 counties.

Most of its population of about 2 million persons live on farms or in towns. Farms generally are not large, being typically of 100 to 200 acres; many have forest land in addition. Dairy farming is the predominant enterprise. Potatoes and fruit are grown on specialized farms.

Most of the region has the uneven topography of a heavily glaciated country gravelly hills and ridges, sandy plains, swamps, rock outcrops. The annual rainfall is 25 to 35 inches. About two-thirds of it falls in the warmer months. The climate is cool. The average annual temperature is about 40 F. Winters are cold. Snowfall totals 5 feet or more annually. The ground is covered with an inch or more of snow for 100 to 140 days of the year, a length of time that approximates or equals the frost-free period, or growing season, which is 80 to 140 days. The Great Lakes moderate the extremes of temperatures along their shores.

The soils are products of cool, moist forests and are light colored, acid, rather infertile, and low in organic matter. They vary greatly because of the diverse nature of the parent materials that the glaciers moved and mixed. Stones, sands, and gravels are common. Organic soils occupy millions of acres, but there are also smooth uplands, rocky ridges, outwash plains, and former lakebeds covered with deep silty or clayey soils. Poor soils are often intermixed with good soils a fact that was partly responsible for failures by many settlers who were unfortunate in their choice of land.

Today a system of land zoning set up by the county and State governments helps to keep poorer lands in forest or recreational uses.

Forests rapidly are restoring the economic productivity of the lands. They offer part-time employment to many farmers and full-time employment for more than 100 thousand workers in logging and wood-using industries, especially pulp and paper mills. Forest fires, once a great hazard, are almost entirely controlled. Tree planting and forest management are enlarging and improving the stands. About 20 million acres are in publicly owned forests. An equal or greater acreage is in private ownership, sometimes in large tracts managed by timber or paper companies. Of the privately owned forest, about one-fourth is a part of farm holdings. The principal forest types are pine, spruce-fir, and hardwood.

Most farms are operated by owners and usually by one family. The proportion of tenant-operated farms is well under 20 percent. Many northern counties have as few as 5 percent of tenants on farms. Approximately one-fourth of the land area is in farms, and only one-tenth is cropped. Usually less than half the land of a county is in farms. In some counties as little as 5 percent is in farms. Land is still available for settlement, and prices are relatively low.

The cropland on a farm generally is only 40 acres. The limited crop acreage is one of the principal handicaps of northern farms. The average size of farms has been increasing, but it is still too small on thousands of farms to provide sufficient cropland and income. The pastured woodland on a farm often is larger than harvested cropland.

The farm population has been declining. The decline between 1940 and 1951 averaged 15 to 29 percent in northern Wisconsin counties; in a few counties the drop was more than 40 percent. The number of farms in the northern part of the Lake States declined about 20 percent during that period. The trend has continued since, although probably at a slower rate.

The family level of living index has risen. It was below the national average in 1950 for farm operator families, but it improved faster from 1945 to 1950 here than in the North Central States as a whole. Compared with the 12 North Central States, farm employment fell more rapidly, but manufacturing and other employment increased at nearly the same rate. The number of workers in manufacturing areas near Lake Superior increased at more than twice the rate for the 12 States.

The northern part of the Lake States, like the rest of the United States, has a declining rural but an increasing urban population. Its farms are becoming more mechanized and specialized, standards of living are rising, and its resources in forests, mines, and recreational facilities are being developed more fully and generally are better managed.

Soils in the southern part of this region in Minnesota, northern and northeastern Wisconsin, and much of the southern peninsula of Michigan are sands, with sandy or gravelly subsoils. The sandy soils cover about one-third of the region. They often occupy nearly flat plains, but rolling to rough areas also occur. The smoother areas have been cleared and cultivated in many places, but drought, wind erosion and low fertility limit their productivity. Potatoes, rye, alfalfa, and other crops can be grown, but these soils generally are best suited to pine forests. . In northwestern Minnesota, at the eastern edge of the Red River Valley, a belt of loamy sands and sandy loams is utilized for livestock farming and for growing potatoes and sugar beets. Many of these soils are dark colored or have clay layers in the profile and thus can hold water better.

Gently sloping to flat plains, with pinkish, clayey soils, occur on the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota and Wisconsin and in Ontonagon and Chippewa Counties, Michigan. These plains were covered by Lake Superior in glacial times. Because the soils are relatively smooth, stone free, and usually rich in lime in the subsoil, they are used for hay, pasture, and small grains. The frost-free season along the lake-shore is somewhat longer, but slow drainage, clayey texture, and cool, moist summers limit farming possibilities. Much land, especially the more poorly drained, remains in forest. Lake-laid clays, mixed or covered with sand or silt, in northern Minnesota are used for pasture and forage crops, including alfalfa, and potatoes and root crops. A considerable amount of grass and legume seed is produced. Artificial drainage is often needed on cropland. The poorer and wetter uplands support second-growth hardwoods. The extensive peat bogs support spruce and tamarack.

Most of the rolling uplands has loamy soils, derived from glacial drift low in lime. These soils usually are poorly suited to farming, but the deeper and more fertile ones are intensively used.

Some of these loamy soils have limy subsoils or parent materials, particularly in Houghton, Menominee, and Alger Counties, Michigan; Marinette and Oconto Counties, Wisconsin; and north-central and northwestern Minnesota. The surface soils often are as acid as those without limy parent materials, but the more level and stone-free areas of these soils are good to excellent cropland. Dairying and livestock farming are successful, often in combination with the production of strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, or legume seed. Deficiencies of sulfur in Minnesota have been observed. Trace elements may become deficient under intensive cropping on many soils throughout the region. Much of the loamy soils of the northern uplands is so acid, stony, shallow, or rough that it will continue in forest or be returned to forest.