Glen Lake Sugarbush

Glen Lake Picnic Area

NPS

Quick Facts

Amenities

6 listed

Parking - Auto, Parking - Boat Trailer, Parking - Bus/RV, Pets Allowed, Picnic Table, Toilet - Vault/Composting

The Glen Lake Sugarbush

The extensive history that this area has as an Odawa sugarbush is a very special feature. Thoughts of harvesting maple sugar in the traditional way, in the same spot as their ancestors, holds deep and meaningful connections for contemporary Odawa people. The Glen Lake Sugarbush was active as a traditional Odawa sugaring camp and village site since time immemorial, with use extending well into the 19th century

We would build our sugar camp in a clear spot, like this, maybe wherever the lodge was built we would clear the ground, but we wouldn’t do much cutting unless we were using saplings to build our lodge. Again, the maple saplings or willow those are used for lodge spine. We would cover it with bark, birch bark was used a lot.
- Odawa representative in interview with National Park Service, 2014

The area contains sugar maples and many types of northern hardwood forest species, and has an understory with wild leeks and other ethnobotanical resources. In addition to past Odawa use as a sugarbush camp and large village site, the Glen Lake area also has a history of Euro-American canning, fishing, and logging activity that took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.