EAGLE RIVER, Mich. – Isle Royale National Park is the largest island in the largest lake.
It is an important part of Michigan’s tourism industry, bringing in about 30,000 visitors every year. Despite being about 15 miles from Ontario and about 18 from Minnesota, Isle Royale is a part of Michigan, despite being nearly 60 miles from the Keweenaw Peninsula.
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Why is that? Well, legally speaking, Michigan kind of had dibs since we became a state before Minnesota. But what if there was a second island? What if there was another that we could have shared?
What if it was... a phantom island?
Well, gang, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a mystery!
Enter: Isle Phelipeaux
A phantom island is defined as an island that does not exist but, for whatever reason, was included on early maps.
They typically come from the reports of early sailors as they explore and are usually due to navigational errors, communication issues or some other variable that resulted in the documentation of something that does not exist.
Despite not existing and sometimes being entirely fabricated and made up, these phantom islands can result in real-life impacts. Just like money.
Isle Phelipeaux is one such island.
When the American Revolutionary War ended, the Treaty of Paris was signed to officially acknowledge the sovereignty of what would become the United States. The treaty set the boundaries of where the United States ended and where what would become Canada began.
Isle Phelipeaux was listed in the 1783 Treaty of Paris as a landmark defining the border in Lake Superior.
This may surprise you, but Isle Phelipeaux did not exist. Shocker. I know, it’s wild. Michigan has never ever had issues with its borders, that’s why the southern border is a straight line from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie and there have never been any issues with which state Toledo belongs to. Never. Nope.
Related: How Michigan kind of, sort of, illegitimately became a state on Jan. 26, 1837
The Treaty of Paris set the border through Lake Superior as “northward of the Isles Royale and Phelipeaux,” but when surveyors attempted to draw the international border more precisely in 1820, they learned that Isle Phelipeaux did not exist. It disappeared! It was a gh-gh-gh-ghoooost!
...or the initial maps just counted Isle Royale twice by mistake. It’s the biggest island in the biggest lake, it’s not unreasonable to think European settlers and fur traders stumbled upon an island that was 20-40 miles from what they thought was the closest island, not knowing it’s just one 207 square mile island.
And they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling border surveyors.
Zoinks!
This originally was published in ClickOnDetroit’s Morning Report Newsletter. You can get Metro Detroit’s news, headlines, deep dives and more in your inbox every morning.
