Apples on a Wilderness Isle
- NPLSF
- 7 hours ago
- 8 min read
By Tim Cochrane
For over five millennia people have made their way to Isle Royale. Evidence of that presence is sometimes subtle and sometimes it is like the bow of the packet freighter America looming out of the depths of Lake Superior. Whether obvious or not, each sign of human activity often can tell a remarkable story such as the rewilding Island Mine road turned into a trail or the toy left behind at the Hay Bay fishery. But evidence of human activity is becoming increasingly difficult to read and to interpret. Lots of these places are now obscure and are often undramatic, like the last course of sill logs rotting into the ground. But they can, when examined, tell a remarkable story. One example, is a surviving apple tree at Windigo or Ozaagaateng.
This story begins, for me, with the serendipitous joy of foraging and eating…. In the late 1970s I was a back-country ranger on Isle Royale, stationed at Windigo or now known by its Anishinaabemowin name Ozaagaateng. I would hike the trails on the western half of the Island for ten days and then have four off. I also stayed into September when the apple trees at Windigo/Ozaagaateng became ripe. As temporary residents, we used to make apple pies from these sweet apples with a soft flesh. Hikers and exercising rangers sometimes would see the trees through a thicket of brush and chow down. And the moose liked them too, as one day I climbed the stoutest of the trees and threw apples out to a moose who was happily munching on them.
The presence of apple trees (uphill from the smaller, second dock at Windigo) is a bit of mystery. How did they get there? Who brought them? And what is the “larger story” behind them?
A few years ago, with permission, I grafted a scion from one of the Windigo/Ozaagaateng apple trees onto a common apple rootstock. I planted the grafted whip alongside other apples at our home outside of Grand Marais, Minnesota. This year, I engaged the Horticultural Department at Washington State University to DNA profile this tree to identify what apple variety it is. But first it is important to note the tree which was tested has the same DNA as the tree at Windigo/Ozaagaateng.
The WSU DNA profile results are fascinating. This tree does not match any known variety of the 5,000 apple tree varieties they have tested. It is, in their words, unique. They were able, however, to identify its parents: the Duchess of Oldenburg (an old Russian apple variety) and Jonathan (first identified in 1826 in New York State). You can still find Duchess of Oldenburg and Jonathan apples to eat and tree stock to buy. But they are heirloom varieties and few bother with them now.
The Duchess of Oldenburg (first identified as a variety in the mid 18th century) was once very popular and is particularly cold hardy. It also ripens relatively early, the fruit has streaks of yellow, and some believe it is the best pie apple grown in a cold climate. But the Duchess has an amazing pedigree. It is the grandparent of one of the most sought after apples today: the Honeycrisp. But its contribution does not end there. The University of Minnesota’s cold hardy apple breeding program picked up this apple [Duchess of Oldenburg] in 1922 and nearly all of their modern apples are genetically related to the Duchess of Oldenburg.” Among those apples that “descend” from the Duchess of Oldenburg are: Haralson, Beacon, Frostbite, Regent, Sweet Sixteen, Honeycrisp, and almost a dozen other varieties.
Even before the University of Minnesota’s apple breeding efforts began the Duchess of Oldenburg and Jonathan together produced another notable variety, the Wealthy. Peter Gideon was a pioneering apple breeder in Minnesota responsible for “creating” the Wealthy variety. When he came to Minnesota in 1853 there were few to no apple trees growing in the state (apples are not native to North America).
He experimented with apple and fruit growing but after planting thousands of trees almost all died, and the survivors did not bear fruit. Down to his last apple and eight dollars he got seeds from Maine and crossing the seeds with one of his survivors the Wealthy variety was created and named after his wife. It became one of the most popular commercial apple varieties in the Midwest in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Why does this matter to our story? The Windigo/Ozaagaateng apple is a “sibling” to the Wealthy apple, now also becoming an uncommon variety. Just as siblings have differences in their DNA, appearance, and so on, so do apples.
The DNA profile of the Windigo tree does not match an earlier attempt to identify the apple variety by sight. A 1989 study of apples on the Island came to a remarkable conclusion that one of the Windigo apples is likely malus ioensis, or a native crab apple found in the central Mississippi Valley. [The authors alternately suggested it was not a named cultivar, which appears much closer to the mark.]
If one or more of the Windigo trees are an “Iowa crab apple” this would be stunning and beg the question of how did it get there hundreds of miles from its source?
Unfortunately, it is, according to contemporary apple experts likely a misidentification prior to the availability of DNA profiling.
How did our tree—which we know to be a sibling to Wealthy—get to the Island? Who was responsible? Knowing its age helps suggest its origin. We know something about its age, it was mature in the 1970s. The 1989 study theorized the trees in this cluster were 50 to 75 years old, or perhaps even older, suggesting it originated in a period from 1914 to 1939, or again a little older. And most dates predate the establishment of the park. This loose date range suggests good “suspects” to consider: (1) Did the Wendigo copper miners bring these apples to Isle Royale in the 1890s? (2) Did the well-to-do Washington Harbor Club members or their caretaker bring these apples? If so, the apples would most likely have come from Duluth where most of the Washington Harbor Club members resided. Or, (3) Did this apple come from the Civilian Conservation Corps men stationed there? Another curious fact needs to be considered, namely, there are a group of trees, not just one, in close proximity just off the trail to the Washington Creek campground. Does this suggest they were purposefully planted as young apple trees or did they grow there “accidentally" perhaps out of a refuse pile?
Both Jim Luby and Dave Bedford, leading horticulturalists at the University of Minnesota apple program (and credited as the “creators” of Honeycrisp) think the most likely beginning for our tree is the result of discarded seeds (vs. young apple whips brought to the Island and planted). Or as Jim Luby said more exactingly: “Both Wealthy and Jonathan were commonly grown in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so it is possible…that your tree originated as a seed from one of them with the other as a pollen parent.” This means, I think, that “our” apple was the likely result of apples brought to the Island (as food for overwintering residents?) and the core was discarded with the seeds leading to this “unique” variety.
What does this history tell us about who likely brought it to the Island? My hunch is our apple having the one parent the of Duchess of Oldenburg and being closely related (sibling) to a Wealthy variety suggests the originating apple came from Minnesota where the Wealthy variety originated and Duchess of Oldenburg was frequently used in apple breeding at the university. Further, the timing of when Wealthy became an important commercial fruit is mostly after the Wendigo Mining effort. The Washington Harbor Club members had the financial means to bring apple whips to plant, but they would have brought a known variety (that someone had carefully grown and prepared for transplanting). I’m guessing that apples were brought to the Club, eaten, and discarded in a refuse pile (that pile perhaps moved a bit each year) which may account for the grouping of apples. And the apple tree may have germinated at the high point of the Washington Club doings, or when the Governor Preus of Minnesota visited the club in 1923. The Civilian Conservation Corp camp in the late 1930s are less likely originators of these apples because they were mostly supplied from Michigan where Wealthy apples were less common and the tree may predate their appearance. But then again, who knows?
Like other mysteries, we need to know more. It would help if we knew about the other apples in this group. Are they siblings of the Wealthy variety too? And there are other, often solitary, apple trees scattered about the Island, perhaps related to mining ventures. One of these trees is thought to be a Black Gilliflower variety, another, older uncommon cultivar with an odd shaped—sometimes called conical—fruit.
The Windigo trees are the largest grouping and appear to have thrived in the warmer microclimate of Windigo/Ozaagaateng. Or what some of us call the “banana belt” of Isle Royale.
Perhaps it should be amended to be the accidental orchard of the Isle? Any of these trees might have a unique DNA profile and perhaps more importantly, useful in the never ending quest to develop the best tasting, longest lasting, best looking, cold hardy, and best disease resistant apple available. The absence of apple tree pests on the Island makes these trees particularly important as an incubator of rare apples, much like in a controlled experiment. The Isle Royale apples are also telltale evidence of widespread human use of the Island. Most of the buildings in which they were once associated are gone, but some of these apples have lived on. And this one apple variety has historic links that stretch across the lake, to university scientists, and even across the Atlantic to Czarist Russia as is the case with the Duchess of Oldenburg.
There are perhaps a dozen of apple trees scattered about the Island. They are like sentinels the past, marking the location of some human endeavor.
A couple trees mark older copper mine ventures, another grouping is where the Mead Lumber Company operated a pulp wood operation in the 1930s and another CCC camp. Like the Windigo apples, some we aren’t sure of their origin story. All these apples, through their tenacity, vigor, and their basic purpose as food, likely tell a unique story different than what might be assumed in a wilderness isle. As sentinels of the Island’s past, they point to times and people who are now overshadowed. But they may have a unique story (and DNA) to tell. And in the meantime, moose, hungry wolves, rangers, and observant hikers like them!
Historian, author, and NPLSF board member Tim Cochrane served as superintendent of the Grand Portage National Monument for twenty years, co-managing the site with the Grand Portage Anishinaabeg through a Tribal Self-Governance Act agreement. A reluctant bureaucrat, he wrote as an aside and as a creative outlet to his park service duties. His books include Minong–The Good Place: Ojibwe and Isle Royale and A Good Boat Speaks for Itself: Isle Royale Fishermen and Their Boats; and Making the Carry: The Lives of John and Tchi-Ki-Wis Linklater. He is currently working on a new book, Coming Into View: Early and Forgotten Stories of Isle Royale.
Over the coming months, Tim will be sharing more stories about Isle Royale’s history, so stay tuned!
About NPLSF
The National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation (NPLSF) exists to provide financial support for projects and programs that preserve the natural resources and cultural heritage of the five Lake Superior national parks: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Grand Portage National Monument, Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Funded through grants and private donations, NPLSF projects and programs ensure that these great parks and historic sites are maintained for the enjoyment of all current and future visitors.
To learn how you can support our work visit nplsf.org/donate.