It s the reason European explorers and fur traders arrived in Michigan long before they got to many other parts of the Midwest. With coastline on four of the five Great Lakes, Michigan was directly on the canoe routes that were the superhighways of the 1600s.
Water is also the primary reason travelers go to Michigan today.
While the state has vast forests, stretches of farmland, large cities and small towns, it is water that separates Michigan from the other states both physically and in terms of vacation opportunities. In addition to being surrounded by the small seas of the Great Lakes, Michigan has 11,000 inland lakes. You ll have to travel to the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans to find better conditions for boating, fishing, swimming or simply taking in the shoreline scenery. At the time of European contact, the principal tribes were the Ottawa, Ojibwa and Potawatomi. They lived in small bands and depended largely on hunting and fishing, though some agriculture was practiced in the southern part of the state.