Historic Photos of Lake Michigan

The vast lingering remnant of an ice age that came to a close more than 10,000 years ago, Lake Michigan has shaped the history of the settlements along its surrounding shores for centuries. Its storied waters have seen schooners, luxury steamships, and modern freighters, its lakeshores the rise of the railroads that helped to carve a way of life into the surrounding wooded wilderness for the Americans who called the region home. Through high times and lean, the lake’s 1,640 miles of coastli...