ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK — Thomas Gale lost count of how many seasons he’s spent at his family’s cabin on Tobin Harbor after 60. Or maybe 65. But his weeks spent in the nearly 100-year-old cabin mirror the experience of his great-grandfather, grandmother and father.
Gale has worked as a fishing guide and a seasonal ranger. The relationships he’s built on the island echo a history none of the families who have spent generations there want to forget.
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“It's a very isolated place, and you have to both be very self-reliant, but you also have to be dependent on the other people out there to give you a hand and to help,” he said. “And that community has been incredibly special.”
More than a dozen families preserve the cabins and other historic sites. In collaboration with the recently formed Isle Royale Heritage Alliance, families and volunteers can work alongside the National Park Service.
The folks that have been doing this for years are excited because now it's not just up to them, and it's not a one-off individual effort. It's going to be a whole team effort.
Jan Reyers, the Alliance’s volunteer director, said it is a formal plan in collaboration with the National Parks...