Hartwick Pines State Park

About this park

Hartwick Pines State Park, established in 1927, protects 9,335 acres in Crawford County near Grayling, making it one of the largest state parks in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. The park's namesake and centerpiece is a 49-acre stand of old-growth white pine, among the last remaining virgin timber of its kind in a state where 19th-century logging once cleared nearly everything else. The Hartwick Pines Logging Museum, a short walk from the visitor center, documents that logging era in detail, when Michigan briefly led the entire nation in sawed lumber production before the old-growth forests were largely exhausted; the Salling Hansen Lumber Company heavily logged much of the surrounding property in the 1880s and 1890s, making the surviving stand here all the more significant. A 1.25-mile paved, fully accessible Old Growth Forest Trail lets visitors of all abilities walk directly through the preserved pines. Rolling hills overlook the valley of the East Branch of the AuSable River, and four small spring-fed lakes within the park support fishing and paddling alongside more than 21 miles of trails used for hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing depending on the season. In 2014, the state specifically declined to auction oil and gas drilling rights beneath the park despite new drilling technology making it technically feasible, a deliberate choice to protect the old-growth forest that gives the park its name and purpose.