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With one glance at a particular 12-mile stretch of Lake Huron’s shoreline, it’s clear there’s a pattern. Small islands outlined by tan beaches and bright, shallow water align in a remarkably parallel orientation. The claw-mark-like appearance of this Great Lakes locale is evident in this image, acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 9 satellite in July 2026.

The Les Cheneaux Islands are a group of 36 islands near the shore of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of the Straits of Mackinac. The archipelago contains coastal marshes, rock and sand beaches, peat bogs, and forests full of pine and cedar. Parts of several islands are set aside as nature preserves, including a substantial portion of Marquette Island, which is only accessible by boat or over ice. The islands are interspersed with sheltered waters that inspired their name; the French “Les Cheneaux” roughly translates to “the channels.”

The Les Cheneaux Islands, like many landforms in the Great Lakes region, look the way they do because of glaciers that carved the landscape during the Wisconsin Ice Age before retreating around 10,000 years ago. Their elongated shapes indicate many of them are drumlins: mounds of glacial debris that run parallel to the direction of the ice’s movement. 

The glacial topography has helped give rise to a distinct local maritime culture. In contrast with the Great Lakes’ vast open expanses, the waters around the Les Cheneaux Islands are relatively protected from the infamous storms that can otherwise roil the upper Midwest lakes. This creates opportunities for paddling, as well as fishing in quiet alcoves for species such as smallmouth bass, northern pike, yellow perch, and lake trout. The town of Cedarville boasts an annual antique wooden boat show, a boat-building school, and museums highlighting how people, from the area’s earliest inhabitants to today’s residents, have used the islands and waterways.

On land, the much older geology of the area is revealed in a couple of brightly colored quarries. The bedrock here is dolomite, a modified form of limestone. It was deposited in the Silurian period more than 400 million years ago in a shallow, tropical sea before the movement of tectonic plates brought it up north. Michigan is home to several large dolomite and limestone mines, and Port Dolomite, east of Cedarville, ships millions of tons of the material every year.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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July 23, 2026

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References & Resources

• Aldo Leopold Festival (2021) Les Cheneaux Geology Tour. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Les Cheneaux Historical Association (2026) Welcome to The Les Cheneaux Historical Association. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Les Cheneaux Islands Chamber of Commerce (2026) Visitor Information. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• National Park Service (2018, February 22) Drumlins. Accessed August 20, 2026.
• Schaetzl, R., Sedimentary Rock Sequence in the Michigan Basin. Accessed August 20, 2026.

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