Emily Min Hunt Preserve
County: Presque Isle Established: 2019
Size: 428 Acres
Located 20 minutes north of Alpena, Emily Min Hunt Preserve offers the perfect spot for quiet nature exploration. Its mixed hardwood forest gives way to a limestone glade, home to what was once a working apple orchard. This unique grassland habitat provides open space for wildflowers, birds and other wildlife. The preserve offers opportunities to enhance and manage habitat for diverse plants and animals, making it a place for the public to learn first-hand about stewardship best practices and land management.
Click the image to download a fullsize PDF map.
Visitor Information
Emily Min Hunt Preserve is located 2 miles west of US-23 on Shubert Highway. A large preserve sign is visible from the road to mark the entrance. There is a small parking area at the trailhead.
Conservation Value
The preserve is home to a number of unique ecosystems rich in plant and animal diversity, which Huron Pines aims to promote through ongoing stewardship and restoration activities there.
Dense forests of mixed hardwoods are frequented by deer, fox, coyote, rabbit and a host of bird species. In spring, vernal pools form in the forest depressions and provide vital habitat for frogs, toads, salamanders and fairy shrimp. The ram’s head lady’s-slipper, one of Michigan’s rarest orchids, occurs in the dense woodlands of Min Hunt.
The remnants of a former working apple orchard are about a 15-minute walk from the trailhead. It resides at the edge of a limestone glade, where a diverse mix of wildflowers and grasses grow on thin soil.
History and Future
The Thunder Bay Audubon Society donated the 428-acre Emily Min Hunt Preserve to Huron Pines in March of 2019. The preserve was originally donated to the Thunder Bay Audubon Society in 1989 by Paul S. Hunt in memory of his late wife Emily Min Hunt. The Hunts moved to Long lake from Detroit in 1936 and, for over 28 years, Mr. Hunt was a toolmaker at Besser.
Activities
iNaturalist is a worldwide community science platform that Huron Pines uses to share information about flora (plants) and fauna (animals) found on our properties. Below are the most recent observations.
