A New Shoreline Tribal Park

The 87 acres at Frog Bay in Wisconsin recently designated as a park offer views of five Apostle Islands, pristine sandy beaches at the top of Bayfield Peninsula and a rare opportunity for the public to visit tribally owned and protected lands.

Frog Bay Tribal National Park was created when the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa bought this prime Lake Superior frontage from David Johnson and his wife, Marjorie, of Madison, and hold and manage it in partnership with the Bayfield Regional Conservancy.

In 1980, David purchased 40 acres of Frog Bay at public auction and recalls hearing from a county clerk at the time that the Red Cliff tribe wanted the land but didn’t have money for a bid. A retired professor of labor relations and economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, David later added another 47 acres.

In the deal worked out in late 2011, the Johnsons sold the land to the tribe for half its appraised value of $950,000, Ellen Kwiatkowski, the conservancy’s executive director, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Part of the agreement was for the conservancy to hold a conservation easement on the land. The tribe obtained a grant from the federal Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program to buy the acreage.

Tribal Chairperson Rose Gurnoe Soulier says Red Cliff residents are elated at again having access to a site with cultural and spiritual significance and that historically was owned by the tribe and within the reservation boundaries, Dennis McCann writes in the conservancy’s newsletter.

Red Cliff officials will open the park to the public, as well as to tribal members, for hiking, birding, beach use and other recreation. Trail development is expected in the spring.

The conservation easement held by the Bayfield Regional Conservancy permanently restricts uses of the site, forbidding uses such as subdivisions, development and excessive logging.

Under an agreement, a  committee of elders, natural resource professionals, tribal government representatives and conservancy staff will oversee park management. Tribal crews and volunteers will maintain trails and roads, tribal wardens will enforce game regulations and tribal police will enforce park hours.   

“I could not be happier about knowing that the Frog Bay property will be preserved for the future. I’ve always felt a little embarrassed at owning property that should have been in the tribe’s hands all along,” says David Johnson in the conservancy’s newsletter.