Precolonial farmers thrived in one of North America’s coldest places

Ancestral Menominee people in what’s now northern Michigan grew maize despite harsh conditions

Open woodland with tall trees and bright green foliage, grassy forest floor with a subtly ridged terrain and fallen logs in the foreground.

A new lidar survey revealed the largest preserved area of precolonial farm fields in the eastern U.S. on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Raised garden beds once used to cultivate maize and other crops are now partly obscured by trees and ground cover.

M. McLeester

A laser eye-in-the-sky has uncovered vast, ancient farm fields in an unlikely place — the frosty forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.