Decades of campers document stories in UP logbooks

Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park holds logbooks in cabins for hikers to share stories since 1940s.

January 8, 2025

Stateside Michigan –

Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park spans 60,000 acres in Northern Michigan. Throughout the park, about two dozen rustic cabins and yurts sit off the trails to shelter hikers at night and during bad weather. Just like some family cabins and vacation homes, each one contains a visitor logbook.

But in the Porcupine Mountains, these books have evolved into a way for hikers to communicate stories and information to each other. Since the 1940s, each of the cabins has had a logbook inside, where hikers share poems, songs, and legends with each other.

Park Interpreter Katie Urban joined Stateside to talk about the books. She first discovered them when she was hired as an interpreter, and she’s enjoyed perusing the logbooks ever since. The park has collected about 200 completed books from the cabins, and continues to replace filled books with new ones. According to Urban, the books help connect people from different times and places. Hikers will often have stories from their journey through the park, and find themselves in a cabin overnight with a place to share these experiences.

Park interpreter Katie Urban discovered the logbooks when staying in one of the park’s cabins herself during her first week on the job. When Urbans asked other staff about the books, they revealed a collection of about 200 books going back as early as the 1940s.

“We are a people that love to share. Even if you’re out to get away from the world, in a wilderness area like the Porcupine Mountains, they still kind of want to share that,” Urban said. “Even if it’s just by writing to a stranger, that might be the next 15, 20 people coming in the cabin behind you … whatever story that they want to share, they just want to get it out.”

The Union River cabin at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

While many hikers use the logbooks to write and read stories, or flip through the different forms of art left behind, some also share personal experiences or confessions. With wood-burning stoves and water basins, the cabins are rustic and remote. They don’t have electricity, internet, or cell service, and running into other hikers is rare.

Urban believes the solitude helps people go deeper and share more in the books.

“There’s this mental piece when you go out in the woods, and you’re disconnected from the world and you have all this time as you’re hiking and walking to think and just self-reflect,” Urban said.

The books also serve as an important historical record. With people’s handwritten accounts and artwork dating back to the 1940s, looking through the decades’ worth of logbooks teaches staff like Urban about what the park was like long before they arrived.

Whether it’s strawberries that disappeared over the years, a shelter or a hidden spring, she has seen numerous things change while others stay the same.

“What makes them special for me is that I can dig through and learn stuff about the park that I didn’t know was there,” Urban said. “People are still doing the same stuff from the ’40s and getting that same wilderness experience, which is such a cool thing”

The state park closes many of its cabins for the winter, but keeps about 10 open near the visitor center and provides firewood. Winter activities include a lantern-lit trail in February, downhill and cross-country skiing, and plenty of views. More information can be found on the DNR website.

Listen to the full conversation with Katie Urban on the Stateside podcast.

Special thanks to John Carlisle and Ryan Garza of The Detroit Free Press for their coverage of the Porcupine Mountains logbooks.

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