The Yellow Dog Plains is an area north and west of Marquette, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States. The Yellow Dog River flows through it, as does the Salmon Trout River. The Salmon Trout River is unique in that it has a breeding population of coasters, a potamodramous form of brook trout. Coasters are virtually extinct from their native range on the south coast of Lake Superior, except for the Salmon Trout River. The Yellow Dog Plains is a remote and virtually untouched wilderness, aside from large scale logging operations. There are extensive forests of Eastern white pine, with reports of some of the trees in the Yellow Dog Plains reaching heights of 31 meters.
Kennecott Minerals Corporation, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, is currently considering opening a nickel-copper mine in the Yellow Dog Plains. The plan, called the Eagle Project by Kennecott, has garnered both local support and opposition. Proponents claim that the mine would produce jobs, while the opposition claims the mine would produce irreversible environmental damage.
Famous quotes containing the words yellow, dog and/or plains:
“It was a quiet Sunday morning, with more of the auroral rosy and white than of the yellow light in it, as if it dated from earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a heathenish integrity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The Plains are not forgiving. Anything that is shallow—the easy optimism of a homesteader; the false hope that denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach ground water—will dry up and blow away.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)