Nine rivers within the forest's boundaries provide canoeists with some 550 miles of waterways that snake their way through deeply cut sand and clay banks, as well as across vast flood plains. Spring runs of steelhead and brown trout along with salmon runs in the fall have given the Pere Marquette River a reputation as one of the best fishing streams in the state of Michigan. In the swamps and marshes of the Manistee, birders can ogle at a variety of warblers, sandpipers, vireos, gulls, and meadowlarks. In the Huron, you're more likely to see loons, osprey, and northern waterthrush.

Hikers can meander along some 330 miles of trail, many of which also serve as cross-country ski trails during the winter months. A significant section of the North Country National Scenic Trail blazes its way through the forest. One day, the trail will link wilderness areas across seven northern states and cover a distance of some 4,000 miles. The forest is also home to a rare jack pine ecosystem found in the Au Sable River Valley.

During the late 1880s and early 1900s, large swaths of virgin oak and pine were cleared for timber. The land was burned and farmed, yielded poor crops, and eventually left fallow. The idle windswept sand dunes were combined to create the 481,000-acre Manistee National Forest in 1938. The Huron and Manistee were combined in 1945 for administrative purposes into a forest that now spans an area of 964,413 acres.

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