When is peak fall color at Isle Royale National Park?

Our forecast puts peak color at Isle Royale National Park around 8 Oct. The four days to aim for are 7 to 10 Oct. We publish our error rate.

Isle Royale National Park Fall Foliage: 2026 Peak Color Forecast

Q: What trees turn color at Isle Royale National Park?

Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Quaking Aspen, Paper Birch, Red Oak. Michigan produces some of the most vivid sugar maple color in America, with the Upper Peninsula's maples turning neon orange and scarlet against birch gold and the dark green of hemlocks.

Peak color8 OctAim for 7 to 10 Oct

In the park today, Sep 25Starting to turn

Roadsides and wetland edges turn first, and the woods behind them run a few days later.

No new reports from the ground here this week.

Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecastInside the line, each band of elevation is painted on its own date.

Around Isle Royale National Park Nearly all of the park is in Keweenaw County, which is starting to turn today.

By elevation The park runs from about 600 to 844 feet. It turns together: there isn’t enough relief here for the color to come down in stages.

0–1,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 899%

Height off 3DEP inside the park’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the park stands in it.

Today from the nps-isro-middle-islands-passage-webcam camera, inside Isle Royale National Park — See it now National Park Service, Middle Islands Passage webcam, inside the park, captured Sep 25.

That’s 2 days later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.

The place

Isle Royale sits 56 miles off the Michigan coast in Lake Superior, reachable only by boat or floatplane. That isolation makes it the least visited national park in the Lower 48 and the most revisited, with 40% of visitors coming back. Wolves and moose have been studied here since 1958 in the longest predator-prey research project on earth.

Established 1940. About 28,800/year visitors.

Plan this trip

If you can only come on certain days

Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.

ArrivingLeaving

Wednesday 7 October to Thursday 8 October

You’ll find it peak color.

That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.

Where to drive: Route 41 through Copper Country, about 54 miles · Brockway Mountain Drive, about 56 miles · Gunflint Trail (County Road 12), about 67 miles
What turns: paper birch, sugar maple, red maple, quaking aspen, water oak
Entrance: $7/day

What turns, and when

paper birch19%
sugar maple17%
red maple17%
quaking aspen15%
water oak8%
sweetgum8%

Also named across Michigan, outside what the canopy read measures here: Red Oak.

Michigan produces some of the most vivid sugar maple color in America, with the Upper Peninsula's maples turning neon orange and scarlet against birch gold and the dark green of hemlocks.

This forecast is built from the species that stand here, their elevation and this September’s weather, and corrected in season by cameras, foresters and our own crew. We score it here against 13 long-running forest cameras: two dates in three land within 9 days of the camera’s own peak. How this map is made

All of Michigan