W. C. Gray (1830-1901), of Oak park, Illinois, was writer and editor for over thirty years of the religious newspaper The Interior. He came to love the unspoiled wilderness of the Keweenaw and surrounding areas, but saw by the 1880’s that logging and mining had already, in his opinion, begun to destroy the environment. He bought three square miles of land which included a lake with a small island, and from 1887 until 1901 visited it every summer with his family. Gray was a correspondent with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, lifelong friend of Benjamin Harrison, and had been invited to dine in the White House with President McKinley.