Two historic sites preserved within the national park, connected by the easy 2.5-mile Bailly-Chellberg Trail. Joseph Bailly, a French-Canadian fur trader, established the first recorded non-Native settlement in the area in 1822. His homestead — a collection of brick and log structures — gives you a sense of the trading post life that preceded the industrial era on Lake Michigan's shore. His family's cemetery is here too, quietly atmospheric beneath old oaks.
A short walk through the forest brings you to Chellberg Farm, a working 19th-century farm that the National Park Service maintains using period-appropriate methods. In spring you'll find maple sugaring demonstrations; in autumn, harvest activities. It's an honest, unshowy operation, and all the better for it. The surrounding Cowles Bog trail (5 miles, moderate) passes through the distinctive bog ecosystem that inspired Henry Cowles's ecological research.