Incorporated as a village in 1897 and as a city in 1919, Munising is sited on Munising Bay, one of the most beautiful natural harbors in Michigan. It is encircled by steeply rising hills and faces Grand Island, to the north. First a Native American encampment, Munising developed with iron furnaces in the 1870s and later with a tannery, sawmills, a paper mill, and tourist attractions. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, established by Congress in 1966, features a multicolored sandstone escarpment that rises from 50 to 250 feet above Lake Superior and extends for over twenty miles from Munising to Grand Marais to the northeast. Nineteenth-century explorers, travelers, artists, and scientists admired and, from their different perspectives, described the awesome and fantastical shapes, caves, arches, and promontories gouged and carved into the stone by the action of waves and ice, naming them Miners' Castle, Lovers' Leap, Battleship Rock, Grand Portal, Chapel Rock, and the like.
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