It wasn't either Paul Bunyan or the lumber companies that deforested Michigan and Wisconsin, Joe. Most of the work was done by forest fires--particularly a series of fires that swept through those states on October 8, 1871, the same day as the Chicago fire. The Peshtigo Fire is the most well known-centered in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, it leveled more than 1.5 million acres, and may have killed as many as 2,500, ten times the number that were killed in Chicago.

Michigan's thumb area, which we Michigander know as farmland and fields, was a vast forest, also burned as did the Cities of Manistee and Port Huron. All told, some 4 million acres were burned, in the 1871 fires and it is impossible to determine the number of deaths.

For some reason, this day of fires, which were the worst in US history, isn't something that most people know about. For more info:The Great Fires of 1871 and 1881