Upper Fox Headwaters

State Natural Area (No. 265)

Location: Marquette and Waushara County. T17N-R8E, Sections 1, 21, 22. T18N-R8E, Section 36. T18N-R9E, Section 23. 195 acres.

Access: For Chaffee Creek Meadow, from the junction of Highways 21 and 39/51 in Coloma, go south on 51 3.8 miles to rest area 81. Access is available via the Ice Age Trail on the west end of the rest area. Walk northeast into the site. For Caves Creek, from the junction of County Highways A and E in Lawrence, go north on A 1.7 miles, then continue north on 4th Avenue 1.7 miles. Park along the road and walk east into the site.

Description: Upper Fox Headwaters contains three distinct units: Zinke Lake, Upper Chaffee Creek Meadow, and Caves Creek. Zinke Lake is a small hard water spring lake with a tamarack-dominated shore. The water is deep, clear, and cold with limited aquatic vegetation that includes common horsetail, common pondweed, chara, and water milfoil. The spring outlet has a soft sandy bottom and contains white water crowfoot. Other plants include marsh-marigold, lousewort, cow parsnip, ironweed, bulbet water-hemlock, showy goldenrod, and Missouri goldenrod. The lake's outlet stream is also used by brook trout for spawning. Upper Chaffee Creek Meadow contains a wetland complex of fen, wet-mesic, and wet prairie with over 100 native plant species present. Running through the site is Chaffee Creek. The creek valley varies between very wet sedge meadow through fen-like areas along the gentle slope north of the creek and grading to wet-mesic prairie. Grasses include big and little blue-stem, blue-joint grass, and slender wheat grass. Featured forbs are marsh pea, Michigan lily, western sunflower, pale-spike lobelia, Kalm's lobelia, grass-of-parnassus, marsh fern, and swamp lousewort. Caves Creek contains spring seeps and runs, a 2-acre spring pond, sedge meadow and tamarack swamp, and oak barrens. The spring seeps are floristically rich and are surrounded by a diversity of wetlands. The barrens lies on a south-facing slope and contains a good diversity of prairie species including little blue-stem, June grass, flowering spurge, and bird's-foot violet. A state endangered species, western slender glass lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus), has been found at the site. Upper Fox Headwaters is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 1998.