The Big Water: A History of Michigan’s Lower Au Sable River

As one of the country’s most popular recreational streams — with an international reputation for fly fishing — the Au Sable River is a crown jewel of Michigan waterways. However, underneath its surface lies a history of controversy and conflict. For 12,000 years its sylvan banks and clear waters have attracted everyone from the First People of North America to European explorers and American settlers. They came to trap, lumber, hunt, fish, canoe, and lately, to conserve.

The Big Water: A History of Michigan’s Lower Au Sable River is an up-to-date, comprehensive, and unified account of the region’s history, from pre-European times through French and English exploitation, American Manifest Destiny, resource extraction and redemption, the rise of outdoor recreation, and the legacy of pollution from modernization. The Big Water is a tale of the Wild West ways of early industrialization that flows hopefully towards a future where we try to live in harmony with wild places.

Thomas A. Buhr is a native Michigander and lifelong fisherman, chasing everything from bluegills and bass to snappers and snook. As a fourteen-year-old, he moved to Boca Raton - a place nobody had heard of yet - and fell in love with Old Florida. Watching "progress" steal away this magical land also spawned an interest in conservation.While working his way through the academic thicket with degrees from the University of Miami, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Michigan, Buhr found time for freelance writing. For over thirty years, Tom Buhr has written for magazines, including Field & Stream, Florida Game & Fish, The Fisherman, Michigan Out of Doors, and Midwest Fly Fishing, as well as several pieces for academic journals. He was editor of The Riverwatch and won an Award for Conservation Journalism from The Sierra Club in 2011. His first novel, The Outgoing, won a Silver Medal in the Global Book Awards.Buhr has been a member, often serving on the board, of several Michigan-based conservation organizations. When not fishing, writing or protecting wild places, he cheers for his favorite sports teams: the Leicester City Foxes, the Michigan Wolverines, and the Miami Dolphins.