Nixon Lake State Natural Area

Nixon Lake features a complex of natural features including extensive wet meadow and shrub swamp, conifer swamp, muskeg, northern dry forest surrounding an undeveloped drainage lake. Bordering Nixon Lake, Nixon Creek, and Partridge Creek is a mostly open shrub-herb wetland of American woolly-fruit sedge, blue-joint grass, bog birch, marsh bellflower, marsh cinquefoil, water hemlock, Virginia water-horehound, and marsh fern. Extensive beds of submerged aquatic vegetation occur in the inlet and outlet streams. Marsh and bog species including cat-tail, bulrush, sweet fern, white meadowsweet, leather-leaf, and bog rosemary are significant in areas. Tamarack is scattered unevenly throughout the wetland and becomes co-dominant with black spruce away from the lake and streams. On gently rolling pitted sandy outwash northeast of Nixon Lake is a dry forest dominated by jack pine. Associates include red pine, balsam fir, red maple, and black cherry. The understory includes beaked hazelnut, bracken fern, winterberry, blueberry, Canada mayflower, gay-wings, and cow-wheat. The 110-acre Nixon Lake is a moderately fertile drainage lake that supports dense beds of aquatic vegetation. Common species include Robbins pondweed, big-leaf pondweed, floating pondweed, flat-stem pondweed, water-lilies, northern water-nymph, pickerel weed, common water-weed, and wild rice. Nixon Creek, the lake's outlet, empties into the Manitowish Flowage about two miles downstream. The lake and surrounding wetlands are extensively used by numerous water birds including mallard, American black duck, blue-wing teal, wood duck, mergansers, coots, and Canada geese. Principal fish species are muskie, walleye, large-mouth bass, small-mouth bass, and panfish. Nixon Lake is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 2007.