Landlocked Property in Crawford County, Michigan

Why landlocked inholdings are a genuinely elevated risk in this specific county

Crawford County's own government describes the county as roughly 75% publicly owned, split between the Michigan Department of Military Affairs' Camp Grayling training area, the US Forest Service's Huron-Manistee National Forest, and Michigan DNR state forest and park land (including Hartwick Pines State Park). That's a dramatically higher share of public ownership than most Michigan counties, and it has a direct, practical consequence for private land buyers: a meaningful number of private parcels here exist as inholdings -- privately owned tracts entirely or almost entirely surrounded by public land -- where the only realistic route in or out crosses land the buyer doesn't own and a government agency does.

That's a different and more consequential risk than the generic "confirm legal access before buying rural land" advice that applies everywhere. In most counties, a landlocked parcel's neighbors are other private owners, and a road easement is a private negotiation. In Crawford County, the neighbor on the other side of that missing access is frequently the State of Michigan, the US Forest Service, or the Michigan National Guard -- each with its own separate, government process for granting (or refusing) access, on its own timeline, under its own legal standard.

If the surrounding land is Michigan DNR state forest

Simply using an existing DNR forest road to reach a landlocked parcel is not the same as having legal access to it. The DNR is explicit about this distinction in its own guidance: a private landowner has the same right to use a public forest road as any other member of the public, but that public-use right does not establish a legal right of access -- the kind a lender will typically require before financing a purchase or new construction.

For a parcel actually landlocked by DNR-administered state land, Sections 2123 and 2124 of Michigan's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA) provide the formal mechanism: a landowner can apply to the DNR for a granted easement across state land. Before filing, the DNR requires the applicant to discuss the proposed easement directly with the local DNR land manager. The DNR then reviews the request for its impact on natural resources and the public interest, and its stated standard limits approval to situations where the applicant demonstrates a genuine need, shows there's no reasonable alternative route, and the impact on the public's investment in the land can be minimized. This is a real, but discretionary and not guaranteed, process -- it is not the same as an as-of-right private easement.

Separately, Michigan's general common-law "implied easement" doctrine can apply where a landlocked parcel was originally split off from a larger tract that once had road access -- in that situation, an easement over the land from which the parcel was carved may already exist as a matter of law, independent of any DNR application. Whether that applies to a specific Crawford County parcel depends on its title history and requires review by a real-estate attorney or title company familiar with Michigan easement law, not a DNR office.

If the surrounding land is Huron-Manistee National Forest

Where a private inholding is instead surrounded by US Forest Service land in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, the applicable process is federal, not state. The Forest Service typically grants road access to private inholdings through a special-use permit rather than a permanent easement, issued under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and its implementing regulations at 36 CFR 251, Subparts B and D. Forest Service authorized officers are directed to grant only the access actually needed for reasonable use and enjoyment of the private land while minimizing impact on the surrounding federal resource -- in some cases, that can mean the agency determines a non-motorized access mode is sufficient rather than a full road-use permit.

These special-use road-access authorizations are typically issued for 20-year terms, with reauthorization possible at the end of that period if access is still needed and the permit holder has complied with its terms. The Huron-Manistee National Forest has processed a number of these specific requests over time (documented individually in the Forest's own project records), so this is an established, if administratively involved, process rather than a novel one -- but it is a federal permit application, with its own paperwork and review timeline, not an automatic right that comes with owning the inholding.

Camp Grayling: a shifting boundary that has directly affected nearby land access

The third kind of public land bordering private parcels here is Camp Grayling itself -- the Michigan National Guard's roughly 148,000-acre training installation, described as the largest National Guard training facility in the country, spanning Crawford, Kalkaska, and Otsego Counties. This isn't a fixed boundary a buyer can treat as permanent: in 2022, the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs proposed a 20-year lease of up to roughly 162,000 additional acres of state forest land, which would have expanded the installation's total footprint to around 315,000 acres. Following public comment and review, the Michigan DNR rejected that long-term lease proposal, but did make about 52,000 acres of the originally proposed area available to the Guard for short-term use permits instead of a permanent lease -- a narrower, more limited outcome than the original request, but still a real, current expansion of Camp Grayling's operational footprint beyond its base 148,000 acres.

For a parcel anywhere near the installation's current or short-term-permitted boundary, that history matters two ways: first, training activity on adjoining public land can affect noise, access-road use, and seasonal restrictions in ways that ordinary state or national forest land wouldn't; and second, the boundary itself has already been the subject of one major proposed expansion in the past few years and could be again, so a buyer should check current status directly with the DNR or DMVA rather than relying on a boundary shown on an older map.

Before buying a Crawford County parcel that borders or is surrounded by public land

1. Confirm the parcel's legal access status with a title search and a Michigan real-estate attorney before assuming that a road you can currently drive on constitutes a legal right of access -- this is the single most important step, since public-road use rights and legal access rights are genuinely different things here.
2. Identify exactly which public landowner borders the parcel -- Michigan DNR state forest, the US Forest Service (Huron-Manistee National Forest), or Camp Grayling/Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs -- since each has a different access-easement or permit process, office, and legal standard.
3. For DNR-bordered land, contact the local DNR land manager before filing a NREPA Section 2123/2124 easement application, since the DNR requires that consultation as a first step and reviews each request case-by-case with no guarantee of approval.
4. For Huron-Manistee National Forest-bordered land, budget real time for a Forest Service special-use permit application under 36 CFR 251 -- this is a federal administrative process, not a same-day approval, and reauthorization is required roughly every 20 years.
5. For land anywhere near Camp Grayling's boundary, check the installation's current confirmed footprint directly with the Michigan DNR or Department of Military and Veterans Affairs rather than an older map, given the documented 2022-2023 expansion proposal and its narrower, short-term-permit resolution.