[1] The islands are part of the Town of Gibraltar, Wisconsin.

The islands were likely occupied for thousands of years by indigenous peoples.

Gradually the historic Ojibwe people moved into the area around the Great Lakes, where they competed with the existing Sioux (Lakota).

They pushed the Sioux west into the Great Plains, with their last battle occurring in 1745.

The islands and the adjacent Strawberry Channel were part of a border dispute between Wisconsin and Michigan that was eventually resolved in the 1926 United States Supreme Court case Michigan v.