Donegal Bay

Summary

Donegal Bay is a bay on Beaver Island, near Saint James harbor. GNIS records its former name as Mount Pisgah Bay, after the sand dune (“Mount Pisgah”) above the harbor — itself a biblical toponym from James Jesse Strang’s Latter Day Saint settlement (1847–1856). The bay’s current name coincides with County Donegal, Ireland, homeland of the Arranmore-Island emigrants who dominated the island’s population after 1856, though this project has not located a source that documents the renaming act itself.

History

“Mount Pisgah” — named, like Lake Geneserath and the Jordan River, for a biblical location (Deuteronomy 34:1, where Moses viewed the promised land from Mount Pisgah) — was in use as a place-name at Beaver Island by the early 1850s. A rumor reported to Mackinac authorities held that Strang’s Mormons operated “an artificial cave in Mount Pisgah” for counterfeiting; a search party investigated and found nothing, “conclud[ing] that the cavern was somewhere else.”¹ Elizabeth Whitney Williams’ 1905 memoir describes Mount Pisgah as “a high sand mountain,” a short distance from Long Lake, from which “one can look down into the harbor” and see the surrounding islands.² GNIS records the adjoining bay’s former name as Mount Pisgah Bay, consistent with this same dune.

The bay’s current name, Donegal Bay, is not explained in any source read for this project, but its coincidence with County Donegal, Ireland — the county of origin for Arranmore-Island emigrants who resettled the island after Strang’s 1856 assassination and dominate its subsequent demographic and cultural history — is suggestive. This connection is presented here as a plausible association, not an established fact: no primary or secondary source consulted states directly that the bay was renamed for the county.

Geography

Donegal Bay lies on Beaver Island near Saint James harbor; today’s Beaver Island Master Plan records Donegal Bay Road running along its shore, connecting to Kings Highway and the harbor area, and lists a “Donegal Bay ‘Sunset Beach’” among the island’s recreational sites. The adjacent Mount Pisgah dune area is today partially owned by the Port of St. James Association.

Names

Mount Pisgah Bay → Donegal Bay is one of the clearest examples in this knowledge base of a Strang-era biblical toponym surviving only as a GNIS variant name rather than in current use — the dune itself is still called “Mount Pisgah” locally and in the 2023 Master Plan, but the bay beside it now carries the modern name. Any historical source using “Mount Pisgah Bay” refers to this same feature.

Significance

The bay’s naming history is a compact illustration of the island’s successive eras: a biblical name from Strang’s theocratic settlement, superseded by (or existing alongside) a name that, if the Donegal association holds, would instead memorialize the Irish community that replaced the Mormon one after 1856.

Open questions

• No source consulted documents when or by whom the bay was renamed from Mount Pisgah Bay to Donegal Bay, or confirms the connection to County Donegal, Ireland, as opposed to it being an independent coincidence of naming. This is flagged as probable/associative, not established.
• The relationship between the bay’s name and the still-current “Mount Pisgah” dune name (i.e. why the dune kept its Strang-era name while the bay’s name changed) is not explained in sources held.

See also

• Beaver Island
• Saint James
• Lake Geneserath