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BIG BAY
POINTS
OF
INTEREST
Lake Independence and Perkins County Park. There's good year-round fishing at this big lake known for its northern pike, walleye, and perch. The shallow lake makes for warmer, earlier swimming at the attractive park beach ...
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Big Bay Outfitters/Anatomy of a Canoe. Part crafts shop, part outfitters and kayak and canoe dealer, part outdoors store. In season a daily waterfall and mountaintop tour of hard-to-find beauty spots ...
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North Shore Treasures. A charming, rambling shop sells lodge look accessories, Michigan jams and sauces, and select local handcrafts. ...
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Cram's General Store. Hardware, takeout sandwiches, complete groceries and meats, videos, snowmobile and car parts can be found at this community info center ...
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Big Bay Harbor and beach. A beautiful and little-used beach near unusual sandstone formations that are fun for kayakers and scuba divers to explore ...
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Big Bay Point lighthouse tour. Now a B&B, this 1896 brick lighthouse has tours highlighted by a climb up the 65' light tower viewing Lake Independence, the Huron Mountains, and passing ships ...
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Region: Marquette Range
BIG BAY
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For people who like to feel they're away from it all, this sawmill town at the end of the road is a favorite destination. The company-built mill town on Lake Independence is tucked between the Huron Mountains and Lake Superior. Big Bay enjoys ready access to the Yellow Dog River and other noted natural trout streams that come tumbling out of the mountains and the high Yellow Dog Plains, creating several waterfalls on their way to Lake Independence.
The shore road to the west is cut off at the gates of the Huron Mountain Club, the vast, fenced-off fishing and hunting retreat and wilderness area owned by extremely wealthy families, most of whom made their money in the 19th century. The public is never allowed inside, but the unpretentious log clubhouse from 1892 can easily be seen from the water near the Pine River mouth. Clustered along the river in this area are the members' 46 cabins and camps, leaving virtually untouched and wild nearly all of the club's choice 21,000 acres - seven lakes, six waterfalls, and several mountaintops over 1,300 feet above sea level.
The Huron Mountain Club has been the subject of much local lore and speculation. Fred Rydholm, author of a massive two-volume history of Marquette County, worked for the club as a young man and is fond of writing about it. "Members now include affluent Michigan families like the Fords, Algers, Ferrys, Bentleys, and Angells - many of whom exploited the resources of the wilderness but saved this particular wilderness as sancturary and hideaway for themselves," writes Kathryn Eckert in Buildings of Michigan.
Today casual visitors come to Big Bay because of the fishing, the proximity to waterfalls and mountaintops in a wilderness setting, and the combined mystique of the Big Bay Point lighthouse, the legacy of Henry Ford, and the Anatomy of a Murder connections. The murder occurred here in the Lumberjack Tavern, the jealous husband and his wife lived in a trailer at Perkins County Park, and the scene in the tavern was filmed here.
Back roads are confusing and the back-country attractions like Gobbler's Knob (a favorite of rock climbers) and Alder, Little Garlic, and Bushy Creek Falls are unmarked, so many first-time visitors opt for a four-hour tour offered at Big Bay Outfitters, or a family group tour given by Martha Bush of Little Tree Cabins. A helpful short introduction to the area is veteran outdoorsman Ben Mukkala's folksy $10 Touring Guide: Big Bay and the Huron Mountains, Third Edition, widely available around town along with books of northwoods anecdotes Ben has collected over the years. Unfortunately its maps have no mile scales. You can also try following directions in the free "Guide to Marquette Country Waterfalls and Lighthouses." E-mail mailroom@marquettecountry.org . Also ask for the Marquette County trail guide for hiking and biking, and you'll be set.
Big Bay has just the combination of adventure, friendliness, and reliable snow (25 feet a year) that snowmobilers love. They can sled here from L'Anse on the AAA Road through the Huron Mountains and the high Yellowdog Plains and gather at the Thunder Bay Inn. The Big Bay 550 Snowmobile Club ( www.bigbay550snowmobileclub.org ) not only grooms 148 miles of trail through wild backcountry to the Baraga County line, but also runs a hot dog shack for sledders. Big Bay snowmobilers are quite unhappy with a township decision to allow ATVs on all Powell Township county roads because ATVs do so much damage to the shoulders used for snowmobile trails.
Silent sports enthusiasts are well represented in Big Bay, which is the western trailhead of the Hiawatha Water Trail, depicted in another brochure also available by e-mailing mailroom@marquettecountry.org . The trail consists of a one-page map and guide showing put-in and takeout points from Big Bay 120 miles east along the Lake Superior shore through Marquette to Munising. Anatomy of a Canoe outdoors store, part of Big Bay Outfitters, sells and rents canoes and kayaks in a big way.
For paddlers, the beach by the harbor on Big Bay itself is the place to put in for a pleasant paddle to see the varied shore in the immediate vicinity. Paddle northwest to see unusual Jacobsville sandstone formations under the water that rise up to become cliffs. Go east to see the Big Bay Point lighthouse from the water. A short way east of that, but before the Iron River outlet of Lake Independence, a private homeowner in cooperation with the Hiawatha Water Trail has created a takeout point. Beyond that, there are no takeout points until Little Presque Isle, and miles of forbidding cliff. This stretch is no place for canoes, warns an experienced Big Bay outdoorswoman aware of how quickly weather can develop on Lake Superior. After listening to weather reports, careful, strong kayakers could try paddling 13 miles from the private takeout point to take in Granot Loma, Michigan's grandest log structure, from the water.
Marquette County's nonprofit Noquemanon Trails Network of cross-country skiing and mountain biking enthusiasts ( www.noquetrails.org ) is developing cross-country ski/mountain biking/hiking trails centered on Big Bay. The designated Big Bay Pathway, a loop of three miles or so, is flat and easy. A beautiful 20-mile trail system at all levels is the Saux Head Trail between County Road 550 and Lake Superior. The trailhead is off Saux Head Road about 10 miles south of Big Bay. Groomed for traditional skiing and ski-skating, it offers views in places of Saux Head Lake and Lake Superior. Neither of these trails have so far been linked with the Noquemanon's main trails, which extend from Marquette to Ishpeming and northwest to County Road 510 north of Negaunee. Those trails from Marquette are used for the nationally important Subaru Noquemanon Ski Marathon in January and the Subaru Ore to Shore Mountain Bike Epic in August.
Big Bay was founded in 1875 around a sawmill. Over the years logging camps supplied several sawmills here, including a central mill complex so large it had four smokestacks. There the Brunswick Lumber Company mill made bowling pins and hardwood flooring, among other things.
In the 1930s, three large sawmills were built on the north edge of Marquette, a more cost-effective location. That spelled doom for Big Bay as a mill town. Brunswick closed its Big Bay operations in 1932. Its company houses were sold for $35 each.
The isolation of mill town life at the end of the sawmill days around 1930 is portrayed in Mildred Walker's fine first novel. Fireweed, written from her own first-hand observation when she was the company doctor's wife in Big Bay. Later Walker became a well-known western writer in the Montana. The University of Nebraska Press has republished her well-received literary debut from 1934. It's a good read about the bright, energetic, Hollywood-infatuated daughter of a Swedish mill hand. Will she fulfill her dreams and enjoy the excitement of city life or get stuck in Big Bay after the lumber has run out?
Big Bay was nearly a ghost town when Henry Ford bought the mill in 1943 and reopened it. "Henry was eighty years old when he bought the large sawmill, power plants, and almost everything else in Big Bay as a personal project," wrote Ford R. Bryan in Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford. "An inn costing five hundred thousand dollars to renovate was used as a summer hotel for Ford executives and friends. A trip to Big Bay became a vacation bonus for those in the good graces of the powerful at Ford Motor company. Big Bay became another of Ford's model towns - pretty but unprofitable." Ford took a special interest in Big Bay and visited it frequently, since it was so close to his summer home at the Huron Mountain Club.
Today the hotel, still furnished in the Early American style Ford liked, is known as the Thunder Bay Inn. The mill closed again in 1949, after Ford's death. To help make Ford Motor cost-effective, the founder's grandson Henry Ford II eliminated this and most of his grandfather's other cherished village industries.
In 1952 the owner of Big Bay's popular Lumberjack Tavern was shot and killed by an army lieutenant jealous over attention paid his wife. It became a famous murder case, immortalized by Marquette judge John Voelker (pronounced "VOLL-kuhr). Using the pen name of Robert Traver, he transformed the event into a best-selling novel and classic film, Anatomy of a Murder. Eight minutes of the movie were filmed in Big Bay, renamed "Thunder Bay."
Soon after World War II, Big Bay developed its current split personality. It become a place for summer cottagers, especially from Marquette, and for retirees and visitors drawn by the wild trout streams, undeveloped waterfalls, and natural beauty. The old sawmill is now a kind of northwoods version of loft apartments for the families of a retired physician and his brother. The mill village and surrounding back country are home to a very different group of people: folks who have chosen to live very simply, often on the fringes of society. In characteristic U.P. fashion, some locals stitch together a subsistence income from logging and seasonal jobs. The Lumberjack Tavern, still a classic northwoods bar with pool table and juke box, offers a window on this world.
A completely different groups of people who live simply are transplants or offspring of Marquette professionals who have created a community based on what could loosely be called New Age or ecology-based spirituality. Living off the electrical grid doesn't daunt them, either. Some home-school their children. They link up with organizations of kindred spirits in Marquette. Some have practiced simple living to a degree inconceivable to most Americans - like the family that lives two miles from their road and mailbox, without electricity, and makes a living finding herbs and selling wildcrafted herbs by mail. (Now a cell phone reduces their isolation.)
The 1990s saw an influx of year-round residents. They are well-to-do commuters to Marquette who built large homes with big lawns going down to Lake Independence. Expect more pontoon boats, more cars on County Road 550, more runoff of lawn chemicals into the lake, and better services. (Already the grocery now has an in-store bakery; the Thunder Bay Inn has more entrées on its regular menu.)
Today Big Bay's only non-service businesses are three sawmills, two of them portable, one stationary. Along with the famous old hotel and bar, there's Cram's General Store and gas station (formerly an IGA) with associated restaurant and laundromat, the Corner Store (more of a convenience store), a public elementary school (high schoolers are bussed to Negaunee, the closest town via unpaved County Road 510), and some lodgings and gift shops. St. Mary's Catholic Church, across the street from Big Bay Outfitters, has a peace and serenity garden with perennials in a shady area behind the church. It's reached by a wheelchair-accessible walkway. Two ample tables with bench seating look out towards Lake Independence.
North of town is the well-known Bay Cliff Health Camp ( www.baycliff.org ) for handicapped children. Bay Cliff's primary focus is a two-month summer camp for some 170 Upper Peninsula children with hearing, speech, vision, and orthopedic (skeletal) disabilities. Children are not separated by disability. The program aims to increase children's independence and enable them to live fuller lives. There's also a one-week program for adults. In 1934 Elba Morris, a nurse, and Goldie Corneliuson, a public health worker, started Bay Cliff in the buildings of a former dairy farm already 20 years old. Rentals to nonprofit groups in spring and fall bring some income. Now Bay Cliff's capital campaign wants to raise over $7 million to replace and renovate the ancient buildings to current ADA standards, winterize the facility, create an accessible trail system, and develop its Lake Superior waterfront for people with disabilities. The camp is open, and interested groups can call (906) 345-9314 and arrange tours if staff has time.
Since 2003 Big Bay has been in the news because Kennecott Minerals wants to mine a deposit of nickel and copper on the 1,600 acres it has acquired on the Yellow Dog Plains. The plains are a high wetland, the source of five rivers, including two famous fishing streams, the Salmon Trout River, one of the last natural habitats of the Lake Superior coaster trout. Kennecott, based in Utah, is a subsidiary of London-based Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies. Demand and prices for nickel, a necessary component of steel, are high because of China's and India's growing demand for steel. Kennecott promises to return its land, after mining is over, to the community for recreational land, clean and green.
As news reports dribble out, they are confusing, full of this group and that group calling for reports and studies. The mine as proposed is supported by some groups - the state's Department of Environmental Quality and, surprisingly, the Marquette County chamber of commerce, which has a large tourism component. The state would collect tax on precious minerals mines - how much it's not clear, since no precious minerals have been mined in Michigan in recent times. Many other groups and individuals are afraid of the mine and distrustful of both Kennecott and the DEQ, which they feel is rubber-stamping Kennecott's plan, possibly for its short-term boost during a period of less than ten years to the Michigan's beleaguered economy.
Trying to put together an overview of the whole story, it does seem hard to imagine a more sensitive location for the mine shaft and kind of sulfide mine Kennecott wants. The shaft would be sunk 1,500 feet beneath the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River to extract nickel, copper, and silver from sulfide-based rock. Sulfide rock, when mixed with water and oxygen, can produce highly corrosive sulfuric acid. Mixed with additional water, sulfuric acid becomes hot and toxic. Big Bay residents worry that pumping out water for the mine (a necessary part of dewatering the shaft) will lower their water table. Where would the mine water be discharged, and what effects would that have?
The mine is near Pinnacle Falls on land recently sold by Marquette historian and grand old man Fred Rydholm to the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve. Its purchase was the climax of the preserve's long, well publicized fund-raising effort, with many benefit concerts, aimed at keeping a beloved place wild and accessible to all. The mine and its estimated 120 to 140 direct employees, trucks, and equipment would certainly alter the Pinnacle Falls area and the character of both the AAA Road through the wilderness and County Road 510, now promoted for fall color trips and waterfall watching.
Concern for fish has united the patrician Huron Mountain Club, the plebian Big Bay Sportsmen's Club, Uncle Ducky Charters, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, the National Wildlife Federation, a group of retired DNR ad DEQ employees, and all the varied retirees, new agers, wealthy commuters, and timber-cutters who live in Big Bay. They have banded together as the Eagle Alliance (www.ydeaglescry.com) spearheaded by the energetic Cynthia Pryor. An early retiree, she has devoted herself to first the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve ( www.yellowdogwatershed.org ) and now to fighting the mine. Photographer-writers John and Ann Mahan put the proposed mine in a broader context on their web site, sweetwatervisions.com
Governor Jennifer Granholm hasn't said anything for the record about the project. State Senator Mike Prusi, a former Marquette County iron miner himself, accepts the sulfide mine as inevitable and supports it. He points out that Kennecott has been poking test holes in the ground throughout much of the U.P., so this issue may well come up again and again. (Some Menominee County residents are fighting a similar sulfide mining project.) Congressman Bart Stupak, who represents the U.P. and half of northern Michigan, is a consistent protector of Great Lakes water. He opposes the project. He has pushed to fund a USGS hydrology study as a way to halt the project by proving its negative environmental repercussions.
Meanwhile, Kennecott designed and the DEQ approved a road crossing and culvert system on the Triple A Road on its property, installing a 14" culvert where Fred Rydholm recalls a much larger culvert used to be. In April of 2005 the culvert washed out, sending sediment - 98 tons of it, according to a road commission estimate - into the Salmon Trout River, which flows downstream through 20,000 acres of Huron Mountain Club land. Sand can suffocate fish eggs and organisms eaten by fish. "While a stream washout may be a small disaster that can, we hope, be ameliorated, it is an ominous harbinger of a much greater disaster that can not," wrote Elinor McLennan, president of the Huron Mountain Club, in a letter to Governor Granholm. She added, "If Kennecott and the DEQ cannot properly install and manage a simple flow diversion system, how are they to be trusted to operate and oversee a potentially dangerous sulfide mine?"
Big Bay has been so consumed by the sulfide mine issue, says one involved community leader, that everyone has been distracted from ongoing concerns like planning and zoning decisions. A sensitive case came up about an unpopular high-density condominium project in an area of 10-acre properties. When did the zoning get changed? Why didn't the matter get any attention? Nobody among the concerned community at large quite knows.
Back to Marquette Range
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BIG BAY
RESTAURANTS,
LODGINGS
& CAMPGROUNDS
These are our choices, not ads.
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BIG BAY
RESTAURANTS
The Thunder Bay Inn closed at the end of March, 2008 — an unhappy event, since it was a center of Big Bay. For future changes, try calling the inn at (906) 345-9376 or Cram's General Store, (906) 345-0075.
HUNGRY HOLLOW CAFÉ
(906) 345-0075
Hearty breakfasts are served all day at this unpretentious spot next to the Laundromat. For lunch there are burgers, chili, home-made soups, taco salads and other sandwiches. It's the only place in town to get breakfast, and there's a huge cross-section of society as its customers.
On County Road 550 as you enter Big Bay, just before the gas station. Open year-round Mon-Thurs 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., Fri & Sat 7-4, Sun 8-4. Wheelchair-accessible.
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BIG BAY
LODGINGS
The Thunder Bay Inn has closed. See above.
LITTLE TREE CABINS
(906) 345-9535
Four simple, tastefully furnished cabins are behind the Independence Lake home of Martha Bush, Ken Baker, and their teenage children. Ken and Martha are extremely knowledgeable about the natural world. They offer a worthwhile backcountry guide service for families visiting the Big Bay area, with a family rate of $35, no matter how many. Now that their homeschooled children are going on to college, Martha has time to develop her other businesses in mediation (the sulfide mine controversy has given her a lot of practice) and nutritional consulting. Their little resort has a 200-foot stone and sand beach (it was much sandier before trees were removed to open up the view for a neighboring property, eventually destroying a protective headland), a community fire circle and picnic area, nice hikes up the rocky, wooded hillsides across the road, and trout fishing in the nearby Yellow Dog River. Independence Lake fishing is excellent. Each cabin comes with a rowboat, picnic table, and fire ring. The cabins sleep 3 to 6; there's an extra charge for extra people, children and adult alike. Cabins have no water views. Two have screened porches. They rent by the week during summer ($375-$450), otherwise for $55-$100/day, depending on party size and season. 2-day winter minimum. Daily rates may be available, even in summer if it's the last-minute. A paddleboat is for rent. This resort is geared to silent sports. It takes snowmobilers in winter but separates snowmobilers and skiers by booking in different weeks.
On CR 550 about 3 miles southeast of Big Bay. Open year-round. Handicap accessible: call. Family friendly. Pets welcome.
PICTURE BAY MOTEL
(906) 345-9820
This very clean, trim older motel has rooms with knotty pine paneling. Birders, take note: a very pleasant seating area and the back yard look down on shallow McKenzie Bay of Lake Independence, an idyllic view. The bay is fed by an underground river and springs, which creates open water in winter. Waterfowl flock here for most of the year. Once a busy sawmill was on the bay.
Two rooms have cooking facilities and two double beds. They are $70/night for a two-room suite, and $60 for one room. Two double beds are in each of the three sleeping rooms ($50/night). All have satellite TV. A phone is in the office. No air-conditioning; it's seldom necessary. Snowmobilers welcome; on trail. Owners Rick and Gale Hausfeld are active snowmobilers, drawn to move up from below the bridge. No no-smoking rooms, but most guests smoke outside and smoke was not noticeable on our visit.
On CR 550 at the entrance to Big Bay, a mile from town. Walk to Perkins Co. Park and Lake Independence. Open year-round. Handicap accessible: very small bathrooms. Family friendly: no extra charge. Otherwise $5/extra person. Dogs OK, no extra charge
BIG BAY POINT LIGHTHOUSE B&B
(906) 345-9957
This seven-room B&B is one lighthouse B&B of some 23 in the U.S., and only four in Michigan. Owner/ innkeepers Jeff and Linda Gamble do all the little things to make this unusual lodging a destination where guests like to stay on the premises. The cozy downstairs living room with fireplace, comfortably furnished, is well supplied with lots of games and books. Exposed brick walls set a casual note. The library VCR/DVD has good movies, including, of course, the locally filmed Anatomy of a Murder. A phone is also in the library. Cookies, fruit, candy, and pretzels, and beverages can be grazed at the dining room buffet any time. The Gambles love to share lighthouse lore and stories at their nightly orientation talk and in their quarterly newsletter. It's most fun to be here in this north-facing waterfront location, they say, on those marvelous nights when the northern lights can be seen - November through March are the best bets - or when the sky is clear and the stars are out, or when the weather's really bad. Then you can sit in the tower room (a shared area) and watch storms and lightning out in the lake.
Linda bakes for the full breakfast. Perched partway down the bluff there's a hut with spa services (massages, masks and wraps) with one to two weeks' notice -all the more memorable because all that you hear is the lapping of waves. A perennial garden is by the door. The grounds offer good early-morning opportunities to see birds and wildlife. Guests can borrow snowshoes. Trails on the property, however, have given way to lots for sale, sectioned off along the entrance road, to help fund the Gambles' eventual retirement. The Gambles assure future guests that any development won't be seen from the lighthouse itself.
Three larger "keeper's rooms" with queen beds, fireplace, lake view are $187/night in season, May thru Oct., $170 otherwise. Two other rooms with queen beds, lake view are $150 or $135 off-season. Small rooms with a double bed and woods view are $120 and $130. For good summer availability, reserve three months in advance; for non-holiday winter weekends, three weeks ahead. Public tours of common areas ($2) are given at 1:30, and 2:30 on Sunday and Wednesday, June through September. Grounds are open to visitors from 10 to 4 daily.
Go through the town of Big Bay, take Dam Rd. to the east around bay, take lighthouse road to point. Closed from Nov. 15 to Dec. 27. Children 16 and over welcome. Handicap accessible: no.
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BIG BAY
CAMPGROUNDS
PERKINS COUNTY PARK CAMPGROUND
(906) 345-9353; reservable by the day, 5 days, and month.
This modern campground on the west shore of Lake Independence is a peaceful place to camp, provided it's not July 4 or Labor Day when there's a softball tournament. Campsites are in a grove of mature maples with some hemlocks and pines. It makes for a shady, cool setting. For fishing and swimming, see lake independence point of interest. It's an easy walk into town.
All sites are served by showers and flush toilets. Rates vary with services. 36 full-service sites (water, sewer, electricity) in 2007 include 6 pull-through sites with 50 or 30 amp electric and full hookups. They are $25/night. Full-hookup 30 amp sites are $23/night. 16 electric-only sites are $18/night. 24 tent sites are $13/night. Five-night rates are about 10% off. The new sites have understory privacy buffers. Landscape buffers for other campsites are planned with the next round of improvements. The campground fills on weekends in July and the first part of August, and very occasionally on weekdays, too, so reserve ahead.
The campground area has had some famous residents over the years. The lieutenant who was the defendant in Anatomy of a Murder and his beautiful, bored young wife were among the dozens of army personnel who lived in trailers here in the 1950s while testing artillery anti-aircraft guns for the army. (The lieutenant murdered the owner of the Lumberjack Tavern across the road.)
The late Miss Perkins, the Queen of Big Bay, lived here in her youth, before she grew into a 600-pound hog by consuming uneaten food from the local school lunch program and quaffing an occasional beer from the Lumberjack. Her owner, resident park manager Kim Bourgeois, then moved her to a spacious, wooded pen on adjacent private property. Miss Perkins died after an illness and was buried, not butchered.
On CR 550 at the south entrance to Big Bay. (906) 345-9353. Open May 15-Oct 1, and often into Oct. Wheelchair-accessible: some sites, all buildings, and a grass path to the water. Family friendly. Dogs permitted on leash.
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