|
|
MANISTIQUE
POINTS
OF
INTEREST
Downtown Manistique. Downtown is friendly, functional, and architecturally quite simple, despite Manistique's lumber town heritage. There's a most unusual Latin American import shop, a used paperback bookstore, and a large antique shop with vintage clothing ...
more
East Breakwater Light and Manistique Boardwalk. A scenic, hardened two-mile walkway with picnic areas goes along the Lake Michigan shore. The beach alternates between sandy and rocky, in places backed by birches and cedars ...
more
Mackinaw Trail Tasting Room and Winery. Tasting room of an award-winning U.P. winery ...
more
Water Tower and "Siphon Bridge". Manistique's 200-foot 1920s neoclassical brick water tower is the town's defining landmark. It's next to the river and what was the famous "siphon bridge," below water level. ...
more
Imogen Herbert Historical Museum. Lots of curious stuff in this little museum — a quilt made of neckties, a lampshade — and good photos of the many facets of Chicago Lumber, the company that once owned much of the town. In back there's a cabin once part of an 1890s agricultural commune. ...
more
Traders' Point. Two pleasant shops: a café/bookstore and antiques. The outdoor eating area looks across the Manistique River to the marina. ...
more
Rogers Park. This is the best Lake Michigan beach in the area-pure sand, free of the limestone cobbles along much of the shoreline. Also a picnic area ...
more
Kewadin Casino, Manistique. One of the smaller U.P. Indian-run casinos, the Kewadin here has 2 blackjack tables and one roulette table, a poker room, and 80 slots. Free drinks while gaming ...
more
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Region: Manistique and the Garden Peninsula
MANISTIQUE
|
 | | Photography Plus | | Manistique's ice-free harbor made it especially attractive for shippers. It started to boom in the 1890s when huge volumes of logs were floated down the Manistique River. | Once an important Lake Michigan port at the mouth of the Manistique River, Marquette is an old lumber and paper mill town. Downtown is on the plain side but attractively spiffed up with streetscape improvements. Manistique was served by the Upper Peninsula's major east-west railroad long before there were roads. That and steamships, and later the Ann Arbor Railroad carferry from Frankfort, enabled it to become an early resort area of cottages and small resorts on nearby fishing lakes, especially Indian Lake. Today the widely used boardwalk along Lake Michigan has played up Manistique's scenic strong points.
 | | Manistique’s logging boom is remembered in the mural at the post office on the south end of Cedar, the main business street. The classic 1930s W.P.A. style depicts the lumberjacks in a dynamic, almost heroic fashion. | Like most U.P. towns, Manistique has a smaller population than it had during its heyday (3,500 in 2002 vs. 5,400 in 1940). It started to boom in the early 1890s; the population jumped to 4,000. By then Manistique was already a major Upper Peninsula port, thanks to its location at the Manistique River mouth, important in logging river drives because of its extensive watershed. Manistique's ice-free Lake Michigan harbor was much closer to lumber markets than Lake Superior ports. In 1887, the new Soo Line railroad between Minneapolis and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, created a station in Manistique, and the town became an even more important shipping point. That development led seven brothers from Chicago to form the Chicago Lumber Company. It built a great deal of company housing and created subsidiary industries: a box factory, a broom factory, and a chemical plant. Local sawmills turned out Manistique's most lucrative product, white pine boards, at the rate of 90 million board feet a year. Commercial fishing was another major industry.
...continued below...
 | | The Manistique Clyde’s Drive-In is a classic diner in a classic location, serving employees of Manistique Paper across the tracks. Manistique’s landmark water tower appears in the background. | William S. Crowe arrived in Manistique in 1893 as a teenager to work in its booming lumber industry. He described the woods, large-scale logging, and town life in Manistique in his first-hand Lumberjack memoir, initially published in 1952. It has now been reissued with many period illustrations and some explanatory footnotes as Lumberjack: Inside an Era in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan . Crowe considered life in most all northwoods lumber towns to be the same, and Manistique's story to be prototypical. One myth he energetically dispels is the notion that logging towns were lusty and bawdy, and streets were unsafe when lumberjacks came out of the woods in spring. Crowe regarded Manistique as an optimistic, orderly, generally delightful place to live. He gives special attention to using his own first-hand experience to destroy the credibility of Call It North Country: The Story of Upper Michigan, republished in 1986 by Wayne State University Press. Call It North Country was written by the colorful, imaginative magazine writer John Barlow Martin, well known to readers of the Saturday Evening Post in the 1940s and 1950s. Martin was born after Manistique lumbering was basically over. Crowe says he valued drama, storytelling, and sensationalism over truth.
 | | The boardwalk begins downtown and soon dips past a marsh with many ducks. The big recycle paper mill is in the distance. | After 1900, as the white pine gave out, the fishermen and resorters became a more important part of the local economy, and other industries moved in. Most important was the giant paper mill now known as Manistique Papers. The plant and its big "Recycle America" sign are easily seen from U.S. 2 looking north from the bridge over the Manistique River. The publisher of the Minneapolis Tribune founded the plant circa 1920 to control the supply and price of the newspaper it needed.
Today Manistique Papers claims to be North America's largest recycler of catalogs, magazines, and junk mail, all de-inked, turned into pulp, and then once more made into paper that's used for ad inserts, food carryout bags, office papers, envelopes, and more. Curbside recycling programs are one source of paper to recycle. This was the first paper mill to be chlorine-free. It recycles enough paper to keep some 2.4 million cubic yards out of landfills. The paper mill has long been Manistique's biggest employer. Its current workforce is about 150. The mill and its big "Recycle America" sign are easily seen from U.S. 2 looking north from the bridge over the Manistique River.
Back to Manistique and the Garden Peninsula
|
|
|
|
MANISTIQUE
RESTAURANTS,
LODGINGS
& CAMPGROUNDS
These are our choices, not ads.
|
MANISTIQUE
RESTAURANTS
We recommend six places to eat in Manistique, including a pub & bistro known for pizza and pan-fried walleye, a pleasant deli/bakery/bookshop with splendid views from its outside patio, a genuine 1950s drive-in with curb service and classic menu, a supper club, a restaurant with whitefish dinners and Lake Michigan views, and a family dining establishment
For full write-ups of our recommended restaurants,
click here.
|
MANISTIQUE
LODGINGS
See also: Garden Peninsula, Gulliver. Many guests use Manistique as a base for day trips in the central Upper Peninsula, from Tahquamenon Falls to Pictured Rocks. Over a dozen motels are strung out east of town along U.S. 2 for some 4 miles. Here are some mom-and-pop motels. Chains are more expensive and not necessarily as good. Almost all motels are across U.S. 2 from Lake Michigan and offer some shore views. Some have beach and bonfire areas across the road. Many motels closer to town have access to the pleasant gravel walk that leads east from the lighthouse area past birch woods and wetlands filled with dwarf iris and other wildflowers. Even on summer weekends, Manistique motels seldom fill entirely. You can't assume they're air-conditioned.
Note on locations: lodgings are listed here from west (in town) eastward along U.S. 2.
COMFORT INN
(906) 341-6981
This well-managed motel is good choice in Manistique. Next to Big Boy, across from Lakeview Park on Lake Michigan. "Enhanced continental breakfast" includes fresh fruit, hard-boiled. Wi-fi internet. No pool, but there are a whirlpool and exercise room. There are 57 standard tooms, plus deluxe suites with or without fireplaces. Standard rooms for two began at $69 in 2006. Rates change with availability, season. Book earlier for better rates.
617 E. Lakeshore Dr. half a mile east of downtown next to Big Boy. Open year-round. Wheelchair accessible. $10/extra person. No charge for children if there's no extra bed. Pets: extra fee. In some rooms. Call.
HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS
(906) 341-3777
Each of this motel's 55 rooms has two queens, and free wi-fi internet access. For 2006, standard rooms for 2 were $77 in winter, $99 in summer. Extra charge for whirlpools in some rooms. No pool. A big "enhanced continental breakfast" includes wafflles as well as hard-boiled eggs, fresh fruit, and typical baked goods and cereals. A swimming beach and 2-mile boardwalk are across U.S. 2.
1 1/2 miles east of Ontonagon on U.S. 2. Wheelchair-accessible.
ROYAL ROSE B&B
(906) 341-4886
Hosts Gil and Rosemary Sablack really do provide the royal treatment at their elegant B&B. It's on an attractive residential street near downtown Manistique and the harbor and boardwalk. A lawyer built the impressive frame house in 1904 and made it extra-large so single schoolteachers could board there. The Sablacks, Manistique natives and retired teachers, can field most any question about the area, historical or current. They renovated the house so each of the four pretty second-story rooms has a private bath. Air-conditioning and direct TV (100+ channels) are in every guest room. Guests can use the phone in the office/gift shop. Room rates average about $105. The Harbor View room (about $120) has a fireplace and Jacuzzi. Rosemary has taught home ec and food service, then English and speech. "I love setting a nice table, with china and crystal," she says. The full breakfast is an event, with candles and classical music.
This is a homestay B&B. Guests share use of the Sablacks' sitting room with fireplace, and of the sun-filled morning room leading to a wrap-around rear deck.
230 Arbutus. Go north from U.S. 2 at the Pizza Hut. Open May thru Dec. Handicap access: no. Not really for children. No pets.
STAR MOTEL
(906) 341-5363
The only area motel with direct Lake Michigan access. All 20 rooms have nice views from big rear windows. The 1950s decor is memorably retro, with modernistic furniture. Rooms are large and well-kept. Summer rates for two are about $54 (one queen) and $56 (two queens, 2 people). Fall & winter rates less. Rooms, mostly non-smoking, have phones, cable TV, air-conditioning, mini-fridges, and wireless internet. Plants flourish in the pleasant central office, with morning coffee. Longtime owner Dorothy McNamara and her son fuss over details. Most of the beach in back is rocky and rather wild. Ask to build a bonfire. There's a small, sandy area. The property goes back a ways and includes birches, cattails, and wildflowers. Picnic tables and a swing set are in front. Walk to highway restaurants or to town (1 1/4 mile).
1952 E. Lakeshore/U.S. 2. Handicap access: call. Families: no extra charge. $2/extra person. Dogs in a few rooms:$2.
|
MANISTIQUE
CAMPGROUNDS
Around Manistique, there's causal, comfortable lodge in the old county poor farm complex, an elegant B&B on an attractive residential street near downtown, a motel with knotty pine and log furniture across the highway from the one-mile boardwalk into town, an older, inexpensive motel next to Sunny Shores restaurant, a 1950s-décor motel with direct Lake Michigan access, a renovated Best Western with indoor-outdoor pool and attractive natural area.
For full write-ups of our recommended campgrounds,
click here.
|
|
|
