|
|
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
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Downtown Manistique
|
 | | Downtown Manistique, altered by 1970s mansard roofs, is a pleasant, functional downtown with some unusual specialty shops (Mercado Imports, Mustard Seed books and handcrafts, Christopher’s Antiques) and a good clothing store, People’s. | Manistique is too small to attract big chain stores, though U.S. 2 between town and lake has many fast food franchises. Awareness of tourism and its benefits has led to attractive improvements for a basically plain, simple, functional downtown. Few grand legacies of the lumber era are here. (Nov. 2007)
Cedar, downtown's main retail street, turns away from the lake and U.S. 2 at the flashing yellow light at Maple/M-94, which winds north through part of the Hiawatha National Forest to Munising.
U.S. POST OFFICE.A somewhat larger-than-life scene of loggers swinging their axes and sawing in a pine forest is depicted on the vivid mural from the Federal Art Project. It was part of the make-work WPA (Works Project Administration) program during the Great Depression of the 1930s. 301 S. Cedar at Oak. (906) 341-2646. Front lobby open 7-4:30 weekdays, from 6:30 Saturdays. Window open 9-4:30 except closed 12:30-1:30. Wheelchair-accessible.
PEOPLE'S DEPARTMENT STORE. Renovated historic department store with better casual wear and shoes for men, women, and children, including Carhartts, Woolrich, Columbia, and Tribal — plus Stormy Kromer hats. 209 S. Cedar at Oak. Mon-Sat 9-5, and in summer Sun 10-2. Wheelchair-accessible.
MUSTARD SEED. A pleasant mix of books with coffees, chocolates, wind chimes tuned to a peaceful pentatonic scale, gift baskets, and local handcrafts. Books (with weekly special orders) are strong on spiritual and regional, with popular new titles and leisure reading. The onetime J. C. Penney store has mezzanine space for a gallery with art by local artists. 237 S. Cedar/M-94. 341-5826. Mon-Fri 9-5, Sat 10-5 (closes at 4 on Saturdays Jan-Memorial Day. Handicap accessible.
MERCADO IMPORTS. This small, colorful Latin American imports shop in Manistique has a very wide selection of sterling silver jewelry from Mexico. Its offerings aren't what you'd expect to find in a paper mill town with a modest amount of tourism. Here are leather handbags, hand-knit wool sweaters from Ecuador, rugs made by Zapotec Indians in pre-Columbian patterns, and colorfully painted Oaxacan wood animals. In 1986, on a family car trip to Guadelajara, Mexico, founder Dick Forstner was so taken with the folk art he'd found in towns along the way that he decided to chuck his work in construction in the Manistique area and go into importing. It wasn't easy at first, buying and making deals with his then-rudimentary Spanish. But he enjoyed traveling and kept at it, helped in the store by his wife, Trish, and daughters Ragen and Chloe. He gloried in his life, being able to live on Indian Lake, where he had spent happy summers as a child; working with his family; and getting to know local artisans from Peru and Bolivia to Mexico on his winter buying trips.
After Dick died at a relatively young age, Trish sold the store to her full-time manager, Peggy Wilson. Trish continues her career as a dedicated elementary school teacher.
Dick used to say that skilled artisans in traditional crafts in Mexico, far from being exploited, are able to make a good living within their indigenous rural economies.
217 S. Cedar, downtown. (906) 341-6111. mercado@charterinternet.com. Open daily except Sun. year-round. Summer hours: 10-5. Winter hours: 11-4. Handicap accessible.
CHRISTOPHER'S ANTIQUES. A beautiful big storefront has room for a large and varied inventory to be artfully displayed. Antique furniture ranges from Victoriana to country and oak. Some really unusual larger pieces are typically on hand. There's also vintage clothing, linens, jewelry, fishing lures, decoys, and old books. The second floor has 6 rooms, two dedicated to sports antiques, one a tool room), and additionally The Purple Lizard, a one-room gallery of local art. 211 Oak, around the corner from The Mustard Seed on Cedar. 341-2570. Open from April 1 thru Dec 31, Mon-Sat 9-5. Handicap accessible: ground floor.
BEN FRANKLINBen Franklins are independently owned, and this one has many Moda and Troy fabrics and a big selection of yarn, in addition to gifts, artificial flowers, cards, housewares, toys, and such. 239 S Cedar. (906) 341-5911. Open Mon-Sat 9-5, in summer Sun 10-2. Wheelchair-accessible.
BOOKTIQUE The energetic proprietor has assembled some 40,000 mostly used books reflecting the varied tastes of local people and visitors, including cottagers, hunters, and snowmobilers. New books are largely of local and regional interest, with a limited selection of hot authors and references like nature guides and Hoyle's rules of games. Occasional book signings. Booktiques' used books go way beyond the quantities of romances that are the staples of most paperback exchanges. Here are mysteries, sci fi, men's adventures, horror and true crime, novels, contemporary classics, and biographies. 125 S. Cedar. (906) 341-8288. Open Tues-Fri 10-5,
Sat 10-3. Wheelchair access: 2 steps. "It works."
Return to Manistique
|
|
