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WHITEFISH POINT
POINTS
OF
INTEREST
Centennial Cranberry Farm. Take a self-guided tour, see a film about the cranberry harvest here, and visit the gift shop with sauces and vinegars made from cranberries harvested here on one of Michigan's very few cranberry farms, one where the same family has grown cranberries since 1876 ...
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Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum & Whitefish Point Light Station. It's at the end of the road, but the parking lot of this superb museum is often full, a reflection of how much it has to offer, from Lake Superior's first lighthouse to an eerie atmosphere to convey the haunting world of underwater shipwrecks ...
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Whitefish Point Bird Observatory. Many birders come to count, to band, to examine birds and to enjoy the massive spring and fall migrations at this birding hot spot where Whitefish Point juts out into Lake Superior. There's a small nature center and shop, and spring weekend programs. But the windswept point, Hawk Overlook, and the beach are beautiful places anytime in summer and fall ...
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Lake Superior Nature Sanctuary/Michigan Nature Association. A remote, beautiful wilderness shoreline. Get guide through Michigan Nature Conservancy. ...
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Lake Superior Nature Sanctuary/Michigan Nature Association
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This remote and beautiful stretch of shoreline, backed by bogs, forests, and meadows, should first be visited with a Michigan Nature Association volunteer guide. It's an all-day trip because it takes a long time to drive there (over rough roads leading from Whitefish Point Road) and then hike in.
The late Jim Rooks, well known to many Upper Peninsula vacationers as the proprietor/guide of Bear Track Tours in Copper Harbor, regarded this 369-acre sanctuary as "the perfect wild corridor. . . . Its native residents include deer, bear, and coyotes. Wolves and moose have roamed its trails. Here is wilderness by any test!
"Not a single person lives year-round in the township, and only a few people in neighboring townships," Rooks continued. "A few poor roads point toward the area from south, east, and west, but none quite reach it. A half mile of impenetrable bogs separate the beach from a high, wooded ridge that offers beautiful views of Lake Superior."
There's just one way through the spruce bogs to the beach - hence the need for a guide. Rooks waxed eloquently about the opportunities to get to know this pristine area. "Faint trails descend . . . over broad plains of departed seas and lead to beach and dunes along Superior's shore. There are magnificent trees to be examined and wildflowers; cool hollows of land and sunbaked blueberry plains. The smell of the north woods is all around.
"I have heard thrush, vireo, parula, blackburnian, and black-throated green warblers; seen twinflower, twayblade, arbutus, and anemone, yew and striped maple; ruffled grouse, barred owl, hooded merganser, sandhill crane. . . . I have seen a bobcat and followed bobcat tracks on the beach. With all these still living in this wilderness, the wilderness traveler can ask for little more."
The Michigan Nature Association is a charitable trust that has purchased over 8,000 acres of natural land as permanent nature sanctuaries in 51 Michigan counties from southern and southeast Michigan to the Peninsula. It continues to add nature sanctuaries in the Whitefish Point area. Call the Michigan Nature Association at (810) 324-2345 to contact the local person to guide you to the sanctuary, or to ask about buying its big $29 Nature Sanctuary Guidebook, packed with maps, descriptions, photos, and interesting information tidbits about its sanctuaries - over 30 in the Upper Peninsula and 49 below the bridge.
Return to Whitefish Point
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