Sunset from Douglas beach

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

IMGP1498h

IMGP1498h, photo by norjam8.

The Wikipedia entry for Douglas, Michigan says Douglas (in Allegan County, pop. 1214 in 2000) and adjacent to Saugatuck, was originally known as Dudleyville and settled in 1851 as a lumber town. In 1861, residents changed the name to Douglas, maybe to honor Stephen A. Douglas or maybe because an early settler came name because he came from the Isle of Man (with a capital named Douglas). After the lumber went to rebuild Chicago, Douglas turned to fruit (especially peaches) and tourism.

Check out the Douglas Michigan history page for some cool old photos (and for Douglas business, events and city information. Here’s a Google map for Douglas to you can go there for the day or weekend. Douglas is also home to the Douglas Dutchers vintage baseball club who play a remarkably full schedule.

Norm has a ton more photos of West Michigan dunes and beaches and sunsets and sunrises.

Lake of the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains State Park

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Lake of the Clouds by Night

Lake of the Clouds by Night, photo by SpringChick.

Spring Chick writes: Lake of the Clouds at dusk. I love the mirrored, mystic look to the lake in this photo. I also found it interesting that the sky colored in the east. I could visit this place every day and never tire of it. Porcupine Mountains, MI.

This photo is part of her Porcupine Mountains set (best as a slideshow) and yes, it makes an amazing background for your computer.

Lake of the Clouds is in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, which was established in 1945 and is Michigan’s largest state park. The “Porkies” are located 15 miles west of Ontonagon in the western Upper Peninsula, and the 60,000 acre park features virgin timber, secluded lakes, and miles of wild rivers and streams. If you it that link above you can get trail maps (they allow mountain biking too) and backcountry camping information.

The Wikipedia Porcupine Mountains entry says that the Porcupine Mountains were so named by the native Ojibwa people because their silhouette had the shape of a porcupine. Also see Exploring the North’s Porkies page, this cool Ski the Porkies site and a map to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

Michigan Shoreline Tour: South Haven … and the Friends Good Will

Posted on by farlane

Friends Good Will

Friends Good Will, photo by Doug Langham

Doug writes that the Michigan Maritime Museum’s historical replica of the famous sailing sloop Friends Good Will sails daily from the South Haven harbor. Follow that link for the tale of the original Friends Good Will and the building of this replica. (also check out Doug’s daytime photo of the sloop)

The Wikipedia entry for South Haven has all your facts and demographics and says that most of the city is in Van Buren County, with a the very north portion in Allegan County. Probably the best resource for South Haven history is the city of South Haven’s history page. It notes that the city was originally founded by J.R. Monroe, who was granted a land patent from the U. S. government in 1833 for 65 acres of land along Lake Michigan’s shore. The city didn’t get going until the 1850s when sawmills at the mouth of the Black River were established and fed the growth of the town (and the timber-hungry city of Chicago). South Haven’s “glory days” were probably when:

The resort business had its beginning in the mid-1800’s at the home of Mrs. H. M. Avery. It was to experience phenomenal growth and became South Haven’s most colorful era. By the turn of the century, thousands of visitors were arriving by steamer and train to enjoy a memorable vacation. Lodging was available in magnificent hotels, farm resorts, family homes, or picturesque little cottages along the river. Entertainment was unlimited. Choices included pavilions, several theaters, a casino, an opera house, an amusement park with a roller coaster, and much more.

Tourism remains the main business of South Haven and the South Haven Visitors Bureau and Great South Haven Chamber of Commerce can help you plan a visit. You can look in on the town with the South Haven web cam, view the Flickr photo map for South Haven and the Google map for South Haven.
Coincidentally, yesterday’s post was from South Haven too. View more South Haven area photos on Michigan in Pictures and also explore South Haven on Absolute Michigan.

Michigan Shoreline Tour: Van Buren State Park

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Van Buren State Park

Van Buren State Park, photo by Paladin27.

A little over a year ago, I blogged another photo from Paladin27’s Flying to South Haven set.

It might be cheating to go to the well twice, but it’s hard to find a way to convey the awesome scope of Michigan’s shoreline dunes without getting above them (and moving along them). Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of his video on YouTube of the flight.

The official page on Van Buren State Park (which makes the park look like it recently escaped from prison) says:

Van Buren State Park offers approximately 400 acres of land located along the Lake Michigan shoreline in northern Van Buren County. The focal points of the park are its high dune formations and one mile of sandy beach. Van Buren became a state park in May of 1965 when the original 167-acre plot was purchased from the Harry LaBar Drake family. Since then two other land purchases have been made to make up the current park.

The Wikipedia entry for Van Buren State Park needs some help as well. Anyone have some knowledge about the park and a little time?

The park has camping on over 200 sites, hiking on miles of trails and great sandy beaches. Here’s a Flickr photo map and also the Google Map for Van Buren State Park (looks like they caught a boat on the satellite flyover!)

Michigan Shoreline Tour: Silver Beach, St. Joseph, MI

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Silver Beach, St. Joseph, MI

Silver Beach, St. Joseph, MI, photo by lucasseidenfaden.

Lucas has a panorama of Silver Beach in St. Joseph that you have to check out, and you better have a look at his other beach and landscape photos too.

You can view more photos from St. Joseph on this Flickr map and there’s also a whole bunch of St. Joseph information posted today in the Berrien County, Michigan article on Absolute Michigan.

Biking the Big M in the Udell Hills

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

aDSC_7407.jpg

aDSC_7407.jpg, photo by cyoas55.

Craig writes that this photo is from the outer loop at Big M ski and bike trails (and that recent high winds littered the trail with debris, so keep that in mind).

The Big M Ski & Mountain Bike Trail System is located in the nearly million acre Huron-Manistee National Forest. Information online is pretty scant, with the Big M trail page at the Michigan Mountain Bike Association pointing to the now vanished Udell Hills Trail Network web site.

Fortunately, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine was created to handle just such an eventuality, and you can get the Udell Hills Trails System site as it appeared in May of 2005. It says:

The Udell Hills Trail system is located in Manistee County just north of the border with Mason County. It is a lush area that is predominantly covered in hardwoods and is sandwiched between the Little and Big Manistee Rivers. It is a big pile of glacial poop and includes sandy/loamy soil and some interesting rocks and boulders. At one point, Udell Hills was the home of downhill ski area. Now it is a Mecca for mountain biking and cross country skiing.

There’s also a great trail system page that describes all the trails and their features in entertaining fashion.

View a map.

Michigan Shoreline Tour: Warren Dunes State Park

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Warren Dunes State Park

Warren Dunes State Park, photo by mizjellybean

Heading up the shoreline from New Buffalo, we come to the Warren Dunes State Park. I think that the first thing you need to do is check out this slideshow of the Warren Dunes. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

Wikipedia’s entry for Warren Dunes State Park is a 1,952 acre state park, located along the shore of Lake Michigan in Berrien County, Michigan (near Sawyer). The park’s dunes include Mt. Fuller, Pikes Peak, Mt. Edwards and (the tallest) Tower Hill which rises 250′ above Lake Michigan. Warren Dunes was designated as a state park in 1930 and draws around one million visitors annually. The page on the village of Sawyer from the Harbor Country Chamber of Commerce adds that although most in the area saw the land as worthless, businessman Edward K. Warren had a vision to preserve them and bought the land at the turn of the century.

Speaking of Wikipedia – something we seem to do fairly often – they have a massive page of map data and hacks for Warren Dunes including a Flickr map of photos from the Warren Dunes area and the Google map to Warren Dunes State Park.

I should add that the DNR page for Warren Dunes State Park notes that due to an infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer beetle, over 4,000 ash trees have been removed from the modern campground unit, dramatically changing the appearance of that campground.

New Buffalo, Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Sunset over Lake Michigan

Sunset over Lake Michigan, photo by briethe.

There’s not much doubt that as we head up Michigan’s west coast in our shoreline tour, we’ll see a lot of breakwalls and sunsets.

The New Buffalo Township’s excellent history tells us (among other things):

The city of New Buffalo came into being because of a violent October storm in 1834, when Captain Wessel D. Whittaker grounded his schooner Post Boy in the mouth of a small stream called State Creek near the present village of Grand Beach. The ship was destroyed, but Captain and crew survived the disaster and walked to Michigan City, where there were taverns that could provide food and shelter. There Whittaker hired a rig and headed north for St. Joseph to report the ship’s loss to its underwriters. On his way up the coast, he was struck by advantages and beauty of the spot where the Galien River passed through Lake Potawatomi into Lake Michigan. Lake Potowatomi, since drained by the sawmills, was, by varying accounts, two miles long, a half mile wide and up to ninety feet deep or four miles long by a mile wide and fourteen feet deep. It is now just “a lazy bend in the river.”

In addition to all kinds of visitor and business information, The New Buffalo Business Administration has a nice timeline of the history of New Buffalo and a cool old photos of the C&O Railroad Roundhouse that I would very much like to see larger. Maybe it can be found at the New Buffalo Railroad Museum. I also learned at NewBuffalo.com that the nation’s first Highway Travel Information center opened on May 4, 1935, on US-12 at New Buffalo. New Buffalo’s Wikipedia entry is on the lame side, and I would encourage any enterprising New Buffaloeans to spruce it up a little.

You can View a map of photos from New Buffalo and nearby, and explore more of our Michigan Shoreline tour pictures.

Celebrating 360 degrees of Michigan Week at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum

Posted on by farlane

Gothic Room from the SS City of Detroit III

Gothic Room from the SS City of Detroit III, photo by Mark Houston

In celebration of Michigan Week (May 19 – 25, 2007), Mark Houston over at 360Michigan has posted new panoramas from four locations: the National Trout Memorial (downtown Kalkaska in front of the Kalkaska Historical Museum), the Michigan Fireman’s Memorial (near Roscommon), the Manistee River and the Dossin Great Lakes Museum (Belle Isle, Detroit).

All of these are available as full screen, 360˚ QuickTime VR panoramas and are well worth a look, but the ones of the Dossin Museum really showcase the power of the technology.

The 16,000 square foot Dossin Great Lakes Museum is located on Belle Isle in the Detroit River and is dedicated to showcasing the story of the Great Lakes and Detroit’s role in regional and national maritime history. Permanent exhibits at the museum include the Miss Pepsi hydroplane racing boat, the bow anchor of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the S.S. William Clay Ford Pilot House, the restored smoking lounge of the S.S. City of Detroit III and one of the largest known collection of scale model ships in the world.

Mark has also created a Google map showing the location of all his panoramas.

Michigan (Shoreline) in Pictures

Posted on by farlane

You can see Chicago from 42 miles away! by by TRVentura

You can see Chicago from 42 miles away! by TRVentura

This summer, Absolute Michigan will be taking a tour of Michigan’s shoreline, looking at the heritage and attractions of the communities along Michigan’s Great Lakes shoreline.

Michigan in Pictures will be going along, trying to point out some of the beauty along the way.

We’d really like it if you’d help us by telling us what not to miss. If we do miss something – and with 3000+ miles of coastline, that’s pretty likely – then please feel welcome to post a comment or a link at the place where we missed it.

And if you want to climb in the car (or on the bike or in the kayak) and join the tour and let us know what you found, well that would be very cool too.

The above photo was taken at the beach in Michiana, Michigan (and Yahoo/Flickr geotagged photo map). I’m always a little surprised to find that you can’t see the state line from space.