flint Journal 06/29/04 Jim DuFresne

By Jim DuFresne JOURNAL NEWS SERVICE     

June 29, 2003

'Everybody who comes here is staying here. There is almost nobody passing through (during the summer) because we're at the end of the road. ' Chris Sarver, owner of the Lake Superior Brewing Company

  The temperature is in the Upper 70's,the sky is deep blue, the sand is warm, Lake Superior is cold and still.

 It's mid-afternoon, and I'm the only one on this beautiful beach in the heart of this scenic Upper Peninsula town.

Grand Marais the get-a-way.

 Located at the eastern end of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Grand Marais hums during the winter, when thousands of snowmobiles arrive to enjoy deep snow and well-groomed trails.

 But that isn't the case in the summer. The season is short and throngs of tourists are a rarity because Grand  Marais isn't on the way to anything.

 "During the summer, Grand Marais comes alive in July, but that's July, not June, and it's over by mid August," said Chris Sarver, owner of the Lake Superior Brewing Company, a brew-pub in town.

"Everybody who comes here is staying here," Sarver added. "There is almost nobody passing through (during the summer) because we're at the end of the road." Well, at the end of a paved road anyhow.

County Road H-58 passes through Grand Marais from east to west, but head in either direction and you're headed for a slow, bumpy drive along a rough dirt road.

 The Alger County Road Commission is slowly paving H -58 west to Munising and this summer has closed the road from Log Slide Road to Grand Sable Lake Overlook to pave a 3.5-mile section.

         Now Grand Marais is more isolated than ever.

 Is there a better reason to take the 50 mile trip fron Seney?

 Yes, for the scenery.

 "This is an absolutely beautiful area, no matter what season it is," said Ronnie Wissinger of the Grand Marais Maritime Museum.

 Grand Marais' harbor is one of the most scenic ports along Lake Superior with its sandy beach, Coast Guard station and usually a sailboat or two anchored in the middle of the well-protected bay.

 It is also the only natural harbor along a treacherous, shipwrecked-strewn stretch of Lake Superior known as the Graveyard of the Great Lakes.

 French explorers and missionaries used the harbor in the 1600s and left behind its name, which means large' marsh, one of the oldest place names in Michigan.

 By the 1860s Grand Marais was a small settlement of loggers and fishermen, and at the turn century, it was a boomtown of more than 4,000 residents and several lumber mills.

    When the timber ran out, the loggers moved on, and by 1910, Grand Marais was almost a ghost town of less than 300 people.

 Today its permanent population is only 400 and during the summer it's almost as quiet now as it was then.

 "That's why most of us live up here, because it's such a quiet area that is so close to nature," said Sheri Bates of the Grand Marais Historical Society.

 'The society operates one of several small museums in town, the Lightkeepers House, whose seven rooms contain furnishings and displays that date back to when Grand Marais was a booming lumbertown.

 The museum is at the tip of Coast Guard Point and is open 1-4 p.m. daily in July and August and on the

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