A Visit to Michigan's Tahquamenon Falls Country

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If you’re vacationing on the eastern end of Lake Superior, odds are good that you’ll make a stop to see one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River – the dark waters of Tahquamenon Falls.

Odds are equally good that while traveling on the newly designated scenic byway loop through this storied region to the falls, you’ll discover spectacular scenery, friendly residents, abundant wildlife, cultural highlights and some darned good beer.

At the heart of Tahquamenon Falls Country is its distinctive rushing waters. The falls are on the Tahquamenon River, which flows through nearly 50,000 acres of Tahquamenon River State Forest in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula, from a spring in Luce County near Newberry to where it empties its dark, stained waters into the blue-green depths of Whitefish Bay.

From its quiet origins to the mighty bay, the Tahquamenon River drains a watershed of nearly 800 square miles.

This river has always attracted people. Early Ojibwe communities benefited for generations from what the watershed provided. In the late 1800s, lumber interests used the river to transport logs to the mills.

The falls gained fame from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1856 poem “Song of Hiawatha,” in which Hiawatha builds his canoe “by the rushing Tahquamenaw.”

Today, families who have lived here for generations still hunt and fish along its banks. Visitors and residents hike the nearby wilderness, and the shore attracts bird-watchers and wildlife lovers from around the world. Tahquamenon Country features miles and miles of forestlands that are home to white-tailed deer, bear, wolves and dozens of bird species.

Say “Tahquamenon” – Tah-kwa-me-non – to tourists and you might get strange looks, even from those who have visited the region for years. Many just say, “We saw the Falls,” or when pressed, they might follow with, “You know, Tukwa-something or other.”

The name is not easy to pronounce or to figure out. One theory says it is based on an Ojibwe word meaning “dark berry.” Others say it means “place of the blueberry swamps.” Either is appropriate, as the river flows through blueberry bogs, swamps and cedar and tamarack forest, and the water is stained from tannins in leaves and roots.

Bernard C. Peters gives it a different twist in his 1996 book, Lake Superior Place Names: From Bawating to the Montreal. Bernard writes that Tahquamenon may stem from the word “Outakouaminan” (shortcut) on a 1671 Jesuit map that marks Tahquamenon Island, about 3 miles straight southeast from the mouth of the river into Whitefish Bay.

The island is just a rocky hump barely rising above the waters of Whitefish Bay. It would have made a welcome rest stop for paddlers traversing the full 18 miles or so from the river across to Iroquois Point or may have indicated a turnoff toward the closer Naomikong Point, about 4 miles across from the river mouth.

A watery shortcut, though, is hardly necessary for a journey to this region today. Most would start their loop of the area at Newberry, the area’s largest town, the gateway to Tahquamenon Country and Michigan’s Official Moose Capital. (And you might see moose here, either descendants of nearly five dozen transplanted in a 1985 “moose lift” from Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario or simply the ones that swim across the border themselves.)

The town features shops, a visitor center, restaurants, lodging and golf. It is home to the Luce County Historical Museum, a former sheriff’s office and jail site on the National Register of Historic Places.

Newberry also sits at the western end of the newly formed Tahquamenon Scenic Heritage Byway, a 63-mile section of M-123 that loops north along Lake Superior, through the Tahquamenon Falls State Park and eventually back south to where the highway rejoins M-28 at Eckerman.

The community is rightly proud of the new route. Pulling together the scenic designation, and the grants that go with it, took six years of work by a committee of volunteers who believe the world should know more about the history behind Tahquamenon Country. Working with the Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional Planning and Development Commission, the group has been securing grants since 2007 and is finally seeing the fruits of its labors.

“It’s been a long time coming and a lot of hard work and frustration, but now finally there are lots of changes happening. … We’re very grateful,” says Lark Ludlow, a volunteer who has worked on the long-awaited scenic byway project.

“It brings entrepreneurial opportunities because as people find more to do in our area, there is consequently a demand for greater services.

“There is nothing extravagant being done; we’re just revitalizing what has been here and sharing it with others in a respectful, thoughtful way.”

New signs help to point out important sites along the route, starting with Hamilton Lake Natural Area, east of Newberry, to Eckerman Pond, where the ruins of a former fishery are hidden among the trees.

Several points of interest are available along the route that weaves into Tahquamemon Falls State Park and Muskallonge Lake State Park and by the Two-Hearted River, immortalized in the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway.

The byway connects the culture with new technology, Lark notes. Ojibwe culture is highlighted through “learning lodges” constructed on the grounds of the Tahquamenon Logging Museum just north of Newberry, and farther northeast in Paradise. Some of the byway funding has gone into creation of an app that can provide a mobile tour that explains where you are, what the attraction is and how far to the next point of interest.

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A Visit to Tahquamenon Falls Country

Courtesy Toonerville Trolley

A Visit to Tahquamenon Falls Country

The Toonerville Trolley combo takes you on a train ride through forests not accessible by road...

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A Visit to Tahquamenon Falls Country

Courtesy Toonerville Trolley

A Visit to Tahquamenon Falls Country

... and along the river to drop you off for a short hike to Tahquamenon Falls.

Another way to find points of interest is hopping aboard the Toonerville Trolley. The trolley’s station is just 15 miles east of Newberry and a couple miles north of M-28. Passengers trek via train and boat into miles of wilderness. From the Toonerville station, it’s 5 1/2 miles over the longest stretch of 24-gauge railway in the country to the landing where a boat takes you 21 miles down the Tahquamenon River to within a half-mile of the Upper Falls. A hike down the trail provides spectacular views.

The service was started by a Michigan conservation officer who found more and more people wanting to go on his river patrol from Newberry to the falls.

“We offer the trip in a couple of ways,” says proprietor Dixie Stewart, who takes care of the trolley station while her husband, Kris, a descendant of one of the original families who started the 87-year-old business, pilots the river boat. The standard tour features a train ride, river cruise and short hike to the falls. In July and August, a separate tour just features a train ride. The service runs mid-June through the first weekend of October.

Tahquamenon Country has many resort options and one of the region’s most popular attractions, Oswald Bear Ranch, run by Dean and Jewel Oswald since 1997. The ranch turnoff is 4 miles north of Newberry, headed toward the falls. Visitors can view the four different habitat areas occupied by nearly 30 bears or cubs.

If you head north on the eastern leg of M-123, you’ll end up in Paradise.

There’s no arguing that this little town has a corner on the market when it comes to what many see as paradise. It is almost by itself on the route, situated among large wilderness tracts and beside Lake Superior. Paradise is popular with berry-pickers for its Blueberry Festival in August, and is a launching point for divers and shipwreck buffs headed farther north to Whitefish Point. It is the crossroads to a few of Tahquamenon Country’s main attractions – the Tahquamenon Falls and Whitefish Point.

The town boasts nice overnight lodgings, fun shops and a general store worth browsing. For proof it is paradise, stop in for a piece of pie at the Berry Patch.

A detour north to Whitefish Point usually means two stops and a long stroll. The end of the point, a key location along Michigan’s appropriately named “Shipwreck Coast,” is the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. On the museum grounds are the Whitefish Point Lighthouse, the keeper’s quarters (which allows overnight stays), a gift shop and the museum itself with shipwreck exhibits, informational videos and the bell retrieved from the tragic wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank off the point in 1975. All sites are maintained by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society.

The other stopping place is the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory, a haven for birders around the world who travel here with binoculars, spotting scopes and long-lensed cameras to catch the migration across this eastern bottleneck of the Lake. The observatory includes data on bird sightings through the years and organizes monitoring. It also offers educational excursions and has a small shop with bird-related items.

The final amenity of this remote point is a fantastic cobble and sand beach for strolling. It’s easy to spend an entire day wandering through the museum, the observatory, into the woods and along the beaches of the point.

From Whitefish Point, you return to Paradise before heading into the heart of this region, the Tahquamenon Falls State Park and to the waterfalls themselves.

This is Michigan’s second-largest state park, stretching more than 40,000 acres. (Only the nearly 60,000-acre Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, also in the U.P., is larger.)

Here again, the new scenic byway is helping to make inroads, so to speak. The grant will be used to explore the best places for non-motorized trails and for off-road vehicles, too, now that Michigan allows them in state park areas.

The park already has 40 miles of existing hiking trails. One of the biggest trails in the United States, the North Country National Scenic Trail stretching from New York to North Dakota, winds right through Tahquamenon Country.

In the opinion of thousands, the main attraction of Tahquamenon Country is, of course, the falls, no matter whether you arrive by train, boat, bike or foot, or if you drive up to within a half-mile of them in the comfort of your car.

At the larger Upper Falls, as much as 50,000 gallons per minute dramatically drops 50 feet. Four miles downstream, the Lower Falls are equally beautiful. They form a series of five smaller rapids that flow around an island in the state park. Michigan DNR provides rowboats to use on the river and to explore the island.

Campgrounds at the falls and at the mouth of the Tahquamenon River offer modern and rustic sites. The Rivermouth Unit campsite stretches along a picturesque bends in the river with trails that are wonderful for watching wildlife. It’s not uncommon to see mink, kingfishers, mergansers, great blue herons, raccoons and more wild things. If you’re lucky, you may see a bear or moose. (On one of my visits, a snapping turtle crawled ashore one day, probably looking for a place to deposit its eggs.)

The rustic side has more riverfront sites where you can pull up your canoe, kayak or small boat. You can walk to where the river spills into Whitefish Bay.

The falls campground is open year-round, much to the delight of those who enjoy cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling.

Lark’s family owns the 2-acre Camp 33, the only private acres within the park and within walking distance of the Upper Falls. The complex includes the popular Tahquamenon Falls Brewery and Pub, with its gift shop and a restaurant where you can sample fresh-caught whitefish and freshly brewed beer. It’s the perfect ending to a day in the woods and by the falls.

With good food and drink, plenty of history and Ojibwe culture, bountiful wildlife, opportunities to paddle, hunt and fish, it’s no wonder so many people believe that Tahquamenon is paradise.

One thing, though, becomes quickly obvious. With so much to see and do as one ventures through Outakouaminan – there is no shortcut through Tahquamenon.

Tom Pink, a freelance writer in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, considers himself fortunate to live less than an hour’s drive from Tahquamenon Country.