Landmarks in Northern Michigan
22 landmarks to discover with Bad Historian in Northern Michigan.
Arch Rock
Look up. That's Arch Rock — a natural limestone arch, curving out of the cliff a hundred and forty-six feet above the water, with nothing but blue lake and blue sky framed inside it.
Devil's Elbow
Slow down. The road is about to double back on itself in one of the sharpest curves on the whole route, a real white-knuckle hairpin, and there's a name for this spot that the highway crews and the locals have used for well over a century.
Devil's Kitchen
You're on the west shore now, and there are two things to look at. Close up, right off the road, there's a small dark cave scooped into the rock — that's Devil's Kitchen.
Harbor Point and Wequetonsing
As you leave Harbor Springs along the bay, you're passing two of the oldest and most exclusive summer colonies in the Midwest — Wequetonsing and, out on the peninsula, Harbor Point.
Harbor Springs — Andrew Blackbird and Ephraim Shay
You're on Main Street in Harbor Springs — flower baskets, boat masts down at the marina, a genteel little resort town that's also, and this is the part that matters, the historic capital of the Odawa people in this region.
Main Street & the Harbor
You've closed the loop. You're back on Main Street, back at the harbor, eight miles all the way around the island and you're standing right where you started.
Michigan Beach
You've come down Grant Street to the beach, right on Lake Michigan, and you should feel the shift — the sand, the open water, the wind coming in off a lake so big it has a horizon like an ocean. Take a breath. This is the reward stop.
The Bridge Street Drawbridge
You're standing on Bridge Street, at the drawbridge over the channel — the narrow strip of water connecting the big lake, Lake Michigan, to the round harbor full of sailboats behind you.
The Good Hart General Store
Pull over at Good Hart, because you've reached the coziest spot on the whole road and it has one of the best name stories in Michigan.
The Grand Hotel
You climbed the bluff again, and there it is: the Grand Hotel. That impossibly long white front with the row of columns and the flags snapping along the top — that porch running the entire length of the building is six hundred and sixty…
The Half House
This one's going to make you tilt your head. Look at the Half House. It looks like someone took a completely normal Earl Young stone cottage, drew a line straight down the middle, and sliced the other half clean off.
The Hannah and Lay Mercantile Building
You're at the corner of Front and Union, looking at a big handsome brick building — arched windows, a heavy cornice up top. Locals used to call it the Big Store.
The Hippie Tree
You've walked out past the edge of the old hospital grounds, into the woods, and you're standing in front of a tree that does not look like the other trees. It's gnarled, low, sprawling — and every inch of it is covered in paint.
The Legs Inn, Cross Village
You've reached the end of the road. Cross Village. The tunnel of trees opens up, the big lake spreads out below the bluff, and standing right here at the finish line is the single strangest, most wonderful building on the entire route.
The Mushroom House
Okay. Look at this house. This is the Mushroom House, and it is the single most photographed home in Charlevoix, and the moment you see it you understand why.
The Open Space
You're standing at the Open Space, the big grassy stretch on the bay, and this is the ground zero of Traverse City's entire personality.
The Perry Hannah House
You're looking at the grandest house in Traverse City — round corner turrets, a wide veranda, the whole Queen Anne fairytale.
The South Pier Lighthouse
Last stop. You've walked out onto the south pier, and there it is at the end — the lighthouse, that steel tower painted against the water, marking the mouth of the channel where the harbor meets the open lake.
The State Theatre
You're in front of the State Theatre — the tall neon sign, the lit marquee hanging over Front Street. This corner has wanted to be a theater for well over a century.
The Thatch House
This is the Thatch House, and it's the story of the one time Earl Young got beaten by a roof. You've spent this whole tour looking at cedar-shake roofs — the wavy wooden ones.
The Union Street Dam and the Boardman River
You're standing over the Boardman River, right where it runs through the middle of downtown. Some folks up here also call it by its older Anishinaabek name, the Ottaway.
The Village at Grand Traverse Commons
Look up at the building in front of you. That enormous brick castle with the spires — nearly a quarter of a mile long, one continuous building — is the reason I told you to come here.
Northern Michigan Audio Experiences
Visit these landmarks and more on a self-guided audio experience.
Earl Young's Mushroom Houses
A short, unlicensed insurance salesman spent fifty years building around thirty storybook stone houses in Charlevoix — burying nine-ton boulders in the ground for decades, tearing roofs off for being too neat, and naming his cottages like pets. Walk Earl Young's "hobbit houses" from the drawbridge to the lighthouse, and try to spot the one lie at every stop.
Mackinac Island — The Island That Banned Cars
Eight miles around the Great Turtle — an island where cars have been illegal since eighteen ninety-eight and roughly five hundred horses do all the work. A fort that surrendered without firing a shot, a doctor who spent eight years studying a hole in a living man's stomach, a hotel built in ninety-three days by candlelight, and an 'ancient legend' that was written in nineteen seventy. Most of what the Bad Historian tells you is true. A little of it he made up — you find out which at the end.
The Complete Guide to Traverse City
A town that turned an insane asylum into a wine bar, baked a cherry pie that needed a construction crane, and let a river out of a hundred-and-twenty-six-year jail. Cherries, lumber, and the asylum with a wine bar — a comedic walking tour of Traverse City where most of it is true and some of it definitely is not.
The Tunnel of Trees — Twenty Miles of Crooked Road
Twenty miles of the most famous two-lane road in America — M-one-nineteen, the Tunnel of Trees, the only Michigan state highway with no center line. A car-free town of millionaires who still ride a horse-drawn bus, a driftwood castle roofed in cast-iron stove legs, a village named after a post-office typo, and the Odawa homeland of the crooked tree, still here today. Most of what the Bad Historian tells you is true. A little of it he made up — you find out which at the end.
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