9 Most Adorable Small Towns in the Great Lakes

The small towns around the Great Lakes did not set out to be adorable. Most started as working harbors. The charm came later, almost by accident. Leland still smokes whitefish in shanties from the 1880s. A reconstructed French fort fires a cannon over the straits at Mackinaw City. Goats graze on the sod roof of a Swedish restaurant in Sister Bay. The ferries out to the Apostle Islands load all summer before the harbors freeze in February.

Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Sister Bay's best-known residents are goats. They graze on the sod roof of Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant from late May into October. The Johnson family shipped the log building over from Norway in the 1970s. The kitchen serves Swedish pancakes and meatballs all day. Bay Shore Drive downtown has galleries and a public beach near the water.

Sister Bay caps the top of the Door County peninsula, where the season is warm and short. A wine trolley loops out to the county's wineries all summer. Boats crowd the marina. The Boathouse on the Bay serves dinner past sunset. Cave Point County Park edges Lake Michigan over low limestone shelves a short drive south. After Labor Day the crowds thin. The village goes quiet by the water.

Grand Marais, Minnesota

Grand Marais wraps a small harbor on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior. The old fishing village now centers on that harbor and a working artist community. The North House Folk School on the waterfront teaches wooden boatbuilding and blacksmithing, with no exams or credits. The Angry Trout Cafe serves Lake Superior fish from a converted fishing building at the harbor's edge.

World's Best Donuts has fried cake donuts from the same recipe since 1969. Regulars line up early, before the day's batch sells out by afternoon. Sven and Ole's has served pizza a few doors down for more than forty years. Artist's Point reaches onto bare volcanic rock past the breakwater.

Marblehead, Ohio

Marblehead points a limestone finger into Lake Erie at the entrance to Sandusky Bay. The lighthouse at the tip first lit in 1822, the oldest one still working on the American Great Lakes. Contractor William Kelly built the 50-foot tower from limestone quarried on the peninsula itself. The same Columbus limestone went into buildings as far off as the Ohio statehouse.

Ferries cross to Kelleys Island and the other Lake Erie islands through the season. The ferry dock is just up the shore from the lighthouse. East Harbor State Park spreads along the coast a few miles on, with a long beach and quieter water. The island crowds thin out the week school starts.

Mackinaw City, Michigan

Mackinaw City grew up around Colonial Michilimackinac, a fur-trade fort the French built on the Straits of Mackinac in 1715. The British took it over later. The fort standing today is a reconstruction. Archaeologists have dug the site every summer since 1959, one of the longest excavations in the country. Costumed interpreters fire muskets and a cannon along the palisade walls above the water. The Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse next door went up in 1892.

McGulpin Point Lighthouse first lit in 1869, among the oldest on the Straits. Its tower still opens for a view of the Mackinac Bridge. Headlands International Dark Sky Park protects about 600 acres of undeveloped shoreline for its dark night skies. Ferries from the Mackinaw City docks reach Mackinac Island. Cars give way to bicycles and horses there.

Leland, Michigan

Fishtown gives Leland its look. Weathered fishing shanties line the Leland River where it pours into Lake Michigan. Fishermen built the first wooden shacks here in the 1880s. Leland remains one of the last working commercial fishing villages in the state. Carlson's Fishery has smoked whitefish on the docks since 1904, now under the family's fifth generation. The other shanties have become small shops, among them the Village Cheese Shanty and the Dam Candy Store. A low 1854 dam stands beside them. Salmon leap the spillway each fall.

Leland spreads across a narrow neck of land between Lake Michigan and Lake Leelanau. Van's Beach lies at the foot of Cedar Street, a few blocks from the shanties. Beachcombers turn up Leland Blue stones there, bits of blue slag from a 19th-century iron smelter. The Manitou Island ferry leaves the Fishtown docks all summer for the islands offshore. The Whaleback Natural Area climbs a wooded bluff north of the village to a high view over Lake Michigan.

Sackets Harbor, New York

Sackets Harbor turned its deep natural harbor into the US Navy's main base on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812. Two battles played out on its shores in 1812 and 1813. The battlefield now occupies the western edge of the village, with a restored 1850s Navy Yard and Commandant's House. Guides in 1813 uniforms work the grounds through the summer.

Main Street still shows its 19th-century storefronts a block up from the water. Madison Barracks stands north of the village, the old army post where Ulysses S. Grant once served. Navy Point works as a marina now. The village empties for most of the year. Westcott Beach State Park down the shore packs out only on hot weekends.

Bayfield, Wisconsin

Bayfield rises on a hillside above Lake Superior. Its main street takes about ten minutes to walk end to end. Victorian storefronts line Rittenhouse Avenue, from the late 1800s when the town shipped brownstone and lumber. The Bayfield Apple Festival takes over the first full weekend of October. Vendors sell orchard pies and cider. A parade comes down Rittenhouse Avenue on Sunday.

Bayfield is the mainland stop for the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, 21 islands scattered across Lake Superior. Cruises and kayak trips leave the harbor for sea caves cut into red sandstone cliffs. A ferry crosses to Madeline Island and the village of La Pointe. Big Top Chautauqua stages summer concerts under a canvas tent at the foot of Mount Ashwabay.

Two Harbors, Minnesota

Two Harbors guards Minnesota's oldest operating lighthouse, a red-brick station first lit above Agate Bay in 1892. The keeper's quarters now works as a bed and breakfast. Guests can sleep inside the light. Ore docks still reach into Lake Superior here. The town grew as a shipping point for iron off the Mesabi Range. Betty's Pies has sold strawberry-rhubarb pie and burgers on the highway south of downtown for decades.

The Edna G. rests at her berth in Agate Bay. She is the last coal-fired steam tugboat that worked the Great Lakes, retired in 1980 after decades of nudging ore boats through the harbor. A two-room museum downtown marks where 3M was born in 1902. Its founders set out to mine abrasive minerals. They made sandpaper instead. Agate hunters work the cobble beaches all spring, heads down.

Ludington, Michigan

Ludington puts the largest carferry on the Great Lakes at the foot of downtown. The S.S. Badger is a 410-foot coal-fired ship and a National Historic Landmark. It crosses Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, each day in season. Ludington Avenue downtown carries Victorian-era storefronts with shops and restaurants. The North Breakwater Light stands at the end of a long pier.

Ludington State Park spreads across more than 5,000 acres north of town, between Lake Michigan and Hamlin Lake. Dune-ridge boardwalks cross it. A wide beach faces Lake Michigan. A sand-and-gravel path leads to the Big Sable Point Lighthouse, a black-and-white tower lit since 1867. Canoe and kayak routes thread Hamlin Lake on the park's inland side.

The Best of the Great Lakes Comes Small

Marblehead lights the oldest working beacon on the American Great Lakes, a limestone tower standing at the tip of its peninsula since 1822. Sackets Harbor still drills in 1813 uniforms on the battlefield where it once built a navy. Ludington sends the last Great Lakes carferry across to Wisconsin each morning in season. Two Harbors guards Minnesota's oldest working lighthouse above Agate Bay. Grand Marais has fried the same cake donuts since 1969. The pull in each is one tangible thing.