Fairport — I’ve been to a lot of far-flung places in Michigan. Way up in the Keweenaw where there is no cell service, the western edge of the U.P. where the Yoopers root for the Packers, the Les Cheneaux Islands in the east, and Beaver Island in the middle of Lake Michigan. Sometimes I foolishly think there are no surprises left. It’s partly my own hubris, but it’s also the false sense that comes from Google Maps making us think we know more than we really do, and that there are no surprises left in the digital age.
But the truth is there are still surprises. There are secret places you don’t know from Google Maps or Instagram. Places you don’t hear about, read about, or know about. I was driving east along US-2 one day when I discovered one of these places: the Garden Peninsula.
Have you ever heard the name before? I hadn’t. I had no idea what they called this little jut of land piercing south into Lake Michigan. I had to look it up. Leelanau Peninsula and Keweenaw Peninsula are names and places we know. The Garden Peninsula—a beautiful name by the way—is a name and place we do not know.
It makes sense. It’s right in the middle of the U.P., and people don’t really go to the middle of the U.P. To be honest, unless you know the U.P. intimately, you don’t think too much about its nooks and crannies. I’ve been to the U.P. a bunch, love places off the beaten path, and even I never really wondered, “Wait, what’s that little peninsula? What goes on there?”
Take out a map and find the Garden Peninsula. It won’t be labeled, so you will have to find Fairport near the tip. It’s less than 30 miles from Fairport, that southernmost settlement (really just a small collection of houses) on the Garden Peninsula, to Northport, the northernmost point on the Door Peninsula, Wisconsin’s most picturesque region.
Notice the geological realities. Between Door Peninsula and Garden Peninsula there is Washington Island, and then an archipelago of a few empty islands in the middle of the lake vaguely connecting the two peninsulas. The map looks almost like an artist was painting, then, lifting the brush for just a moment, left a few drips behind.
It’s fascinating how close these two peninsulas are on a map yet how different they are in reality. Door Peninsula is basically Wisconsin’s Leelanau Peninsula. Beautiful little towns, picturesque homes, summer holiday beaches. The land is coveted. Garden Peninsula, on the other hand, is unknown and empty.
It makes sense. Door Peninsula is Wisconsin’s only peninsula, and coming up from the south is easier than coming down from the north. More people live in the south. That’s where the cities are. But the Garden Peninsula isn’t our only peninsula, and there are no real big cities in the U.P. either. The result is an interesting quirk of history and settlement.
The Garden Peninsula is just as naturally beautiful as the Leelanau Peninsula or Door Peninsula, but it’s basically unpopulated. It’s like a little glimpse of what those other peninsulas were before they became what they are today.
It’s fun to consider an alternative timeline where the Garden Peninsula ended up just as popular as a vacation destination. A history where the Mackinac Bridge was never built and ferries from Northport on Door Peninsula ran to Fairport on the Garden Peninsula multiple times a day. A history where the Garden Peninsula ends up sociologically tied to Wisconsin rather than the rugged U.P. to the north.
I was on the Garden Peninsula on a warm day in late May. It was foggy in the morning hours, but by afternoon the sun had warmed the land leaving a hazy mist hanging over the water. Flying down an empty M-183, farmland on either side of the road, the misty lake to the west appearing every once in a while.
Windows down, the sweet scent from the blooming flowers in the air, it felt like I had stumbled into some forgotten, natural paradise. The trees aren’t quite as thick or tight against the road on the Garden Peninsula. It doesn’t feel claustrophobic like much of the U.P. with the endlessly tall foreboding pines suffocating any kind of horizon. Curving back and forth, rolling up and down, a mix of woods, farm and lake, M-183 feels a lot like M-22 on the Leelanau Peninsula.
Little Summer Island is easy to see from Fairport. I hadn’t seen another car for at least 15 minutes, so I stopped in the middle of the road, got out, and just stood there, looking over a long field full of green grass and dandelions, watching Little Summer Island floating on the bright blue water. A thin, dreamy, sunny haze covered the scene like a soft photo filter.
No less beautiful than any of the well-known summer vacation spots in the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula, the Garden Peninsula, its emptiness, and essentially unknown status is a testament to how many picturesque places we have in Michigan.
The Garden Peninsula is unknown because we already have enough beauty. We have so much pristine coastline, so many nice lake towns, little islands, and places to get some peace and quiet that we don’t need the Garden Peninsula. It’s too hard to get there anyway. We can afford to forget it, remain unaware of it, and let it be. Beautiful, quiet, and a little secret.
It’s better that way.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
