Lighthouses and Maritime attractions
Thanks to its abundant network of bays, rivers and other waterways, the Traverse City area had its own water-based highway system long before the advent of trains, planes and automobiles.
For centuries, Native American hunters and French-Canadian traders traveled the region by canoe. (It was they who named it “La Grande Traverse” because of the long five-mile crossing at the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay.) During the 19th century, fleets of schooners and steamships brought missionaries, settlers and summer resorters to Traverse City. Cargo vessels carried off huge loads of finished lumber from the sawmills and helped local farmers bring their crops to market each year, while a flourishing fishing industry grew up in some of the region’s smaller coastal towns.
Reminders of that heady time of sail and steam are all around: graceful lighthouses at the water’s edge, picturesque fishing towns, eerie shipwrecks and fascinating living history museums. And although the area’s maritime industry is diminished, it’s not entirely gone. On the west coast of the Leelanau Peninsula, you can watch big freighters and tankers thread their way through the Manitou Passage, a protected short cut on the north-south Lake Michigan route. And at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City – the nation’s only freshwater maritime academy -- cadets still train for careers as deck and engineering officers in the Great Lakes commercial fleet.
Want to experience the feel of a big sailing vessel for yourself? You can easily tour or sail aboard one of Traverse City’s celebrated tall ships.
