If you’re doing the Cote d’ Michigan (coast of Lake Michigan) circuit, a visit to Saugatuck, in southwest lower Michigan, is a must-see spot. Budget Travel agrees. It nominated the little beach community one of eight “perfect summer lake towns.”
Fellow nominees include: Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho; Sackets Harbor, N.Y.; Bigfork, Mont.; Grand Lake, Colo.; Bemidji, Minn.; Jackson Hole, Wyo.; and Newport, N.H. What does it take to make a great lakeside summer town?
There’s a certain je ne c’est quoi, but it involves golden sands, windswept beaches, pretty boats anchored along downtown marinas, comfy local inns, street-side ice cream vendors, a boardwalk, quaint restaurants and watering holes and best of all a serene, great fresh fish, a hometown feel. Wheeling gulls, a mournful fog horn, an enigmatic lighthouse or two and a sense of old things and happy time lovingly preserved: these aren’t necessary, but they lend mystique.
Saugatuck has those in bushels. Along with the aforementioned bliss, Saugatuck was built over the top of a long-gone Michigan ghost town called Singapore, Mich. Visiting with my husband years ago, I read the historical marker about the old village buried in the Saugatuck dunes and was enchanted. There has been debate over the years about unearthing the town under the sand. To do so would in a sense disturb the final resting place of a bygone people. It might annoy the genius loci who would then refuse to dote on Saugatuck.
Several months ago, another vintage beauty was discovered off the shores of South Haven near Saugatuck in Lake Michigan. The hull of a 1880s schooner Joseph P. Farnan was discovered by Clive Cussler and nautical antiquarians from Michigan Shipwreck Research Association. MSRA found a second scuttled vessel nearby.
The Farnan’s home port was St. Joseph, Mich., and her destination was Escanaba, Mich., near the home of another Michigan ghost town called Fayette. I smell a romance. Would the “Farnan” have visited the now-defunct Singapore? Perhaps a maiden of yore rests in the sands forever awaiting her sailor beau’s visit on the “Farnan”?
View the photos of the old schooner as she dreams of her happy, golden days. That’s the allure of Saugatuck: you catch a glimpse of good times gone, a peek into the past, but you can also sample the here-and-now joys.