Why America's least-known stretch of ‘coast' may actually be its loveliest

Telegraph

26-07-2025

Detroit gives up the ghost without much of a fight.
Not in that stereotypical sense of its supposedly being America's great failed city (its resurgence over the past decade makes it anything but); more in the way that it vanishes in my mirrors with barely a murmur or a wave.
One minute they are there in the urban panorama behind me – the Guardian Building in its art deco majesty; the grand bulk of Michigan Central Station, freshly restored to its Belle Epoque glory. The next, they are gone, and all I am left with is water.
Of course, water is not a difficult thing to find at Michigan's south-eastern corner. For this is the realm of the Great Lakes. And in leaving 'Motor City' in search of the state's many miles of lake shore, I am spoilt for choice.
I could go south, towards the arrowhead of Lake Erie, its tip pointed at the froth and fury of Niagara Falls.
I could go west, towards Lake Michigan – that expanse of grey-blue so colossal that it might as well be a sea. I could even go east, to Lake St Clair which, while not technically one of the Great-Lakes quintet, is an important piece in the vast navigable jigsaw of waterways that defines the eastern parts of the relationship between the United States and Canada.
But no. I am ignoring each of these possibilities. Because I am driving north, towards what may be the least appreciated of the Great Lakes. Certainly, Lake Huron is the least known of this famous five – even though it is larger than the more celebrated Lake Ontario (where Toronto holds court as a Canadian New York); even though it is only eclipsed in surface area by the enormous Lake Superior (the biggest lake on the planet by certain metrics).
A giant in its own right, 23,000 square miles in its hugeness, Lake Huron is somehow also dismissed as an appendix to that road-trip heartthrob Lake Michigan – to which it is connected by the narrow Straits of Mackinac.
Never mind that the suspension bridge of the same name which spans this gap is a further photogenic joy, a Midwest cousin of the Golden Gate Bridge, preening in green and white – Lake Huron is an outsider. But it is this forgotten soul – in its silver magnificence – that I am seeking.
More to the point, I am looking for its most curious stretch of shoreline. If Michigan's 'Lower Peninsula' – the core of the state, shaped by Lake Michigan on one side and Lake Huron on the other – is generally deemed to resemble a super-sized mitten, then the lump of land which juts up, and out, some 100 or so miles north of Detroit is the thumb on this gargantuan hand. Indeed, it is referred to as such, via the quirky moniker 'Thumb Coast' – an area of fresh air and considerable beauty, but few international tourists.
Certainly, there are few visitors in evidence when I pull into Port Huron. This doughty town occupies a crucial position – at the south tip of the lake, where the St Clair river breaks off and ebbs 40 miles south towards Detroit. It is shadowed, for the entirety of this journey, by Canada, which waits on the other bank, the border running down the middle. The view is only interrupted by the tankers that thread this slender needle, either forging down to Motown, or escaping from it, craving the deeper waters that the Huron promises.
Deeper, but perhaps not always safer. Positioned right at the meeting of lake and river – so close to the junction that the Blue Water Bridge to Canada all but sweeps over its rooftop – Port Huron's main hotel, the Doubletree, keeps a careful eye on the currents. It provides an information board for tanker-spotters, displaying the estimated times that these great metal beasts of the ocean will darken its rear door. Its restaurant (inevitably called 'Freighters') is a perfect spot from which to watch these ships as they lumber past.
There is also a warning from history; a stark mural depicting the spume-tossed sinking of the SS Regina – a freighter, loaded with crates of soap and whiskey, which went to the lakebed just off Lexington, 20 miles to the north along the Thumb Coast, in the infamous 'Storm of 1913'. This four-day cataclysm (November 7-10 1913) remains the deadliest such weather event in the documented history of the Great Lakes, destroying 19 ships and taking 250 lives. The Regina's wreck was finally located, in 80ft (24m) of water, in 1986.
As befits a maritime connection-point of such barnacle-hulled authenticity, Port Huron has a wealth of these stories. Life and death – with the latter often taking the lead – have danced a frequent waltz around its streets in the three and a half centuries since it sprouted from the military acorn (Fort St Joseph) founded by the French in 1686.
The town museum runs a regular tour, aboard an antique trolleybus, which picks at some of these threads: the store where Herbert Youngblood, an associate of US gangster John Dillinger, was shot and killed by police in 1934; the stretch of the smaller Black river where the SS Eastland, a pleasure-cruiser, was built in 1903 (only to become the deadliest shipwreck in Great Lakes history when it capsized while docked in Chicago in July 1915, killing 844).
There are brighter tales too. Directly below the Blue Water Bridge, the Thomas Edison Depot Museum covers the American genius's teenage years. The inventor of the lightbulb lived in Port Huron between 1854 and 1863, and spent some of this period working on the railroad – selling newspapers and refreshments to passengers riding the line down to Detroit, while conducting experiments in a laboratory set up in a rear carriage. The train service to Motown has long since ceased, but the tracks still cling to the waterfront, halting at the former station where the adolescent Edison leapt off and ran home for tea.
It is almost impossible to take your eyes off the water. Just beyond the bridge, where Lake Huron begins to unfurl, the Fort Gratiot Light Station monitors the waves in that stately manner of 19th century (in this case, 1829) lighthouses.
A staunch vision in whitewash, it has always had an important role to play. Directly behind it, Lighthouse Beach is a gorgeous stretch of golden sand, but the message printed on the signs here is simple: 'Warning: Dangerous currents, deep water and steep drop-offs. Enter water at own risk.'
And yet, Lake Huron retracts this bare-toothed grimace for every mile I advance up the Thumb Coast. Soon, I am into that pastoral, almost picket-fence America where small communities perch on the shore, and the lake is a pane of glass under a benign sun.
North Lakeport is a picture of calm, where the picnic tables and swings of Burtchville Township Park nuzzle the waterline. Lexington quietly ignores the ghost of the SS Regina, out there beyond its shallows, to face the world as a homely place, children and grandparents fishing in the little lagoon next to the marina.
Port Sanilac plays a similar card 11 miles farther north, First Mate Ice Cream waiting to sell frozen treats to the youngsters who are dashing about in the adjacent playground.
Another 30 miles on, Harbor Beach hardly raises the volume, even if the two elongated concrete piers which reach out into the Huron give it an improbable status as the planet's biggest man-made freshwater harbour.
It all comes to a head – or, at least, to an unvarnished nail – where Pointe Aux Barques crowns the 'Thumb'. From this point, the Lower Peninsula shore continues to twist for 300 more miles, to the foot of the Mackinac Bridge. But here is an easy full-stop of sorts.
And a pretty one. 'Turnip Rock' is surely an ungracious name for the sea-stack that compliments the lakefront in this lovely hamlet, its hundreds of undercut layers of rock offering an unspoken wisdom; a tacit record of the relentless motion of the waves over many millennia.
As I am admiring its contours, a freighter bellows out on the lake, the sound reverberating even as the vessel inches towards the horizon. Perhaps this horn blast is a farewell to the land. Maybe, if you will pardon the pun, it is an approving thumbs-up.
Essentials
Delta flies direct to London Heathrow to Detroit from £745 return. The Doubletree in Port Huron has rooms from £87.
America As You Like It (020 8742 8299) sells a Pure Michigan road-trip which visits Port Huron and the Huron lakeside as part of a 13-night route around the state. From £1,945pp, with flights, accommodation and car hire.