CEDAR RIVER

Region: Escanaba, Menominee & the Green Bay Shore

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Sawmill towns, now dwindled to a few stores and buildings, grew up where the Ford River and Cedar River empty into Green Bay. From Escanaba to Menominee, today's M-35 parallels the lakeshore. It passes not only cottages and suburban homes but also five parkswith trails, over four miles of public shore and beach, and in some cases campihg.
Behind the sandy shoreline in many places are natural areas full of plants like the tall, weedy Aurelia sarsaparilla. These attract many butterflies - so many that they are often clearly visible from the highway when conditions are favorable in August and September.

For over 10 miles north of Menominee, Green Bay is almost always in view. It's a pleasant drive, especially if you have time to stop and picnic or take a hike by the lake. Wells State Park has a wonderful trail system. On summer weekends, the West Shore Fishing Museum gives a good idea of the area's commercial fishing, and also prehistoric Native American fishing, in exhibits at a successful fishing family's homestead of 1910.

M-35 from Menominee to Gladstone has been designated as the Hidden Coast Recreational Heritage Trail — not a bike path but a motor route with over 100 inventoried points of scenic or historic interest. Special signage will point them out.

Mary Hunt

Cedar River began as a logging village, a heritage reflected in this display at the Lighthouse Inn.

Cedar River, once a mill town at the mouth of the Big Cedar River, is now the center of an popular resort area. Only a couple dozen people live in the village itself. Cedar River once bustled with a sawmill and a pier where lumber was shipped to Chicago. Then the sawmill burned and most residents moved away. Two churches on the highway remain from the lumber village: the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart (1887) and the Mission Chapel (1889).

Fishing is big here, both in the river (stocked with trout) and in the bay, where walleye, smallmouth bass, salmon, and brown trout are plentiful. The State of Michigan's $5 million Cedar River Harbor has opened on the north bank, with 61 reservable transient slips with electricity, day-use dockage, showers, a picnic area, and dog run. Visit http://mi.gov.dnr, then scroll to "Harbor Map" on the left. Call (800) 44-PARKS for reservations. The harbor's boat launch provides river and lake access. In spring the Cedar River can be boated up to a rapids two miles from the mouth. A small tackle shop services sport fishermen.

The largest local employer is Ruleau Brothers' Fishery. In spring, when smelt are running, it employs up to 30 or 40. Ruleau's is one of the Great Lakes' few remaining commercial fishing operations of any size, and it's the only Upper Peninsula fishery to use trawlers. Its 90-foot boat leaves the dock on the Cedar River's south bank in fall. to go after whitefish. (Two other Ruleau trawlers are based in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, near Manitowoc, where Lake Michigan's open water can be fished after Green Bay here ices up.) Smelt is netted during the spring run. The company's Stephenson processing plant is 12 miles due west of Cedar River. Although Ruleau's is a wholesaler, it will sell fresh fish to individuals from its Stephenson processing plant and freezer. It's located about 100 yards west of U.S. 41 at West 521 South Drive, just south of the center of Stephenson. Ruleau's currently sells fresh smelt for about $2.50 a pound, whole whitefish for around $! a pound. (The cost of fish is in the processing.)

Numbers of both smelt and whitefish in Lake Michigan are back after the 1988 invasion of the fingernail-sized zebra mussel, that destructive exotic, native to the Caspian Sea, inadvertently introduced in ocean freighters' bilge water. The zebra mussels fed on the shoreline zooplankton, which were at the bottom of the food chain for whitefish and smelt. The zooplankton moved into deeper waters. Now the zebra mussels died off, says Bob Ruleau, having killed off their food source. Whitefish are again numerous, and 2006 was a good year for smelt, too. The current threat to Lake Michigan fish, Bob says, is waterborne pathogens transmitted to salmon and other fish at hatcheries.

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PLACES AROUND CEDAR RIVER TO

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