Sugarloaf Mountain

Kathe Maskus

Sunrise from Sugarloaf Mountain

The summit of this cherished local landmark offers grand views looking north and east to Lake Superior, and south to the city of Marquette with its steeples and the green forests beyond. It's a 15- to 20-minute walk to the peak - a view best enjoyed when the morning sky is still dawn-rosy. The trail is well marked. This half-mile climb is mostly stairway. Rated "moderate" in difficulty, it is less strenuous than it might otherwise be, thanks to the steps built by the county, plus benches along the way and a deck at the peak.

Kathe Maskus

The ancient rock outcropping on top of Sugarloaf Mountain.

Today Sugarloaf is county property, but long before it was ever reachable by a road, it was a favorite destination of Boy Scout hikes or paddles. The stone obelisk at the summit was erected by members of Boy Scout Troop 1 to commemorate their assistant scoutmaster, who died in World War I. They wanted a monument that his mother could see from her bedroom window on Arch Street. They carried stones up from the beach and caught rainwater with a tarp for the mortar. Troop 1 is among the claimants for first U.S. Boy Scout troop. When scouting was introduced from England, an already organized boys' club of the local Methodist church joined up immediately.

Sugarloaf was (and is) a special place to outdoors writer Jerry Dennis. He described it in his wonderfully evocative and well written collection of autobiographical sketches, A Place on the Water: An Angler's Reflections on Home: "Like many downstaters who attend Northern Michigan University, I was there for the country. . . . Even those places that were most popular gave access to a wildness that is rarely encountered in the Lower Peninsula. A few miles from campus, at the summit of a little mountain known as Sugar Loaf, you could stand on rock outcroppings and look north over the almost frightening vastness of Lake Superior, then turn south and see unbroken hills of forest tumbling inland toward the horizon like bunched rugs. It was country - and this is what I had come north to find - big enough to get lost in."

Sugarloaf Mountain is 6-7 miles north of downtown Marquette on CR 550. Get there by taking Front to Washington, turn west and go to Fourth Ave. Turn north onto Fourth, which becomes Presque Isle Ave. At Hawley turn west. It turns into CR 550. Look for sign by parking lot. Free. Handicap accessible: no.
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