Porch Notes
Canyon Falls and the 'Grand Canyon of Michigan'
Outdoors
Most people don’t picture canyons when they picture Michigan. Then they walk back to Canyon Falls.
Just off US-41 in Baraga County, a few miles south of L’Anse — a handy leg-stretch on the long drive up to Copper Harbor — a short, mostly level trail leads from a roadside park back to where the Sturgeon River makes a fifteen-foot plunge into a steep, box-walled gorge. The rock here has fractured along straight lines, so the canyon has oddly squared sides, and the dark water in the chasm is genuinely dramatic for the Midwest. It’s earned the nickname “the Grand Canyon of Michigan.”
The falls are only the appetizer. Keep following the Sturgeon downstream — into the protected Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness — and the canyon eventually deepens to something like 300 feet and widens to nearly a mile, the deepest gorge in the state. (That far stretch is a serious backcountry trek, not a roadside stop.)
Where to see it
Canyon Falls Roadside Park is on US-41 about eight miles south of L'Anse; the walk to the falls is roughly half a mile each way. Stay behind the railings — the gorge edges are sheer.