Tahquamenon Falls, the 'Root Beer Falls'

Tahquamenon Falls is one of the crown jewels of the Upper Peninsula, and most of its enormous state park — Michigan’s second largest, at over 46,000 acres — sits right here in Chippewa County, in Whitefish Township, with the western edge reaching into Luce County. The main gateway town is Paradise, on the Lake Superior shore just to the northeast. The Luce County Tahquamenon note covers the Newberry side; here we’ll take it from the Chippewa side, where most of the park and the busy Paradise entrance lie.

The star is the Upper Falls: a single drop of about fifty feet, nearly two hundred feet across, with up to fifty thousand gallons of water a second thundering over the lip during the spring melt. That makes it one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River — behind Niagara, but in the same conversation. Its most charming feature is the color. The water runs a deep amber-brown, like root beer, and froths into thick foam at the bottom. This isn’t pollution: it’s tannins, leached naturally from the cedar and hemlock swamps the river drains upstream. Locals affectionately call it “Root Beer Falls.”

A short paved, accessible path leads from the Upper Falls parking area to a series of viewing platforms right beside the torrent. A few miles downriver, the Lower Falls is a gentler series of cascades around an island, reachable on foot or by a rented rowboat, with calm pools where people wade and swim in summer. There’s a brewpub and gift shop at the Upper Falls, miles of trails, campgrounds, and a real sense of northern wilderness — moose are sometimes seen along M-123 between Paradise and the falls. It’s a place worth building a whole day, or a whole trip, around.