The 'Mirror of Heaven' — and the Shopkeeper Who Made Up Its Legends

Kitch-iti-kipi is so clear you can watch trout drift 40 feet below you, and its romantic “Ojibwe legends” came from a five-and-dime store owner trying to lure tourists.

Tucked inside Palms Book State Park near Manistique is Kitch-iti-kipi, Michigan’s largest natural freshwater spring. More than 10,000 gallons of water bubble up every minute through cracks in the limestone, keeping the pool a constant 45 degrees year-round — so it almost never freezes, even in a U.P. winter. You glide across it on a self-operated wooden raft, peering through a viewing window at swirling sand, lime-coated logs and fat trout suspended in the impossibly clear, emerald water. The Ojibwe name is often translated as “big cold spring.”

Here’s the fun twist. In the 1920s, a Manistique shopkeeper named John Bellaire fell in love with the then-trash-strewn spring. According to the Schoolcraft County Historical Society, in 1926 he arranged to sell 90 acres including the spring to the State of Michigan for $10, with the deed requiring the land “be forever designated as a state park bearing the name, Palms Book State Park.” That same society notes the spring “became known unofficially as Kitch-iti-kipi, from an old Indian legend which Bellaire created out of his imagination for the sole purpose of luring tourists to the area.” It worked. People have been coming ever since — to gaze at one of the most beautiful places in Michigan.