Lakeport State Park and its Depression-era beach house

The beach house where you change into your swimsuit at Lakeport State Park was built by young men paid about a dollar a day. In the depths of the Great Depression, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp set up here. The crews put up the stone-and-timber bathhouse and much of the campground. That work has outlasted three or four generations of swimmers. The park itself came together in the 1930s, under a name that kept getting it confused with the city. It opened as Port Huron State Park, then was renamed Lakeport to point people at the lake instead of the town.

The park sits along M-25 on Lake Huron’s edge in Burtchville Township, north of Port Huron. It comes in two pieces, split by the little unincorporated village of Lakeport. Between them they hold better than a mile of shoreline — sand in places, smooth-rounded cobbles in others. It’s the kind of beach where you walk along watching for a Petoskey stone or a flat skipper. This is the open Lake Huron coast of the Thumb. The water is honest about its temperature, and the horizon is all water. On a clear day, you can sometimes pick out the long shape of a freighter standing out in the lake.

The day-use side is the draw for most: a wide beach, picnic shelters, and that old CCC bathhouse. The campground sits on the other unit, set back in the trees with a short walk to the water. It’s an easy hour-or-so trip up the shore from the city. That makes it the closest real Lake Huron beach for a lot of southeast Michigan, and a quieter one than the big-name parks farther up the Thumb. Bring the cobble-hunting eyes and a sweatshirt for after sundown. The breeze off open water doesn’t quit just because it’s July.