Porch Notes
Menominee: river rapids, a Green Bay shore, and the U.P.'s mildest corner
Outdoors
Menominee County is the Upper Peninsula with the thermostat nudged up. Its western border is the Menominee River — the big, wild boundary water whose upstream gorges at Piers Gorge churn out the Midwest’s best whitewater rafting — and its eastern edge is the Green Bay shore, where M-35 runs sixty water-view miles past sandy beaches like J.W. Wells State Park that swim warmer than anywhere else in the U.P. In between lies the peninsula’s banana belt: real dairy farms, real corn, and the mildest growing season north of the bridge.
The county seat wears its lumber-fortune history on First Street, a waterfront historic stretch of 1890s brick blocks beside the marina, lighthouse pier, and bandshell green — twinned across the river with Marinette, Wisconsin, so daily life happily ignores the state line. Menominee is the U.P. for people who want the woods-and-water life with a beach, a farm stand, and a Friday fish fry inside ten minutes — which, around here, is simply called living.
Where to see it
The First Street waterfront in Menominee; J.W. Wells State Park on M-35; Piers Gorge rafting upriver near Norway.