Muskegon: the Lumber Queen's beaches, submarine, and second act

In the lumber era they called Muskegon the Lumber Queen of the World — 47 sawmills around one deep-water lake — and when the timber money left, the city kept its two best assets: the lake and the harbor. Today Muskegon County’s shoreline is the most generous on Lake Michigan’s east coast: Pere Marquette Park’s broad free beach, the dunes of P.J. Hoffmaster State Park and its towering dune-climb stairway, Muskegon State Park’s channel walls and winter sports complex with North America’s only public luge runs open to anyone brave enough.

The harbor keeps the stories. The USS Silversides — one of WWII’s most decorated submarines — floats beside the channel as a museum you can sleep aboard, the Lake Express ferry runs to Milwaukee all summer, and downtown Muskegon, after decades of trying, is genuinely humming again with a farmers market, breweries, and a convention-and-arena district along Western Avenue. Heritage on the water, beaches for everybody, prices that startle Chicago visitors: the Lumber Queen’s second act is selling tickets.