Pentwater, the harbor village

Pentwater is one of those Lake Michigan towns that people fall for and come back to year after year. It sits on a narrow channel where Pentwater Lake empties into the big lake, a setup that gave the village both its harbor and its name, which comes from the old idea of “pent-up waters” held back behind the dunes.

Like most towns along this shore, it began with lumber. In the 1850s a Massachusetts lumber baron named Charles Mears dug a channel to Lake Michigan, built a sawmill on its bank, and ran a long pier out into the lake so schooners could carry his boards down to Chicago. Mears built so many mills and harbors up and down the coast that he earned the nickname “the Christopher Columbus of the West Coast.” The village took shape around his operation and was formally founded in 1867. When the white pine ran out, Pentwater did what its neighbors did and reinvented itself as a summer place, and it has been one ever since.

Today the draw is the easy, walkable charm of it all: a downtown of shops and galleries, Victorian cottages with flower gardens, sailboats gliding in and out of the marina, and the Village Green, a little waterfront park and bandshell where free concerts play on summer evenings. Right at the channel sits Charles Mears State Park, a sandy stretch of Lake Michigan beach with a campground, named for the same man and given to the state by his daughter. You can find the summer concert and festival schedule through the village at pentwater.org.