South Haven: beaches, blueberries, and the maritime coast

South Haven is a classic Lake Michigan beach town — a small city of a few thousand that fills up every summer with visitors drawn to its wide sandy beaches, walkable downtown, and famous sunsets. Two beaches flank the mouth of the Black River, and the red South Haven lighthouse at the end of the South Pier has marked the harbor for more than a hundred years. You can’t climb it, but you can walk the pier out to it — it’s one of the most photographed spots on the lake.

The other thing South Haven is known for is blueberries. Van Buren County grows more highbush blueberries than anywhere else in the country, and South Haven sits right in the middle of that fruit belt. The town has thrown the National Blueberry Festival every August since 1963, and it leans all the way in — pancake breakfasts, a parade, pie-eating contests, and u-pick farms all around town. (There’s even a shop downtown devoted entirely to blueberry everything.)

Down on the waterfront, the Michigan Maritime Museum tells the story of Great Lakes sailing, shipwrecks, and the Coast Guard, with a working shop where craftsmen still build wooden boats by hand and a replica 1810 sailing sloop you can ride. And South Haven claims a notable native son: Liberty Hyde Bailey, the botanist often called the father of modern American horticulture, was born here — his childhood home is now a museum and gardens. The 34-mile Kal-Haven Trail to Kalamazoo also begins at the edge of town.

Michigan Maritime Museum, 260 Dyckman Avenue, South Haven · michiganmaritimemuseum.org · and the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum, 903 S. Bailey Avenue