Emmet County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Emmet County

Driving M-119 Tunnel of Trees from Harbor Springs to Cross Village is a 20-mile rite of passage Northern Michigan fall-color route that comes with a posted Michigan DOT no-rigs-over-22-ft restriction — the only state highway in Michigan with that explicit length sign, driven by overhanging beech-maple canopy and a no-shoulder, no-centerline two-lane geometry that hugs the Lake Michigan bluff. Skipping the restriction is not a recommendation: the road's first switchback north of Good Hart leaves no turnaround once committed. Emmet County covers 467 sq mi at the top of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and includes Petoskey (population 5,790, the county seat) — known nationally for the Petoskey Stone, a fossilized Hexagonaria coral from the Devonian-period reef preserved in Lake Michigan glacial cobble, which Michigan adopted as the official state stone by act of the legislature in 1965.

The Mackinaw City ferry terminal at the county's northern tip is the primary year-round vehicle ferry to Mackinac Island via Shepler's and Star Line operators — though no motorized vehicle has been permitted on Mackinac Island since the Village Council's ordinance in 1898 (one of the oldest continuous motor-vehicle bans on inhabited land in the United States, with exceptions for emergency vehicles and snowmobiles in winter only). Wilderness State Park at the Lake Michigan-Straits intersection accepts rigs to 50 ft with electric hookups, 250 sites on the Michigan State Parks reservation system; the Big Stone Bay loop has the longest pull-throughs and shortest walk to the Mackinac Bridge sunrise view. Petoskey State Park is the alternative full-hookup base, smaller (170 sites) but with direct beach access and the only state-park-managed Petoskey Stone-hunting beach in the system. The Sturgeon Bay shore on Lake Michigan north of Cross Village offers dispersed walk-in shoreline access — Wycamp Lake State Forest Campground (a Michigan DNR-managed primitive loop, 14 sites, no hookups, rigs to 30 ft) is the closest paved-access overnight in that quadrant.