Private Lake Near Marquette

Extraordinary, spectacular, secluded ... this property will put your mind to thinking in superlatives! It is the lovely sort of place we imagine, but rarely find. It`s big country with great diversity of terrain, lakes, streams, and the forest types, birds, animals and plants that call them home. As the seasons change you watch dramatic changes in the landscape. I hope the pictures on this web page capture that for you.

The Huron Mountains west of Marquette are a wonderland of high rock faces, stone outcroppings, sugar maple forests, monarch white pine, sparkling streams and blue high country lakes. They are the remains of an ancient mountain range, once as high as the mountains of Tibet, now eroded and scarred by glaciers and time, but still majestic and beautiful.

This property has it all. A full square mile surrounded by even larger land holdings, much of it owned by timber companies, where a compass and a GPS are a necessity, not a convenience. The log cabin is just a few years old, well built and well maintained. An attached garage plus a separate two car garage and generator shed provide plenty of space. The improvements provide all the creature comforts you could ask for and Marquette just 25 minutes away supplies the rest.

Bass Lake #2 is a northern forest lake surrounded by hardwoods with monarch pine and conifers along the shore. Flocks of wood ducks and a pair of black ducks were working the shallows when I first walked the property. Roughly three quarters of the shoreline is part of this tract.

Deeper in the woods, much higher up, Bass #3 is a magical, lovely, wilderness mountain lake with the look of an ancient crater. This is scenery reminiscent of the mountain West and it is a surprise to find it here in the Midwest. It is perched on an ancient mountaintop, entirely on the property, totally private and serene. The island in the lake once had a trapper`s cabin, and its remains can still be seen. There is even an unexpected sand beach at the east end near the outlet.

This is a diverse forest because of the dramatically varying topography and soils, with red and white pine, hard maple, red oak, hemlock, white birch, aspen and cedars. These trees occur in nearly solid stands in parts of the property and are intermixed or do not occur at all in others. Specimens of each can be found here in uncommon size, true forest giants, but many age classes grow on the property, which adds to its diversity and appeal.

Tributaries of the Little Garlic River originate on or near the property and flow through it to form that classic steelhead stream, once rated in the top 10 in the nation by Sports Illustrated.

There are broad hardwood flats and rolling land, but perhaps a third is mountainous with pockets of old growth timber. The giants that grow there (one is pictured above,) are virgin trees. I may not have seen the largest ones yet as I`ve walked the perimeter and bisected the property, but there`s certainly a lot left to discover. I found some good ones though: a red oak that measures 12 feet in circumference, maples about the same size, many white pine 6 to 10 feet and one giant hemlock 14 feet in circumference. All of these appeared to be healthy, growing trees.

A good road leads to the cabin but with this variety of forest, topography, diverse lakes, streams, rock cliffs and land forms, a hike through the property is a wondrous thing.
The cabin has two bedrooms with a loft bedroom above, a full bath, and large living spaces and decks with garage and storage beneath. It was constructed of large pine logs, cut on the property.

There are several hunting blinds on the property. You will see lots of deer tracks and plenty of bear sign, and in season ducks on both lakes. A flock of Canada geese landed on Third Bass while I watched. I saw a pine martin, and found wolf scat up on the high rock that is the remains of a mountain peak that was overrun by the glaciers.

Fred Rydholm`s wonderful two-volume work, Superior Heartland, tells us that Louis Kauffman, the banker who built Granot Loma, had his hunting camp on First Bass Lake, which adjoins the property. He named it, tongue in cheek, the Lido Club after the famous club in Paris and New York. Its remains are still visible just to the east of the property line. Tin Can Sullivan was the caretaker, and from Fred`s description he sounds like a character for sure. Fred`s books are a good read. Buy them at Snowbound Books if you don`t already have a copy and are interested in this area.

Fred also tells of a "Limey" logging railroad engine (an engine of unique and interesting design particularly adapted to these steep hills) that was lost in a sinkhole near Third Bass and was never recovered. Now there is a substantial artifact for you if you can find it.

The property is located off Gold Mine Road (bring your pan) 3.2 miles south of Highway 550 and about 11 miles from Marquette`s city limit. Marquette is the largest city in the Upper Peninsula and has the regional airport, regional seaport, regional hospital and Northern Michigan University. Marquette has been honored as one of ten annual "All America Cities" and as one of the 50 top small art communities in the nation. It has a wealth of shops, history, cultural activities, and restaurants.

If you have a plat book you will see the property, the whole Section 35, Township 50 North, Range 27 West, Powell Township. The nearest power is three miles away at Hwy. 550 so a generator supplies abundant power to the property. Since 9/11 much effort has gone into designing quiet, reliable, powerful generators and this is a good one. You can also click here for a USGS map (pdf) of the property and surrounding land.

The property is not open to the public and is not listed in CFR under the Commercial Forest Act. It is unusual to own the mineral rights in the U.P., as the big mining companies split them off from the surface ownership years ago when the iron mines were discovered. The minerals on this property were split off in the 1800's and are not owned.

Several years ago a local appraisal firm that concluded its report on the property this way: "In all, this section of land is almost an exact microcosm of the total region in which it lies. There is rugged terrain, difficult access to the property, lack of utilities and a mixed-and-varied forest type with both small lakes of varying quality and small streams on the description. All of these combine into a unique, beautiful, interesting and varied description which is like no other individually privately owned parcel we have encountered in almost 19 years of appraising and 33 years working in the out of door in the Upper Peninsula."

You will agree. This lake is a jewel. The property is majestic and beautiful. Come see it.

$2,550,000

More Information About This Listing
USGS map of property and surrounding land. (pdf)

More Photos
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Disclaimer
The information presented in this web site is and by nature will likely always be a "work in progress" subject to errors, omissions and revision. It is intended as a primer for those interested in buying U.P. real estate and contains personal observations and opinions with which others may disagree. It was obtained from sources deemed reliable, but is not warranted by Dick Huey or Huey Real Estate.