MICHIGAN'S MARCHING DUNES

Michigan’s pioneer town builders studying the fine clear river, the excellent natural harbor and the open expanse of ground protected by sandy hills along Lake Michigan decided they had found the perfect place for the city of Newburyport. But you won’t find Newburyport, the town they built, on any map, for they had to give up their community. Today, its buildings lie buried beneath tons of sand. The founders of this doomed town had fallen victim to a geological phenomenon--Michigan’s marching dunes. They had unwittingly built their town in one of the areas along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan--regions in which wind and sand are masters.
    The hapless citizens of Newburyport may have been the first white people to make this dismaying discovery, but they were not the last. Their defeat has oddly turned the deadly dunes from a sinister enemy of man into a recreational bonanza for millions of Americans.
    The sand dunes of Lake Michigan extend for hundreds of miles along Michigan’s shores. In some places they are mere modest sand piles in a narrow band along the lake. In others they have sprawled out for miles. In some cases the from high, wall-like ridges. In others they create cliffs, canyons and valleys that look like miniatures of rugged Western terrain.
    Nature has its own peculiar formula for making these dunes. It takes a big lake, with waves washing up sand along the beach, a wind that blows at speeds above six miles an hour and an obstruction, which can be as small as a clump of beach grass or as big as a cottonwoods tree. Wind carries the sand against the obstruction, where it drops it. More sand piles up against it and the hillock becomes an obstruction in itself and collects more sand, growing thus to perhaps hundreds of feet in height.
    In the case of most dunes the build-up of sand was slow enough to give vegetation a chance to take root on the sand hills. They had thus been turned into ordinary forested dunes before white settlers appeared in Michigan. But in many areas, an abundance of sand, carried into shore by strong winds, has created another kind of dune. As new sands are deposited on the dunes, sliding down their sides, they move. These are Michigan’s marching dunes, several thousand acres of them, in a score of different locations along the Lake. Some of these dunes move only a few inches annually. Others travel with astonishing rapidity and have been clocked at speeds like that recorded for Marvin’s Slide, near Benton Harbor, which progressed 22 feet in a two-year period. These mighty sand piles are big enough to engulf whole forests.
    After the Newburyport fiasco other ambitious town builders found it hard to accept the power of the dunes. There were cases in which they got the towns built and even fought a fairly successful battle against the sands. But they too lost in the end. Such as the town of Singapore, which up to 1875 was a rip-roaring lumbering center. When the lumbering era passed the sands took over. Today the only trace of the town is an occasional chimney or wall that comes to light in the shifting of the dunes and a plaque in the nearby town of Saugatuck, proclaiming: "Beneath the sands near the mouth of the Kalamazoo River lies the site of Singapore..."
    Port Sheldon also saw its hopes blasted by the sand. When an ambitious group of land developers from New York and Philadelphia came to Michigan in the middle of the last century, they picked a spot north of the present city of Holland, because of the good natural harbor. They went ahead and laid out their town, building a hotel and putting up a big sawmill to provide lumber for future homes. The dunes began to move into the channel. The promoters brought in dredges, but still the sands came tumbling down. In less than a year, the channel was so choked that the discouraged town builders knew they’d never succeed in getting anything much bigger than a rowboat through it. They gave up their scheme and went back East.
    Over the years hundreds of settlers tried farming near the lake, only to have their farms enveloped. The fate of these farmers is most dramatically demonstrated in the big prairie region near Muskegon, where shifting sand dunes have blotted out trees, houses and fields.
    Not everybody has calmly stood by and let the sands have their way without a fight. County, state and Federal agencies, as well as private individuals, have pitted themselves against the dunes, sometimes with considerable success. But even the most skillful engineers have been fooled by the moving sand. Experimental solid walls of corrugated steel were a dismal failure, for the wind promptly proceeded to undermine, topple and then cover them with sand. Other solid barriers only served to create new dunes, for the wind eddying around them piled more sand against the obstruction. Plants, which so often trigger the start of a dune, seemed to offer one solution, but early efforts at planting beach grass got nowhere. The tufts of grass were quickly covered by sand, while others were destroyed by having their roots laid bare. The USDA found that tufts of grass planted exactly the same distance apart, in a checkerboard patten, sometimes kept the sand from piling up more in one place than another. But when the grass died out after a few years, the dunes were on the march again. Another trick is to lay a covering of brush, shingle fashion, over the surface of a dune. The sand fighters also erect "picket networks," 13-foot-squares of 18-inch stakes driven into the sand to a depth of six inches. In one area, small saplings worked pretty well until some took root and sprouted leaves. Soon the sand began to build up around the sapling stakes that sprouted.
    One procedure seems to tie the dunes down more satisfactorily. That’s getting them planted to forests. Not any old tree will do, however, Jack or Red Pine work best, if they ever get a good start, for they develop powerful root systems and seem to flourish in the sand. These forested hills, scattered around many parts of Michigan, aren’t even recognizable as dunes. Occasionally, when some ancient tree is ripped up, its roots reveal that it grew in the pure sand of what was once a barren dune.
    Today, most of the moving sands of Michigan lie in splendid silence. Some find in them the same kind of peace and solitude that man has always found in the desert.
    Several of the most spectacular dunes areas are now open to the public. Since few persons wanted such real estate, the state was able to acquire some sections of duneland lake front. Now it boasts of a series of sandy state parks strung out along the entire length of Lake Michigan. For years the southern-most one, Warren Dunes, was one of the most troublesome. At one time farmers made a try at farming the land, but the sand engulfed the farms. Then cottagers, attracted by the glittering golden strand of beach, moved in. It was a losing battle from the start. Eventually the dunes had it all to themselves, until the state took over the 1,066 acres they covered, built a road through them and opened them up to the enjoyment of visitors. The trick was not to fight the dunes, but to let them go where they wanted to. The Michigan Park Service cheerfully accepts the task of shoveling away tons of sand from roads and parking lots.
    Turning the dunes into state parks may be a happy solution for most, but many cottagers are still challenging the sand. These days they’re jacking their cottage up on piles, letting the sand pour under them. Each year their cottages rise higher on the slopes of the advancing dunes.  "Has its advantages," one cottager says with a wry grin. "Improves the view. And we get a clean new yard every year."

Adapted form a 1960 article in Coronet Magazine.

This material has been compiled for educational use only, and may not be reproduced without permission.  One copy may be printed for personal use.  Please contact Randall Schaetzl (soils@msu.edu) for more information or permissions.