Van Riper State Park: Camping, Beach, Moose Kiosk, Cost

Van Riper State Park has about a mile and a half of Lake Michigamme frontage on the lake’s eastern shore, and most people only ever see it through the windshield on US-41. The park covers 1,100 acres of Marquette County, 17 miles west of Ishpeming, split between Michigamme and Champion townships. It is named for Dr. Paul Van Riper, the Champion country doctor who got the beach into public hands. Wikipedia says he practiced medicine for most of his 91 years, but The Mining Journal reported he died in 1970 at 94, still the state’s oldest practicing physician.

A long, low concrete bridge on several piers crosses a wide blue river between wooded hills under a summer sky, with green brush in the foreground. Photo: Imzadi1979 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). — The 1914 concrete bridge that once carried US-41 over the Peshekee River, now a walking crossing in Van Riper State Park. Photo: Imzadi1979 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

He graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1900 and came to Champion in January 1901 to assist a doctor for the Oliver Iron Mining Company. He served 35 years on the Marquette County Board, and he persuaded Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company President William G. Mather to gift the property. The county built a beach pavilion and change house in 1924. By 1955 the park drew 200,000 visitors a year, and in 1956 it was turned over to the state.

A paved campground loop with a painted site number in the foreground, a white birch on a grassy site, a tent, cars and a fire ring under shade trees. Photo: Steven Isaacson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). — Tents and cars among the birches in the campground at Van Riper State Park, August 2005. Photo: Steven Isaacson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

A campground, a river camp and a pen name

The modern campground has 143 sites in two loops, mostly shaded and on the small side. The Peshekee River Rustic Campground adds 39 sites in the woods, and a group campground has nine more. A rustic cabin on the bank of the Peshekee sleeps six, rents year-round and is heated by a woodstove.

The camper cabin on the lakeshore is called Cully Gage, and that is a family name of sorts. Charles Van Riper, the doctor’s son, was known to his family as Cully. Under the pen name Cully Gage he wrote The Northwoods Reader, a series of books based on life in Champion. He began to stutter at two and spent his career as a speech-language pathologist working on stuttering.

Van Riper also works as the front desk for Craig Lake State Park, the remote park just west of Michigamme. Anyone camping at Craig Lake must check in and pick up a camper pass here. The DNR asks that you do it at the campground office, not at park headquarters.

Tall pines frame a view down a blue lake with forested shores under a partly cloudy sky. Photo: Helman34 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). — Lake Michigamme through the pines, photographed near Michigamme at the lake’s western end, a few miles from the park. Photo: Helman34 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The moose came through here

In 1985 and 1987, with the help of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, 59 moose were moved from Algonquin Provincial Park to the woods of Marquette County north of Michigamme and Van Riper. The DNR ran shuttle buses between the park and the release site so people could watch. Off the edge of a parking lot at the park, a kiosk donated by the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association in 1988 holds moose lift video, shed antlers, a moose mount and photographs.

Trunk Line Bridge No. 1

Beside the current highway, an old concrete bridge carries an abandoned stretch of US-41 across the Peshekee River near its mouth at Lake Michigamme. The Michigan State Highway Department built it in 1914 and designated it Trunk Line Bridge No. 1. It runs 240 feet on six 40-foot concrete girders, and Powell and Mitchell of Marquette built it for $11,129.70. “State Trunk Line Bridge 1914” is cast into the guardrails, and the DNR owns it now, open to anyone on foot.

Sources: Michigan Department of Natural Resources; The Mining Journal (John Pepin, 2014 and 2021; Ann Hilton Fisher, 2023); Michigan Department of Transportation; HistoricBridges.org; Wikipedia.

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