Fisherman's Island State Park

About this park

Fisherman's Island State Park, established in 1975, protects 2,678 acres along six miles of largely unspoiled Lake Michigan shoreline just a few miles southwest of downtown Charlevoix. The park takes its name from a small piece of land, Fisherman Island, sitting roughly 900 feet offshore, though high lake levels in recent years have at times made it inaccessible even on foot from the mainland. The park's interior consists of rolling dunes covered in maple, birch, and aspen, broken up by cedar and black spruce bogs, a genuinely varied inland landscape behind the open lakeshore. A 2.5-mile hiking trail winds through this terrain, and the park's southern end is specifically designated as primitive, offering a more rugged, undeveloped stretch of beach than the more accessible day-use areas further north. The park is popular with both hunters in the fall season and rock hounds searching the shoreline for Petoskey stones, Michigan's distinctive fossilized coral state stone, alongside more conventional beach camping, since several of the park's rustic campsites sit just steps from Lake Michigan itself. Its relatively undeveloped character, with fewer amenities than more heavily visited parks like nearby Petoskey State Park, gives Fisherman's Island a quieter, more rugged identity among the cluster of state parks ringing the Little Traverse Bay and Charlevoix region.