Tahquamenon Falls State Park Guide

The Upper Falls of the Tahquamenon are one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi — nearly 200 feet across with a 50-foot drop, pushing as much as 50,000 gallons a second in spring — and the strangest thing about them is the color: the water runs a deep amber, almost root-beer brown, stained by tannins leached from the cedar swamps upstream (there’s not a speck of pollution in it). Set in a big state park near Paradise in the eastern U.P., the falls appear in Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha,” and the walk down to the brink through the hemlocks is as good as the falls. A few miles downstream, the Lower Falls spread into a set of gentler cascades around an island you can paddle to.