Clare: Where Michigan Starts to Feel Northern

Somewhere on US-127 north of Mount Pleasant, the farm fields give out and the jack pine begins, and the exact place people agree it happens is Clare. It is the town everybody drives through on the way north, which is precisely why it is worth stopping in: a bakery owned by police officers, a hotel with a genuine gangland killing in its dining room, a large Amish community, and the eastern end of a 55-mile rail trail.

Cops and Doughnuts

The Clare City Bakery has been operating since 1896. In 2009 it was about to close, and nine officers of the Clare police department bought it. They renamed it Cops and Doughnuts, and the joke was good enough and the doughnuts were good enough that the thing became a genuine destination.

It won the Cooking Channel's Donut Showdown. Greg Rynearson retired from active duty to run it full time. It has since grown to four locations, with the original downtown Clare shop joined by branches in Bay City, Gaylord, and Mount Pleasant.

The original is the one to visit and it is laid out in three parts: a merchandise front full of shirts and jam and jerky, the case in the middle, and seating in the back. Go early. This is a bakery, and bakeries sell out.

The Doherty Hotel

The Doherty opened in 1924 and spent Prohibition doing what a hotel at a highway crossroads did during Prohibition, which involved alcohol, gambling, and a reputation.

Carl Jack Livingston, a business associate of Detroit's Purple Gang, lived at the hotel. Isaiah Leebove was an attorney connected to the same world. The two men were partners in the Mammoth Oil Company, and they fell out over whether to drill on a parcel of land Leebove owned. Livingston became convinced Leebove had aligned himself with a competing New York syndicate.

On the night of May 16, 1938, Livingston walked up to the table in the hotel's Tap Room where Leebove was eating dinner and shot him dead. He pleaded temporary insanity and a jury acquitted him. He was nonetheless committed to a northern Michigan institution, where he died of a drug overdose in 1948. The hotel is still open, still has a dining room, and does not pretend the story did not happen.

The Irish Festival

Clare turns green for four days every March. The Irish Festival is the town's largest event by a wide margin and it runs parades, bed races, a children's fun run, a craft show, live music, and a leprechaun contest.

March is not otherwise a reason to be in central Michigan, which is rather the point. If you want to see this town at full volume, this is when.

Book lodging well ahead. Clare is small and the festival fills it.

The Amish Community

Clare County's Amish community was established in 1980 and is now a substantial presence in the local economy. Furniture is what it is known for, and a number of families run woodworking shops producing handmade pieces.

Amish-operated businesses and shops are scattered through the area and most are open to the public. The largest gathering is Yoder's, which holds a flea market with a craft show and a quilt auction twice a year: the third Friday and Saturday of May, and the Friday and Saturday of Labor Day weekend.

Ordinary courtesies apply. These are working farms and businesses belonging to people who generally prefer not to be photographed, and the visit is better for everyone if you shop rather than sightsee.

The Pere Marquette State Trail

Clare is the eastern terminus of the Pere Marquette State Trail, which runs 55 miles west to Baldwin through Clare, Osceola, and Lake counties. The trailhead is right in town.

The trail crosses woodland and open field on an old rail grade, which means it is flat and it is continuous. Riding west out of Clare gets you into genuinely remote country faster than almost any other trailhead in the Lower Peninsula.

It also intersects the north-south trail network in this part of the state, so if you are a long-distance rail trail rider, Clare is a junction rather than a dead end.

Harrison, Budd Lake, and the Ski Hill

Harrison is about twelve minutes north on Business US-127 and it is where the lakes start in earnest. Wilson State Park sits on 36 wooded acres at the north end of Budd Lake, with a modern campground, a playground, a picnic area, and access for fishing, paddling, and swimming. It is small, which makes it easy, and it is right in town rather than out in the woods.

Snow Snake Ski and Golf, east of Harrison, has been running since 1949 and has been owned and operated by the Brockway family since 1957. It has six lifts serving ten runs across a 210-foot vertical drop, plus a terrain park and a snow tubing park, and an eighteen-hole golf course in summer.

This is not Boyne. It is a family hill with a short lift line and a low price, and for teaching children to ski in the middle of the state it is exactly right.

Why Clare Is Positioned Where It Is

US-127 and US-10 meet here. That junction is why a town of a few thousand people has a nineteen-twenties hotel, a bakery with a national profile, and a chamber of commerce with opinions. Everyone driving from southern Michigan to Cadillac, Ludington, Houghton Lake, or the Mackinac Bridge passes through.

The practical consequence for a traveler is that Clare works as well for one night as for three. It is a legitimate destination and it is also the best possible place to break a long drive north.

Lake George is west, Farwell is just southwest, and the small lakes of Clare County are scattered in every direction. Mount Pleasant is twenty-five minutes south, and Houghton Lake and Cadillac are both around forty-five minutes north.

How to Structure It

One night if you are passing through, two if you came on purpose. The Doherty is the atmospheric choice; there is chain lodging at the highway interchange and camping at Wilson State Park.

A workable shape: get to Cops and Doughnuts in the morning before the cases empty. Ride the Pere Marquette Trail west and come back. Spend the afternoon on the Amish shops or at Budd Lake, and have dinner at the Doherty so the Tap Room story has a setting.

In winter, swap the trail ride for Snow Snake. In March, come for the Irish Festival and plan on doing very little else.