Craig Lake State Park
— the park you have to want to find.
Not only on a wall.
Craig Lake State Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Six and a half miles of rough two-track lead in from US-41, and the gate is the last reliable thing for the rest of the day. Craig Lake is the most remote state park in Michigan, a roadless cluster of six lakes that the brewer Frederick Miller bought as a private retreat in the 1950s and the state later took on. No campground, no electricity, no cell signal in most of it. Loons on Craig Lake, walleye in Clair Lake, the occasional moose track in the mud by Crooked Lake. People come up with canoes on the roof. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Craig Lake State Park is a roughly 7,000-acre wilderness preserve in Baraga County, in Michigan's central Upper Peninsula, and the most remote unit in the state park system. The land was assembled in the 1950s by Frederick C. Miller of the Miller Brewing family as a private fishing retreat, and was donated to the state after his death in a 1954 plane crash. The park is reached by a rough six and a half mile gravel road north from US-41 near Three Lakes, with the last stretch generally requiring a high-clearance vehicle. The North Country National Scenic Trail crosses the park, threading the southern shores of Craig and Clair Lakes.
There is no campground, no electricity, no running water, and no reliable cell coverage inside the park boundary. Camping is rustic and dispersed; two of Miller's original log cabins on Craig Lake are rented through the DNR on a first-come basis. The park holds six named lakes — Craig, Clair, Crooked, Teddy, Nelligan, and Keewaydin — and what visitors most often remark on is sound, or rather its absence. The carry to Crooked Lake from Craig is a half-mile portage through hardwoods. Black bear and moose both range the park; the Upper Peninsula moose herd was reintroduced into nearby Marquette County in 1985 and 1987.
A Michigan Recreation Passport is required at the trailhead self-pay station. The road in is unmaintained in winter and often impassable in spring mud; high-clearance two-wheel-drive is the working minimum, four-wheel-drive is better. Most visits are day-trips for paddling Craig Lake or overnight trips with canoes carried in. Camping requires a backcountry permit from the DNR; the two rentable cabins must be reserved well in advance. The nearest reliable services — fuel, groceries, cell signal — are in Michigamme, roughly seven miles south on US-41. Park staffing is shared with Van Riper State Park, and there is no on-site office.
