Ellen Creager

Detroit Free Press

ALPENA – It’s a slippery slope to the water’s edge at Michigan's strangest park.

Poison ivy grows everywhere at the sinkhole's shore. Red dragonflies flit in the afternoon sun. Smallmouth bass swim eerily through the shallows. Entire tree trunks, bleached with age, lie along the edge of the near-perfect circle of the twinkling lake.

The Big Sink is one of 12 mysterious sinkholes at Rockport State Recreation Area.

“Scuba divers went 80 feet down, and down there it is silty and squishy, and they didn’t find the bottom,” says Blake Gingrich, unit supervisor for Rockport and four other state park sites in the northeastern lower peninsula. “We don’t know how deep it is.”

Rockport became part of the state parks system just four years ago when it was transferred from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' forest resources division. The former gravel quarry is 4,237 acres in Alpena and Presque Isle counties along a strip of Lake Huron shoreline.

The park features virgin pines, a bat cave, deep-water pier, sinkholes and beautiful Lake Huron beaches.

But mostly, Michigan's strangest park is full of rocks. Much of it resembles an inhospitable moonscape with vast stretches of gravel punctuated by spindly pines.

Most of the park it is off limits to the public except by foot. No trails are yet marked. Only two campsites (both back-country) exist.

“It’s a pretty rugged place,” Gingrich says, in possibly the understatement of the year.

► Related:New Michigan state park campsites cater to tent lovers

► Related: State's newest campground offers Lake Michigan views

Back country

One afternoon, Gingrich takes me on a tour of the park in a heavy-duty John Deere four-wheeler. We drive underneath giant power lines and through a small stand of birch. We take overgrown paths where sharp branches whip at our faces as we pass. We stop on a limestone cliff and look out at a valley of rocks.

When we stop at the largest sinkhole lake, which locals just call the Big Sink, it is nearly inaccessible due to the overgrown trails and steep grade. We half slide, half slip down to the shore. For the public, the sinkholes are technically accessible — but only by hiking 2 ½ miles from the parking lot. The only directions are small, photocopied signs tacked to poles as a temporary measure.

But in this place, I'm struck by the power of nature and human nature to mold neglected places.

In the last 60-odd years, local people have stubbornly kept making trails through this place, legally and illegally, with ATVs, snowmobiles, hiking shoes, horses and shovels. Teens have been jumping off the abandoned Lake Huron pier here every summer for generations. Gnarled apple trees dot some of the wooded areas, remnants of when the quarry had housing here for workers. But nature has a way of simply moving on. Whether anyone is there to see it or not, the rocks endure. The secret sinkholes shimmer. The fish swim. The dwarf iris grows.

Gingrich, who has endless optimism, sees huge possibilities here.

OK, the budget is low, really low, he admits. The park is allocated just $25,608 a year, which must be shared with other DNR forest and boating areas nearby. And the Friends of Rockport, formed in 2012, has only $1,500 in its coffers.

Friends President Carol Dodge Grochowski says the main goal is to at least be able to afford to mark hiking trails.

"Being up in the boonies, we don't get a lot of attention out here. We are running on a shoestring," she says. "We take people out (to the park) on different tours, but it's a shame that people don't know where to go" on their own.

Gingrich is determined.

“We’ve got to get people here, and we’ve got to make it safe,” he says.

“People are going to love it.”

Odd attractions

Rockport was a major gravel quarry from 1927-58. Its last big project was creating and shipping the huge caisson pillars for the Mackinac Bridge in the 1950s. Then the quarry closed. The land passed to Consumers Energy. In 1997, the land transferred to the DNR. Then, nothing.

Now Gingrich would like to make it attractive to Alpena County residents and everyone in the state.

With the help of site development experts at Michigan State University and the Friends of Rockport, the park is trying to lure visitors with unusual appeals:

Scenic vista seekers: Many visitors scramble up to the top of a giant gravel pile near the paved parking lot. The pile is so big it is used as a landmark for boaters on Lake Huron.

"That big pile of rock is all limestone that was ready for shipping, and they never shipped it out," says Joseph Kchodl of Midland, a fossil expert who regularly leads trips here and who is better known as "Paleo Joe."

"In the pile is a tunnel, and in the tunnel there are bats."

Action seekers: Gingrich sees possibilities in the strange leftover commercial docks and pier on Lake Huron. The pier is so old that grass is growing on it. Weird pieces of wood and concrete stick out of the water at odd angles. Underwater in the bright turquoise depths are remnants of history, echoes of a once-bustling quarry shipping operation.

On this hot summer day we watch teens leap off old concrete pylons and splash into the water. Gingrich doesn’t want to stop them, but “this place is not very safe,” he says.

Still, "there are generations that have jumped off that pier," says Dodge Grochowski. True, the banks are eroding with the climbing, but "if the DNR said you could no longer go out there, there would be a big blow-up." The pier also has deep-water fishing near shore, and the bay is a traditional Chippewa fishing site.

Fossil and geology buffs: The churned-up rocks are a fossil bonanza (see related story). I ran into Zachary and Logan Pickelmann, ages 11 and 14, of Frankenmuth and their parents. They were happily picking through rocks in the blazing afternoon sun. Some findings? Ancient coral including huge Petoskey stones and other fossils from the time when Michigan was part of an ancient sea.

Runners: On Aug. 20, the park will host its first big event, the Xterra Rockport Rugged Triathlon (www.performancelocker.com/rockportrugged/).Organizers were attracted by the wildness of the park. Friends of Rockport are hoping the event will be a success and a source of badly needed revenue for park improvements.

Backcountry hikers: Trails have been scouted by DNR officials, but no trail map yet exists. It is coming. “Right now there is nothing telling people where to go,” Gingrich says.

Astronomy buffs: In April, the park was designated a Dark Sky Preserve by the state for its clear night skies.

Backcountry primitive camping: The first two back-country campsites have been installed, with two more to follow. The one I saw featured a nice fire pit and a bleakly intriguing view of miles of gravel and trees. But the ground at the site was all sharp little pointy rocks.

Island lovers: The park includes 30 acres on Middle Island out in Lake Huron. No park activities there yet.

Naturalists: The Besser Natural Area at the north end of the park was folded into Rockport four years ago. But it is notable for its stand of virgin white pine, rare in Michigan, where logging wiped out most of the magnificent trees.

Bat lovers: The park has a bat cave (the scientific term is hibernaculum), constructed in 2013, which provides a home for the little brown bat and other bats. You can visit the hibernaculum, but park authorities have seen few bats this year; disease has decimated the population.

Beach goers: Rockport has miles of white sandy beaches, almost all of them inaccessible. That could change. ”They are beautiful, and nobody knows about them,” Gingrich says as we slide under one huge fallen log and then climb over another to wade through weeds to one of the beaches, which looks like nothing but the wind has been there in years.

So what is the future of Rockport? A master plan for the site created by the state a few years ago suggested that the park could also have equestrian trails and maybe even target shooting, although it warned that "the ricochet of bullets off the rocks" might preclude that idea.

Gingrich is thinking wider than that. He even envisions a zip line from the top of the gravel hill to the pier.

“Whatever the public wants," he says, standing on the grassy pier. "What do they want? I don’t know.”

Kchodl hopes whatever it is, it won't change the park's strange allure. He even took Gov. Rick Snyder rock hunting there in June.

"It's wild. It's overgrown. It's a natural area," he says. "It's a wonderful place to go."

If you go

Rockport State Park is north of Alpena along Lake Huron. Take U.S.-23 north to Rockport Road. Turn right. The park is 2.3 miles farther. www.michigandnr.com/parksandtrails/, 989-734-2543. Friends of Rockport: www.friendsofrockport.org.

In all its rocky glory

Fossils galore make Rockport a fossil hunter's dream site.

"Normally you can't pick up fossils on federal, state or public land, but the DNR realized how important this place was to fossil hunters. So they basically decided to make a fossil park," says Joseph Kchodl of Midland, better known as "Paleo Joe." Today, "people can pick up 25 pounds' worth of fossils there. It is extremely rare. I was there this past weekend with families from across the country."

Why is it such a good fossil spot?

As a limestone quarry from the 1920s to 1950s, "they were strip mining up there," Kchodl says. "They would lay down railroad tracks, load the limestone cars, and the stuff they couldn't use they would dump it on the side. That is the stuff paleontologists love. All kinds of fossils are laying right on the surface."

Fossils are mostly corals that grew in the ancient tropical oceans, including many Petoskey stones.

Kchodl would like the park to stay pretty much the same. "There is no way to tame the area," he says. His only wish?

"I'd love to see little gazebos, interpretive stations throughout the quarry, so people could read the panel, then go out and find the fossils."

Contact Ellen Creager: ecreager@freepress.com, 313-222-6498 or on Twitter @ellencreager.