The wooden viewing platform at Overlook 9 along Pierce Stocking Drive is no more after park staff had to remove it following the dune severing ties with the structure.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL) announced the news about the popular lookout area on Thursday via social media, describing how over the winter, strong winds undercut the sand at the base of the platform and that the western pilings no longer touched solid ground. Due to the loss of structural integrity and imminent safety concern, park staff removed the platform completely. The park service said that when the structure was originally built, it was placed a considerable distance from the edge of the dune face, but the dune has now moved further east than the platform location.
“We’re on living, active dunes, and the dune plateau and the sleeping bear dunes move on a yearly basis,” said Scott Tucker, Sleeping Bear Dunes Superintendent. “The platform went in in the mid 80s… The sand is moving every year, but this winter movement left the platform unsafe.”
Despite the platform gone, Tucker said visitors will still have 100% access to the dunes, and of course, the other 11 points on the 7.4-mile Scenic Drive.
“The views have not changed, the lake and the grandeur is still there, it’s just not the wooden platform to view it from now,” he said. “So visitors will be viewing from the sand in the dunes themselves… Memorial Day weekend is really when summer kicks off for us, but we’re ready for the summer.”
The overlook site itself is 450 feet above Lake Michigan, the largest lake completely within the United States and the fourth largest fresh-water lake in the world. It’s provided scenic views for decades from all directions, including Empire Bluffs and the Platte Bay within a 10 mile radius in the south, and to the west, Wisconsin is just 54 miles across the lake.
According to the National Park Service (NPS), the bluff has been eroding at the rate of about a foot per year. Waves can wear away at the base of the bluff and sand and rocks from above slide down to the beach. The hill once extended much further out into the lake and used to be inland protected from the strong winds off the lake. The shallow waters offshore have indicated that a peninsula once extended from the overlook site about two miles out into the lake.
Plans and discussions regarding the rebuild of another viewing platform at the Overlook 9 point will not begin until 2028. Tucker said Sleeping Bear Dunes’ “recreation fee plan,” which guides how the park spends recreation fee dollars, already included goals to upgrade the overlook location in different ways, however, further planning would have to wait a few years.
“If funding allows in 2028, we’ll start planning for a holistic project that could include restrooms, parking, and an accessible access pathway,” he said. “So our five year planning would start in 2028 to see what options we have for that visitor amenity.”
