Click here to download an interpretive brochure for the Empire Bluff Trail.

From the parking lot, the trail begins with an immediate climb past post No. 1, which marks an out-of-place boulder. Glaciers that picked up rocks and soil in Canada and the Upper Peninsula retreated from here 11,800 years ago, leaving the debris behind as bluffs, hills, and out-of-place boulders known as erratics. You move into a beech-maple forest that edges an old farm field and at post No. 2 can examine some old farm equipment left behind from the 1940s.

Another climb brings you to the crest of a ridge where the trail levels out passing two more posts and at 0.5 miles from the trailhead arrives at the first panoramic view of the hike where a bench allows you to sit and gaze on the Lake Michigan shoreline to the north.

Eventually, you descend off the ridge, bottom out at post No. 5, and then make the final climb to post No. 6, where you break out of the forest to witness a spectacular panorama. It\'s a breathtaking sight for anybody who never envisioned such a reward at the end of such a short walk. You are more than 400 feet above the lake and can view Platte Bay to the south and the Sleeping Bear Bluffs to the north, with the famous Sleeping Bear Dune itself appearing as a small hill on top of the high, sandy ridge. Seven miles out on the horizon is South Manitou Island, and this entire picture is framed by dune grass and weathered trees.

At this point, the trail swings south and follows a boardwalk along the bluffs for 500 feet to an observation area with a series of benches. Here is a hiker\'s bench with a view unmatched anywhere else in Michigan. You might have walked less than a mile but you could rest here for hours.