Big Bay de Noc is a bay in the

Upper Peninsula The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. or Yoop—is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula b ...

of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. The bay, which opens into

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and depth () after Lake Superior and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the ...

's Green Bay, is enclosed by Delta County. The

Garden Peninsula The Garden Peninsula is a peninsula of in length that extends southwestward into Lake Michigan from the mainland of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The peninsula is bordered by Lake Michigan on the east, and by Big Bay de Noc on the west. The base o ...

is on the east side of the bay and the Stonington Peninsula is on the west side. The small Delta County settlements of

Garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

and Nahma are harbors on the shore of the bay. As with the more thickly-settled

Little Bay de Noc Little Bay de Noc is a bay in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The bay opens into Lake Michigan's Green Bay. The bay, consisting of approximately 30,000 acres (120 km2), is enclosed by Delta County. The cities of Esca ...

, the bay's name comes from the Noquet (or ''Noc'') Native American people (thought to have been related to the

Menominee The Menominee ( ; meaning ''"Menominee People"'', also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People"; known as ''Mamaceqtaw'', "the people", in the Menominee language) are a federally recognized tribe of Na ...

of the Algonquian language group), who once lived along the shores. The bay is historically important for its 19th-century use as a center of the Lake Michigan

iron smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron, copper, silver, tin, lead and zinc ...

industry. A former smelting complex has been preserved as Fayette State Park. The state park's ''Snail Shell Harbor'', off Big Bay de Noc, offers a harbor of refuge for small boats and yachts. A lighthouse, the

Peninsula Point Light The Peninsula Point Light is a lighthouse located at the southern tip of the Stonington Peninsula in Bay de Noc township in Delta County, Michigan. United States Coast Guard historical documents have over the years listed the name of the site ...

, marks the entrance of the bay.

Climate

References

External links

Bays de Noc Convention and Visitors Bureau
{{Authority control Bodies of water of Delta County, Michigan Bays of Michigan Bays of Lake Michigan