Twelve of the Best Caves in Michigan

Didn’t your mother ever tell you “don’t go into the caves!” But you did anyway…or at least, you always wanted to IF there were caves near your home.

Ever since Mark Twain wrote about Tom Sawyer getting lost in the cave, American youths have always been curious about caves. We wanna go in ‘em. We wanna explore. We wanna find cool stuff…maybe we’ll find some bones of a guy who got lost! Yeah, we thought all those.

So what do we do as adults? We go out of our way to find these caves, that’s what. Some are on private property, some are hidden in the Michigan wilderness, some are just old abandoned mines in the upper peninsula. So what? Doesn’t matter. We wanna go in ‘em anyway.

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Your best – and safest – bet is to go on a guided tour. That way if something goes wrong, you can blame your guide, and YOU won’t be prosecuted for trespassing. Going into a cave or abandoned mine always caries the risk of a cave-in. It does happen, you know.

Why the fascination? They’re dark, moody, mysterious, oozing with secrets, possible artifacts…and we usually imagine finding some kind of pirate treasure or stashed loot from an old bank robbery from a hundred years ago.

Caves trigger the imagination and gets the adrenaline flowing, that’s for sure. Take a look at the list of Michigan caves and old mines below. You can legally tour some of these. There are many, many other caves throughout our entire state that are not as well-known as the ones below – so if you come across one out in the woods sometime, be aware of the dangers that await you. Cave-ins, you could get lost, snakes, spiders, bears…cougars, maybe?

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