Triple-treat yourself to the Treat Farm Trail

By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
This is the time of year when spring wildflowers uplift the hearts of nature lovers everywhere. One of the best places to see them in delightful profusion is along the Treat Farm trail just south of Empire. The trail offers the triple treat of a woods walk, historical farm buildings and a magnificent Lake Michigan view.

The walk in to the farm is a pleasure in itself. It takes you on a gentle uphill dirt road through beautiful woods where white Trillium (named for their three leaves and three petals) cover the hills all along both sides of the trail. Tiny pink Spring Beauties grow rampant, not to be outdone by an abundance of shiny white Dutchman’s britches, and their cousins Squirrel Corn. Many Jack in the Pulpits also line the edges, and patches of blue Myrtle (Periwinkle) are visible. The ground is covered with the spotted-leafed yellow Trout Lilies, banks of big-leafed Bloodroot and patches of Large-Flowered Bellwort with their droopy yellow flowers. The abundance of wildflowers is as exciting as the variety.
For those who can’t get enthused over flowers, there is the fun of visiting the old Treat family farm itself. The barn is the first thing you see. The National Park Service has restored part of it and torn down some of the later additions.
You can take the steps to the white farmhouse, which sits on a small knoll beyond the barn. The NPS has maintained the old farmhouse, and you can sit on the front porch and try to image what it must have been like to live there in the shadow of the dunes with the farm fields spread out before you. Did the farmer and his wife take the pleasure in the sheer beauty of the surroundings as we do today, or were they too busy with the heavy demands of farming to even notice? Did the children love the woods and the dunes and the Lake, or did they hate the isolation? And what were those interesting round outbuildings built for? Were they springhouses, fruit cellars, or what?
On the far side of the field is a wall of high dunes with Lake Michigan just on the other side. To continue to the Lake, you can follow the path across the field below the house, which takes you to the foot of a dune. Rather than climbing the dune, follow the trail walking along below it. Before long it curls out around the end of the dune to a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan over 100 feet below. The view is spectacular. You look down over a few treetops to the sparkling waters far beneath your feet. Birds fly below you. From this high angle, you can see right to the bottom of the lake for quite a distance from shore. You can also see miles up and down the shore and out over the lake.
The Treat Farm trail is not heavily used. We sometimes pass another couple on the trail or sometimes see no one at all. The distance from the trailhead to the farm to the Lake is only about half a mile long, making for a one-mile round-trip. Although the first part presents a slightly uphill-grade, it is one of the gentlest slopes in the National Park. Dogs are allowed on leashes. The combination of beauty, ease of access, and low usage makes it one of my favorite trails in the entire Park. One caution, there is plenty of poison ivy along the trail later in the season.
How to get there: The trailhead is a gate at the west end of Norconk Road. Norconk (Stormer) crosses M-22 about a mile south of Empire.