Agate Beach
Grand Marais, MI
Agate Beach in Grand Marais lives up to its name. It's one of the best-known agate hunting beaches in Michigan, and the pebbles along the waterline also turn up plenty of unakite, a green and salmon-pink stone. Most visitors spend more time bent over than sitting down.
One of the best agate beaches in the state, though it's pebbly and crowded with hunters on summer mornings.
How we score beachesHunt with the sun at your back so agates glow. Morning light works best on this shore.
Parking in Grand Marais near the beach.
A short walk from town to a pebbly beach.
Spring after the ice leaves and fall after storms turn up the freshest stones. Summer brings more hunters but calmer water.
More Great Lakes beaches

Sleeping Bear Dunes Beach
Empire, MI · Great Lakes
Freshwater Lake Michigan surf below towering sand dunes, some over 400 feet tall, with water clear enough to rival a coastline and a hike back up the dune to burn it off.
New Buffalo City Beach
New Buffalo, MI · Great Lakes
New Buffalo City Beach is the first real Lake Michigan beach you hit crossing from Indiana, a wide stretch of sand at the end of Whittaker Street beside the harbor and the Galien River channel. Chicago weekenders fill it in summer. The town's shops and restaurants are a five minute walk back up the street.
Warren Dunes State Park
Sawyer, MI · Great Lakes
Warren Dunes State Park in Sawyer has roughly three miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and some of the tallest dunes in southwest Michigan. Tower Hill rises about 260 feet above the lake, and climbing it and running back down is a rite of passage. On a hot July Saturday the beach feels like a small city.
