Cave Point County Park

Cave Point is a small county park doing an outsized job. It occupies a headland on the Lake Michigan side of the Door Peninsula, about ten miles northeast of Sturgeon Bay, where the Niagara dolomite that forms the whole peninsula meets open water.

The rock is limestone and the lake has been working on it for a long time. Waves drive into the base of the cliff, find the bedding planes, and hollow them out. The result is a line of caves, notches and short arches cut into the wall at waterline, with the clifftop path running directly over the top of them.

What it is like

The park is small enough to walk in half an hour and good enough to sit at for three. A loop trail runs the edge of the headland through cedar and birch, with unfenced rock ledges stepping down toward the water. The cliff face stands roughly 30 to 50 feet above the lake depending on where you stand and what the lake level is doing that year.

On a calm morning the water below is turquoise over pale rock and you can see the bottom well out from shore. On a northeast blow, waves come in with the full fetch of Lake Michigan behind them and detonate into the undercuts. You can feel it through the rock. That is the day to come with a jacket and no plans.

It faces east, which makes it the sunrise viewpoint in a county whose other coast owns the sunsets.

The jumping, and the honest version

People jump off these cliffs and swim in the caves. It is not prohibited and it is not supervised, and the county does not encourage it. The hazards are real and specific: the water depth at the base varies with lake level year to year, submerged rock ledges sit close to the surface in places, the cliff face has no easy exit once you are in the water, and Lake Michigan here is cold enough well into July that cold shock is a factor.

If you go in, know what is under you before you jump, do it with someone on the rock, and understand that the nearest help is a long way off. Injuries and drownings have both happened here.

Kayaking

Paddling the base of the cliff is the best way to see the caves properly, and outfitters in Jacksonport and Sturgeon Bay run guided trips. Go on a calm day only. There is no landing along the cliff and the reflected chop off vertical rock is confusing water even for competent paddlers.

When to go

Late spring through October. Sunrise in summer. Mid-October for color against the water — Door County’s hardwoods turn and the contrast with the pale dolomite is the reason photographers come.

Winter is dramatic and treacherous: spray freezes the clifftop into a sheet, and the ice volcanoes that build on the shelf below are not walkable.

Before you turn up

Cave Point is free and has a small lot that fills on summer weekends. The overflow answer is next door: Whitefish Dunes State Park shares a boundary, has a larger lot, a real swimming beach, an interpretive center, and trails connecting to Cave Point. A Wisconsin state park vehicle admission sticker is required for Whitefish Dunes, not for Cave Point.

There are vault toilets and no drinking water. No lifeguards anywhere on this shore.

The rock edges are unfenced and the dolomite is slick when wet or covered in algae. Keep children close and keep boots off the wet ledges.