Some hikes are about the view. This one was about the two of us getting to the top of Mount Mount Baldhead(aka Mt. Baldy) together. The day before we made our climb, my wife Deedie was at the base of the stairs and watched a 92-year-old woman make the entire climb with a little help from her own son. She snapped a photo of it, and it stuck with us the whole next day: if she could do it, we could too.

My son Cam and I made the climb up Mount Baldhead — 303 wooden steps rising 200-plus feet above the Kalamazoo River — and by the time we reached the observation deck, we’d both earned the t-shirt waiting for us at the bottom: “I Climbed 303 Steps, Mt. Baldy, Saugatuck, MI.” Cam wore his proudly for the rest of the trip, and honestly, so would you.

The staircase runs straight up the dune in flights, with benches at nearly every landing, so it’s a climb almost anyone can do at their own pace — kids, grandparents, and yes, a dad and his son who stopped to catch their breath more than once. At the top, the trees open up just enough to give you the Kalamazoo River curling past downtown Saugatuck on one side, and on a clear day, a glimpse of Lake Michigan on the other.

Why It’s Called “Baldhead” — and What’s That Dome on Top?
Officially named Mount Baldhead, the dune earned its nickname the honest way — its sandy summit used to be almost entirely bare before trees took hold over the decades. But the real conversation-starter at the top isn’t the sand, it’s the large white dome that locals have nicknamed “Radar Hill.” That’s a real Cold War relic: in 1956, the Air Force leased a small patch of land on top of the dune to build an unmanned radar station as part of the SAGE early-warning network, watching the skies for Soviet bombers. In exchange, the Air Force rebuilt the town’s worn wooden staircase and helped stabilize the dune. The station ran until it was deactivated in 1968, and the city eventually took over the building, tower, and equipment. It’s believed to be one of the last SAGE-era gap-filler radar stations still standing with its original hardware largely intact — a strange and fascinating thing to find at the top of a sand dune.

A Lumber Town Turned Art Colony

The dune isn’t the only thing in Saugatuck with a layered past. The town itself started out in the 1830s as a lumber and shipping hub, its mills feeding off Michigan’s seemingly endless white pine forests and its shipyards launching vessel after vessel onto Lake Michigan — a good chunk of the lumber that rebuilt Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871 passed through towns like this one. By the late 1800s the pine was gone, and the town could have faded the way a lot of Midwest lumber towns did. Instead, in 1910, a group of Chicago art teachers and students founded the Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting along a quiet bend of the river, and Saugatuck reinvented itself as an art colony and summer retreat. That identity stuck. Today it’s known as the “Art Coast of Michigan,” and the same dunes and river views that drew painters a century ago are what pull hikers up Mt. Baldy’s 303 steps today.

If you make the trip, stop at the Saugatuck-Douglas History Museum at the base of the stairs before or after your climb — it’s housed in the town’s original 1904 water pumping station, and it’s where you’ll find the same “303 Steps” shirt Cam and I brought home. Then hit the stairs, take your time on the landings, and enjoy a view that’s been worth the climb for well over a century.

Saugatuck-Douglas History Museum
130 Center St, Douglas, MI, United States, 49406
Website: https://mysdhistory.org/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSVgYejWQPA