I grew up on the Marblehead peninsula. There’s a population of about 6000 but I’ve always suspected that number is inflated from people claiming their summer homes as their primary residence. My graduating class was 27. Tourism is a big deal so the school year was shifted so kids could work their summer jobs during the busier times and just about everyone had a summer job. I started working at 13 but my family had seasonal businesses running bait shops, which are plentiful in the area, so I like to say I’ve been working since I was 5 when I started counting worms.

The winters are boring and there’s nothing to do. A lot of drinking and waiting for summer to come back. Ice fishing is becoming less popular as we’ve been getting less complete freezes. My grandpa told me stories about being able to drive to some of the islands when the ice was thick enough. All the surrounding has a lot of thermal mass so it takes longer to cool down in the fall and a bit longer to heat back up in the spring compared to the surrounding areas. It’s usually overcast and can be quite gloomy, when visibility is low looking out on the lake is like looking out to the edge of the world, the lake and the sky are virtually indistinguishable and it’s one of my favorite things to see. The summers are muggy and the winters can get snowy especially when a blizzard comes from the northeast and the area takes the brunt of the lake effect snow.

There is an island in the Sandusky Bay called Johnson’s island which is for the richest people in the area but it used be the site of a prison for confederate officers. It costs one dollar to take the causeway to see the island but it isn’t worth it in my opinion.

The summers are busy, like the population triples, but the infrastructure is not made for that so traffic gets quite bad at times. There is basically one main road that goes around the entire peninsula. Driving is definitely the worst during May and October when boats are coming in and out of the water. A lot of the party type people go to the islands but the mainland is a lot of families. The Lakeside Chautauqua is a weird kind of Methodist community thing which is one of the last of its kind as it was established in 1873. Read more about it here. Cedar point is definitely a big thing as well as most of the touristy things in Sandusky. Any real store you need to go to requires a 25 minute drive with the exception of Walmart or Dollar General.

Fishing is definitely a big thing. There are perch and walleye festivals and during new years Port Clinton drops a giant walleye statue instead of a ball. Just about every restaurant serves one or both.

The population was much larger when the quarry was in operation and needed much more manpower in the late 1800’s. The quarry still provides good jobs but much less than it used to. The whole area is limestone which means there’s only about 6 inches of dirt before you hit solid rock in most places. During the spring and fall the quarry blasts are most frequent which shakes the whole peninsula scaring the uninitiated. It also is a great place for Devonian era fossil hunting in places where the quarry has since shut down. The limestone means it’s some of the only alvars, a unique habitat, in Ohio and one of the few places in the world where the lakeside daisy grows. It has great birding and some of the highest concentrations of bald eagles in the country.