The State built roads on them. I grew up on a sand beach on Lake Michigan, but now I've grown to love the rugged shores of Lake Superior. Primary roads run along both shores of the U.P. so the trick to finding good property starts with locating parcels with enough depth between the highway and the lake to silence the sounds of traffic. You don't want to drive all the way from Detroit and find on still evenings that it sounds like you live by I-75. The sandy soil means the topography is rolling, shaped by the glaciers, with little or no rock.
Rivers run clear.
Hemingway's Nick Adams stories were set in this country, supposedly on the Big Two Hearted River. Actually the artist in him couldn't pass up the name, but his trout stream was the Fox, still one of the classic trout streams east of the Mississippi. That is why this area has such great mineral wealth. Gold in small amounts is fairly common and you can pan for it on many streams. The whole Yellow Dog Plains area north of Marquette contains known gold bearing sands.