Picnic Rocks is a Marquette staple. It is the easiest and most effortless place in Marquette to catch the sunrise, meaning you’ll always see cars parks in the parking lot during all conditions, especially people on their way to work in the morning.

To the North, you’ll see Marquette’s operational ore dock, with boats coming and going on a near-daily basis about nine months of the year.

To the South, you’ll see the historic Marquette Harbor Lighthouse.

Straight in front of you, to the East, you’ll see the Picnic Rocks (or is the land the Picnic Rocks? Who knows). This iconic rock is painted by Marquette Senior High School alums every so often with the class year. How they manage all the seagull poop out there, I’m not sure. Those the class year doesn’t appear in many published photos, I have a pretty robust archive of detailing approximately when it was last painted.

There is a caveat or two of tagging sunrises Picnic Rocks, as it’s not entirely clear where Shiras Park ends and Picnic Rocks begins.

Of 1,359 published sunrises, 28 have been from Picnic Rocks, representing 2.1% of the project.