The top 5 Great Lakes beaches

It finally happened. The famous Dr. Beach acknowledged that the Great Lakes have great beaches worth mentioning.

What made him do it?

"Years and years of being battered by all the people who were from the Great Lakes," said Stephen Leatherman, director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research at Florida International University. "I get hundreds of e-mails every year from people claiming that I don't know there are beaches on the Great Lakes."

For years, he resisted because his expertise was ocean beaches. But finally, when even colleagues started needling him at conferences about why his influential annual Dr. Beach ranking of Top 10 U.S. beaches excluded the Great Lakes, he changed his mind.

This year's list of top-five Great Lakes beaches named Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore beaches No. 1. The park, on the shores of Lake Michigan in Empire, Mich., was praised for its "variety of beaches with fine to grainy sand and clean, clear water."

Sleeping Bear's gorgeous sand helped it win, Leatherman said. Although the sand on Great Lakes beaches is mostly quartz, just like the ocean's, "it does vary," he said.

"The Michigan side of Lake Michigan has remarkably fine sand," he noted.

At No. 3 is Lake Superior's Sand Point Beach at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which was complimented for its water -- "crystal clear and surprisingly emerald green in shallow water areas." Pictured Rocks, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, has many beaches with water usually too chilly for all but the heartiest of swimmers, yet it attracts 499,000 visitors a year.

Bayfield Main Beach on Lake Huron in Bayfield, Ontario, grabbed the No. 4 spot. Although "the sandy beach grades into cobbles offshore," the ranking said, "there are amenities close to the beach, and crowds are never a concern."

Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan in Chicago came in at No. 5. This popular Lake Michigan beach has good, fine sand and also "provides stunning views of the historic architecture of Chicago and Lake Michigan."

Making the rankings

To evaluate freshwater beaches, Leatherman sought advice from Erin Dreelin, associate director for the Center for Water Sciences at Michigan State University. She helped him come up with slightly different evaluation criteria from what is used for ocean beaches.

Leatherman has traveled most of the marine coast on the Atlantic and Pacific surveying beaches for the federal government and for his own research, compiling 60,000 slides and 10,000 maps. But his travels in the Great Lakes have been more limited.

Will this be an annual list?