By day, it’s Northwoods Hardware. By night—well, Thursday night—it’s Car Central. Every Thursday night from July 10 until the end of August, the parking lot at 6053 S. Glen Lake Road/M-22 becomes a convocation of motorheads. It’s Cruise Night in Glen Arbor.
Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB), a partner organization of the National Park, has many opportunities coming up for visitors and residents to learn about, and help preserve, the heritage of the Sleeping Bear Dunes area this summer.
Empire celebrates its annual Anchor Day festival on July 18-19 to commemorate the raising of an anchor found 37 years ago in 18 feet of water off the Lake Michigan shore. The celebration kicks off Friday night at 7 p.m. at the Township Hall with the Empire Museum showing of two films.
The Port Oneida Community Alliance was formed with the purpose to adaptively reuse the Port Oneida School and Kelderhouse Homestead as a community center and a teaching farm. The vision is to provide hands on opportunities for education, recreation and celebration of historical knowledge, environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture in order to honor and perpetuate the legacy and community spirit of the resilient and loyal subsistence farmers who called Port Oneida their home.
On Friday, May 30, dignitaries including U.S. Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and Congressman Dan Benishek gathered at the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive #3 Dune Overlook to commemorate President Obama’s signing this spring of the Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness Act, which will preserve our National Lakeshore while guaranteeing public access to its roads, beaches and forests. Here are a few highlights from their speeches.
Glen Arbor and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore area enjoyed an economic and tourism boom in the mid-1990s, and now the businesses borne of that boom are coming of age. Brad Anderson was a youthful 27 years old when he bought Steffens IGA in 1994 from Bill and Jan Heston and renamed it Anderson’s Market. Bit by bit he updated the interior and modernized the inventory, but not until this year did the grocery store in the heart of Glen Arbor get a complete facelift.
Eneliko “Liko” Smith, the enigmatic Samoan-born boxer turned hotelier who has made two ill-fated bouts for Sugar Loaf, has shifted gears and will instead acquire the Glen Arbor Art Association’s Manitou Music Festival — the popular classical and folk music concert series that takes place in the summertime at area churches, at the backyard studio stage at Lake Street Studios, and at the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb. Ann Arbor teacher and performer Harry Fried had run the Festival until stepping down last year. The Manitou Music Festival was founded about 20 years ago by world-renowned cellist Crispin Campbell, who has since gone on to found symphony orchestras in the Columbian jungle in land formerly occupied by leftist FARC-rebels.
The Glen Lake Community Library in Empire will host a special exhibit called “Footprints in the Sand – Tracing the Path that Led to the Birth of the Village of South Manitou Island” from April 4 through May 17. The exhibit tells the story of the Village using historical photographs, maps, drawings and narrative. The display opens with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 6 t0 8 p.m. Refreshments will also be served. It then can be viewed during regular library hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.
Patients of Glen Arbor physician Matthew Houghton received the sad news last week that “Doc” Houghton is closing his practice, effective March 10 — “due to sudden personal health changes on March 1,” Houghton wrote in a recent letter to patients. He added that longtime assistants Vicki and Marion will be at the office to help with your record release for the next six months, on a limited basis.
Leelanau County oral historian/author Tom Van Zoeren has published a new book pertaining to Michigan history. Coauthored with 92-year-old native of the subject area, Alma Holwerda, and published to benefit the Holland (Michigan) Museum, A Farm Album from Michigan’s Dutch Colony: An Oral and Photographic History is based on oral histories, letters, and other historic sources, and is illustrated with historic photographs.