By Helen Westie Sun contributor In the midst of the Great Depression, American families harvested the cherry crops here in northern Michigan. They were the forerunners of the migrants who came much later. It was 1931 and I was 13 years old when my family camped in the orchard of huge cherry trees (the trees […]
By Susan Pocklington Sun contributor “We’ve been driving by this house for 20 years…we love it,” beams one woman who couldn’t be older than 35. A gentleman positions his tripod in front of the orange poppies blooming in the side yard. He grins at me and pauses. “I’ve taken many trips out here and have […]
By Kristin Seitz Sun contributor “A handful of pine seeds will cover mountains with the green majesty forests. I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high.” Fiona Macleod For generations people have thrown their own seeds to the wind in this beautiful region. With blood, sweat […]
By Lois Bearslee Michigan State University Press, published 2003 Lois Beardslee, author of Lies to Live By, is an accomplished Native American artist, teacher and writer in Leelanau County. She practices many traditional art forms, including birch bark biting, quillwork, and sweetgrass basketry, as well as painting and illustration. In publishing these excerpts from Lies […]
By Thomas Benn Sun contributor Nestled alongside the highway opposite the Apple Blossom Drive entrance to the Leelanau Orchards top-of-the-line real estate development stands the more modest former seasonal residence of the Chavez and Campos families. Their names are still legible on the doors of the small cinder-block quarters for Mexican migrant workers who were […]
By Anne-Marie Oomen Sun staff writer The following story, told from the perspective of the house, was read at a public reception held by Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear on Thursday, August 7 at the Olsen farm, located north of The Homestead on M-22 in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
By Christina Campbell Sun contributor One late afternoon in prehistoric northern Lower Michigan, a Native American war party lay siege to an enemy group and left only seven survivors. These survivors surreptitiously followed their attackers to South Manitou Island and silently slaughtered most of them in their sleep. Those not killed awoke the next morning […]
By Jacob R. Wheeler Sun editor Nearly 90 years after the mysterious passenger steamboat captain Ralph Dorsey disabled and sank his magnificent craft, Rescue, with an axe on Big Glen Lake, the boat’s whereabouts remain as murky as his motives for doing so. Not even a team of professional scientists from the University of Michigan, […]
By Marge Barrett Sun contributor Amidst all the stories Colonel Thomas J. Barrett could tell about flying military planes and jet fighters from 1934 to 1962, he likes to recall the day he flew with Orville Wright. While stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base just after the end of the Second World War, Tom was […]
By Jacob Wheeler Sun Editor No, you can’t buy the pouches of Bugler roll-it-yourself tobacco. And no, the Coca Cola in the big red cooler behind you does not include cocaine as an ingredient. But nearly everything else at the refurnished General Store in Glen Haven is accurately reminiscent of the 1920s.