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.
By Grace Dickinson Johnson Sun contributor It was a good day for the Ghost Supper in Peshawbestown, Leelanau County. The early evening clouds were leaden and hung low in the sky. The late fall air was crisp and very still. Indian people in this land of the Ottawa and Chippewa were remembering their dead today. […]
By Writefish Sun staff writer “Over here is our new music box,” says volunteer Dave Taghon as he steps to a table in front of the bar, just inside the front door of the Empire Area Museum. Dave is one of many volunteers who have dedicated his “free” time to keeping history alive at the […]
By William H. Peppler Sun contributor
It’s 8:30 on a Saturday morning in May. Doctor Matthew A. Houghton, Jr., sits in his office at Glen Arbor Medical Arts, once the Glen Arbor Beauty Salon, with a few quiet moments to himself before the first patients arrive. He smokes a cigarette — “My last bad habit,” he says — and mumbles something about needing to smoke when you habitually jump out of helicopters.