A number of concerned locals have contacted Glen Lake School about the clear-cutting of aspen trees on the school-owned property on County Road 677 (Benzonia Trail), just north of the M-72 intersection — a 180-acre plot that the local public school typically calls the “Benzie Trail Property”.
Tom Ulrich, Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, reports that 2011 won’t be the Lakeshore’s busiest year in history — despite Sleeping Bear being voted “the most beautiful place in America” by Good Morning America — and the final tally won’t come close to the 1,364,834 the Lakeshore welcomed in 1999. But 2011 will post the second highest visitors total.
Details surrounding the history, legend and exciting 2010 discovery of one of the Great Lakes’ most sought-after shipwrecks will be disclosed during the Empire Area Heritage Group’s Dec. 2, free public program at the Empire Township Hall.
When I spoke on the phone recently with Derek Bailey, current chair of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and now Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, he was crossing the Mackinac Bridge and returning home to Traverse City. The tires on his 2005 Saturn VUE hummed loudly as he passed over the rumble strips on the majestic arch that connects Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.
The Crystal River is a little green today but this is not an early St. Patrick’s Day celebration by our Chicago friends. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is treating the river to control the lamprey population.
A breath of fresh air may have descended on Sugar Loaf. Just weeks before snow is likely to fall on the downtrodden Leelanau County ski hill whose chairlifts have sat idle for nearly 12 years, a local resort owner is developing a plan that would open the mountain to cross-country skiing and ice climbing — perhaps this winter.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced funding for Great Lakes Restoration Initiative projects in Northern Michigan totaling $1.1 million. The projects will help to restore the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Grand Traverse Band watersheds and put people back to work, using a conservation corps model to hire unemployed workers to improve habitat and clean up shoreline.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Superintendent Dusty Shultz announced the availability of the South Manitou Island Boat Dock Extension Environmental Assessment for public review and comment. The Environmental Assessment describes and analyzes alternative approaches for providing boat dock access to South Manitou Island.
Dr. Grenetta Thomassey Program Director at Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, will discuss the impact of hydraulic fracturing on water resources at the Leelanau County Government Center-Community Meeting Room on Monday, Oct. 17 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Sponsored by Leelanau Clean Water, the event is free and open to the public.
This summer, the National Park Service (NPS) unveiled its options for the Historic Landscape Management Plan of the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. Some four miles east of Glen Arbor, the shoreline settlement was founded as a logging community, with subsistence (family) farming and fishing, in the early 1860s by immigrant pioneers from Prussia and Hanover (now parts of modern Germany), and lived in continuously until the 1970s. It is defined as a “historic vernacular landscape … that has evolved through use by ordinary people” over a “period of significance of 1870-1945,” in the Plan’s Executive Summary, and it is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.