Sleeping Bear Dunes record-breaking visitor tally up 13.6 percent in 2012
From staff reports
The numbers have been counted, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore reports that the pristine National Park in northwest-lower Michigan attracted 1,531,560 visitors in 2012 — a record-breaking tally by a wide margin. On the strength of the “Good Morning America” television show’s “Most Beautiful Place in America” honor in August 2011, and the added attention it cast on Glen Arbor and the surrounding region, 13.59 percent more tourists ran up our dunes, hiked our trails and frequented our restaurants and galleries last year compared with 2011. Annual figures have increased steadily since the 2008 Great Recession.
The previous annual record was set in 1999, when 1,364,834 people visited Sleeping Bear (the 2011 tally of 1,348,304 places third). Last year the Park broke the 1.5 million threshold for the first time, even though December 2012 visitor totals actually fell by 22.85 percent from December 2011 — an indication of the immediate, but perhaps short-lived, bump afforded by the “Good Morning America” honor. (The nearly foot of snow that Winter Storm Draco dumped on Leelanau County may also have tempered tourism.) Locals who worry that the 2012 tourism “summer on steroids” represents a “new normal” can perhaps take comfort in the December decline. Perhaps things are already returning to their pre-Good Morning America balance.
Related stories:
• How Sleeping Bear was voted America’s most beautiful place
