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Origin Stories: remembering our resorting history

Everyone has an “origin story” for how their family arrived, found, or landed in this area, writes Rebecca G Carlson in this first installment in our series on the history of Leelanau County resorts and getaways. Which category does your family fall into: Campers? Resorters? Hotel guests? Fishing trips? Connections to the area? In the following editions of the Sun, Carlson will highlight local resorts such as Fountain Point, The Jolli Lodge, The Leelanau Country Inn (now the Little Traverse Inn), Perrins Landing, Sunset Lodge, and other vacation destinations that attracted many voyagers to the area.

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Sleeping Bear Inn takes reservations for August 2024, and beyond

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The historic Sleeping Bear Inn, the oldest hotel in the National Park System, is now taking reservations for August and beyond. Click on the story to read more and to reserve a room. Originally built between 1865-1867, the inn located in Glen Haven across the street from the cannery building served as a frontier hotel for business travelers and local workers. It continued in operation throughout the next century, evolving into a tourist hotel. It has been closed since the mid-1970s. The nonprofit Balancing Environment and Rehabilitation (BEAR) signed a lease in 2022 to renovate the Sleeping Bear Inn and operate it as a bed and breakfast. “This year marks two years of active renovation at Sleeping Bear Inn for our BEAR team, and with the finish line in our sights, we are elated to start thinking about the hospitality aspect of our work,” said executive director Maggie Kato.

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Living legacy: Hank Bailey’s relationship to the land

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About a block up the road from the old Cannery down on the shore in Glen Haven, Henry “Hank” Bailey gets out of a white Lexus in front of an abandoned, turn-of-the-century building that looks like it used to be a store. The whole village is deserted and sad. Glen Haven today is a bleak little shore-side ghost town in the bright sunlight. It’s the off-season, middle of May, the leaves on the trees are in delicate shades, fuzzy-looking and babyish in their newness.

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Manitou Music Fest opens at DH Day Campground

The Glen Arbor Art Association is partnering with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to offer three additional summer Manitou Music Festival concerts this summer, to be held at the D.H. Day Campground amphitheater. The expanded lineup is part of the National Park Service’s 100th birthday celebration in 2016. The public, park rangers and campers are invited to join in the celebration with a concert in the park this summer and “find your park” through music.

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A history of fairways and pines on Alligator Hill

Although my friend, Bonnie Gonzales, didn’t quite make it up Alligator Hill when she tried the first time, she felt it was doable. She wanted to try it one last time before she left for the winter. The trick would be to take the fairways rather than the impassable trail. I was game, so we met at the trailhead entrance by the charcoal ovens one sunny Sunday in mid-October.

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Clearing Alligator Hill Trail

This week, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore workers began clearing the Alligator Hill Trail of downed trees, following the Aug. 2 storm that decimated local forests. Alligator Hill is located just west of downtown Glen Arbor, north of Little Glen Lake, and offers stunning views of Sleeping Bear Bay.

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D.H. Day’s kingdom

The area in Northern Michigan which is now the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was first inhabited by Native Americans, who lived in small settlements around rivers and lakes. But the village known today as Glen Haven was not a major site of Indian settlement. It didn’t even attract much attention from European settlers until 1857, nearly a decade after the Leelanau mainland had begun to be inhabited. By that time, the opening of the Erie Canal had greatly increased steamship traffic on the Great Lakes, with vessels carrying freight and passengers from Buffalo to Chicago. The need for wooding stations to fuel the ships that passed through the shipping lane reached an all time high, and in 1857, C.C. McCarty, the brother-in-law of Glen Arbor pioneer John E. Fisher, recognized the potential of the Sleeping Bear Bay area to become a major refueling station and a thriving settlement.

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Cookies, Cocoa and Coffee on the Trail

Trail enthusiasts are invited to a Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail Open House on Saturday, Feb. 15, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the historic log cabin in D.H. Day Campground. Please stop by while you are out skiing or snowshoeing to enjoy complimentary cookies and coffee from Cherry Republic as well as hot chocolate from Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate.

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Sleeping Bear slumbers under federal government shutdown

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The federal government shutdown early this morning — forced by the Republican-led House of Representatives who oppose the Affordable Care Act — prompted the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and National Parks across the nation, to lock their gates. The timing here in Glen Arbor is highly unfortunate, as it threatens to stunt our growing shoulder tourism season.

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