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Tickets are now on sale for the North Manitou Island day trip sponsored by the Leelanau Historical Society. The trip is planned for Tuesday, Aug. 20. The Historical Society is planning an enjoyable experience visiting the island, exploring the natural beauty, learning about the history and viewing Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear’s restoration projects. Boat fare, park fee, a guided tour and a box lunch are included. The cost is $65 for members and $80 for non-members. Seating is limited. Pre-paid reservations only. For more information, call the Historical Society at (231) 256-7475 or Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear at (231) 334-6103.

Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB) was founded in 1998 in an attempt to halt the demolition of several buildings owned by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Some 15 years later, the organization continues a partnership with the National Park Service in which its volunteers maintain and restore those buildings.

Off a two-track road south of Empire lies the historic Boekeloo Cabin/Boekelodge, one of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s most popular sites, built as a homestead cabin in the late 1800s. Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB) has been working to restore this beautiful building and site since 2005. Last summer PHSB’s contractor did a beautiful job of restoring the logs of the cabin. This summer Preserve will be working from July 18-20 on the windows, chimney, gables and interior, as well as repairing the gate, boardwalk and privy. Volunteers are needed for the nonprofit work group’s project for each of those days, starting at 9 a.m. Volunteers with good carpentry and window glazing skills are preferred, but general “unskilled” volunteers are needed as well.

Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB) preserves historic buildings and landscapes in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, but also provides ways for people to learn from and understand the history of these symbols of our past. This summer a number of interpretive programs are being offered that get people out on the landscape and inside some of the historic farmsteads of the Port Oneida Rural Historic District.

The nonprofit Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes works with the management and staff of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to plan and implement projects that the National Park Service is unable to do because of limited budget or staff. This year has been a banner year in terms of volunteer hours and funds provided to the Park, reports Friends of the Sleeping Bear.

The third annual Port Oneida Run — a 5K Barn to Barn Trail Run/Walk in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will take place on Saturday, August 4. The natural trail offers an inspiring alternative to paved courses, meandering through beautiful meadows, forests, and the pastoral landscape of farmsteads from the late 1800s in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District with bluff views over Lake Michigan.

Ever wish you could own a private slice of Pyramid Point or Overlook #9 at Pierce Stocking Drive? Well, now you can own at least a virtual piece of it, or any other favorite spot in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — “the most beautiful place in America”. The Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear organization announces a new program in partnership with the National Park Foundation, which allows supporters and fans to claim their very own virtual inch or inches of the National Lakeshore. Just like services that allow people to buy a star in the sky or a pixel, you have a similar opportunity to support the parks through the “My Inch of Earth” program.

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.

On Saturday, Sept. 3, at 9 a.m., Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear hosts their second annual Port Oneida Barn to Barn Run/Walk – a 5K on the Bayview Trail in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

As the Annual Port Oneida Fair draws near on August 12-13, showcasing the fine cultural and physical preservation efforts in the picturesque Rural Historic District of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the dedicated volunteers of Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB) are preparing for another annual ritual. On August 19-28, they will launch a third year of restoration and stabilization projects at North Manitou Island’s historic “Cottage Row,” a group of early 20th century dwellings that were built for and occupied by long-ago summer residents and visitors.