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South Manitou Island is an uninhabited island just off the coast of west Leelanau County. In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries the island was a popular harbor and fueling station. In the 1800s the island was inhabited by farmers - their buildings, equipment, schoolhouse, and cemetery still remain on the island today. The island now has many miles of trails crisscrossing the island, an inland lake, a beautiful lighthouse, and the Manitou Passage State Underwater Preserve. The longest trail on the island is 7.4 miles, with others as short as .6 miles.

The village on South Manitou Island was located in the natural harbor on the west side of the island. The strategic location of the island and the fact that it had one of the only protected deep water harbors between Chicago and Buffalo, made it ideal for refueling the steamers. As a result, it became the first settlement in the area. In 1847, the village included Burton's Warf, a house, blacksmith shop, grocery store, barn and a wooden tamarack railroad track extending from the Warf inland to haul wood for the steamers. The current village is located south of the original village near the Life-Saving Station and lighthouse. The houses in the village were used as summer cottages. The Visitor's Center is located in the former General Store.

Cool things to do: bike to the old farms on the island, hike all the many miles of trails, check out the lighthouse, walk to the Virgin Cedars and check out the shipwreck on the way, take a guided tour of the old settlements, swim, scuba dive to explore the wreck of the Morazan.

Watch out for Poison Ivy! It can be found all over the island, a way to help remember about Poison Ivy is this little rhyme: Leaves of three, let it be. Before you go check out Wikipedia: Poison Ivy to learn more about it. The Poison Ivy in Leelanau County is normally ground cover and not a shrub. As long as you do not touch the Poison Ivy you will be fine.

How to reach the island: you can take a personal boat, canoe or kayak (beware it is 8 miles of open water from Pyramid Point), or take the Manitou Transit. When you take the ferry and do not plan on camping you have 4 1/2 hours to tour the island.

I've had this Enterprise article kicking around for just about ever. Since I can find absolutely nothing of interest about Leelanau on the entire internet, it finally gets to see the light of day!

Manitou lakes share tranquility is a detailed feature that looks at Florence Lake on South Manitou, which is home to just 4 species of fish: northern pike, perch, smallmouth bass and the Iowa darter and Manitou Lake on North Manitou that is teeming with fish and bald eagles pursuing all those fish.

Both are longer than they are wide, with Manitou Lake decidedly the larger of the two. On a plat map Manitou Lake appears to occupy about one-half of Section 32, located halfway between east and west Lake Michigan shorelines on North Manitou closer to the north than the south shore.

Lakeshore biologist Ken Hyde puts the lake’s actual size at 256 acres. Florence Lake on South Manitou, found just one-half a mile from the southern edge of the island, is just 78 acres.

Check out the pages for Lake Manitou and Florence Lake from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Photo credit: Lake Manitou by mollypitcher. Check out her cool set of photos from North Manitou Island.