The Leelanau News Blog
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A magnificent beach along a stretch of Good Harbor Bay. This beach offers clear views out to the islands and has a long sandy beach. Just a few seconds walk south is a stream running from the woods into Lake Michigan. The stream is great for kids to play in, fun to follow into the woods, and nice to just stand in the warmer waters of the stream after a cold dip in Lake Michigan.

Cool things to do: Bring a soccer ball, football, or frisbee to have a rowdy game on the beach, on a windy day bring boogieboards, surfboards, or skimboards and play in the waves, and after all the hard play make sure to stick around to watch the sunset - there is nothing better than watching a sunset over Lake Michigan (don't blink - if you look hard enough you might be able to see the Green Flash when the sun sets).

Since the 1800s this island has been a popular harbor and fueling station. By the late 1840s there were piers on both the eastern and western sides of the island. The steamers traveling to and from Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac stopped at these piers to refuel. The island was inhabited for a time. Today North Manitou Island (like South Manitou Island) is an uninhabited island just off the coast of western Leelanau County. Since the mid 1800s families have lived on the island, remnants of their farms still survive and there is a cemetery at the southeast edge of the island. The village is composed of houses which were summer houses or hunting lodges. There are many miles of trail over the island and wilderness camping is allowed on the island.

Cool things to do: hike, swim, fish, check out the abandoned buildings - they are dangerous to go in.

Watch out for Poison Ivy! 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 or take the Manitou Transit, Manitou Transit only drops people off and picks them up, they do not stay at the island in order to pick passengers up later that day, if you go to the island plan on camping.

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.

Fishtown is a historic 100 year old fishing village located in Leland. In the 1930s fishing reached its peak and quickly declined due to overfishing. Although Fishtown may not still be home to as large a fishing community as previously, it is home to many charter fishermen, Carlson's fishery, the only ferries to the Manitou Islands and a wide variety of shops.

Cool things to do: take a ferry to the Manitou Islands with Manitou Island Transit, shop in the old fish shanties, buy fish from the 5 generation old Carlson family fishery, look for fish in the Carp River, and eat a sandwich from The Village Cheese Shanty.

Read about Leland at Leelanau.com's Leelanau on Location.

In 1852 Carsten Burfiend of Hanover, Germany moved from North Manitou Island to the mainland, just west of Pyramid Point. Burfiend continued his work as a fisherman on the mainland and ferried settlers from the Manitou Islands to the mainland on his fishing boat. In 1862 Thomas Kelderhouse's dock was completed on Carsten Burfiend's land. The S.S. Oneida was one of the first steamships to dock at Thomas Kelderhouse's dock. The town was named after this first steamer, the S.S. Oneida. Kelderhouse soon built a sawmill to process cordwood to sell to passing steamers for fuel.

By 1880 many other families had moved to the area, many of whom were from Hanover or Prussia. According to the 1880 census 74 adults were working in the Port Oneida area. Port Oneida was soon a thriving town with a blacksmith shop, a boarding house, a general store and post office. At that time Thomas Kelderhouse owned mot of the buildings and almost half of the land on Pyramid Point. Just ten years later, in the 1890s most of the timber had been harvested and the Great Lakes steamships were burning coal. Competition with the much larger logging operations in the county forced the Port Oneida mill to close. The dock and mill were both sold. By 1908 all the buildings at the town site of Port Oneida had been abandoned, except for the the Kelderhouse residence. Families living on surrounding farms stayed in the area until the 1940s. In 1970 the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore was founded by an act of Congress. The National Lakeshore included Port Oneida, and the first offical survey of historic buildings was completed in 1988.

The first settlements in Leelanau County were on the Manitou Islands. The islands provided natural safe, deep harbors for schooners and steamers and excellent fishing. Families living on both the North and the South Manitou Islands worked as fishermen, farmers or as lumbermen to supply fuel to the steamers. In 1844 Nicholas Pickard built wooden docks on the western shore of North Manitou Island. The site soon developed into a small settlement known as Aylsworth. In 1856 Edwim Munger built a sawmill in Aylswrth. As the village grew education for the children was deemed a necessity, and a school was built in what was then known as Crescent City, in 1909. The school was closed in 1917, as many settlers moved off the island to the mainland. Today Crescent City is nothing more than a memory with a few pilings of the docks left.

Yesterday at The Leland Report Molly Grosvenor wrote:

This morning George Firestone Grosvenor, our Bumpa, passed away. He went peacefully in the company of his children and with the kind assistance of all the great people at Effie's Place. This truly marks the end of an era. I know that many people have a story or two or many about Bumpa. It's great comfort to know that he will live on in these stories... may we all keep telling them. May the seas be calm in heaven! In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the South Manitou Island Memorial Society's project "relight the light" or to Munson Hospice.

You can share your memories here or over at the Leland Report's tribute to George Grosvenor. George captained boats that went to the islands, most recently the Manitou Isle to North Manitou. My favorite tales from him were those of delivering the mail across the ice to the Manitou Islands. He said his dad would tie a rope to him and make him walk in front of the mail truck as they crossed the ice.

Was it true? I don't know but I do know he was a great guy who will be missed.

Photo credit: NMI Pickup by migolfer who writes: North Manitou Island. For those of you old enough to remember the island pickup/dropoff point off the beach by Bourniques. This was before the fancy dock they put in. If the weather was bad, the drop off point was on the south beach off The Big Windfall. The boat is the "Manitou Isle".

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.

Photo credit: Breakwall Rocks II by Andy McFarlane

News from the Week

News from the week included a story about Leland grad Alisha Glass's success in college volleyball, including being names to first team all Big Ten and helping Penn State to a #1 ranking. Right now they are in the Sweet Sixteen, so look for her on TV! Other stories included a nice Enterprise piece remembering Leelanau historian Larry Wakefield and a photo of a storm building over the Manitou Passage.

The Week's Weather

We had some stormy, windy weather last weekend and though the winds have died down, we've been getting steady snow and cold temps. Great news for area ski resorts!

November 29, 2007: Breezy & low 30s (33°/19°)
November 30, 2007: Snow, wind & 20s (24°/16°)
December 1, 2007: Windy & low 20s w/ heavy overnight snow (24°/15°)
December 2, 2007: Wet snow & low 30s (34°/24°)
December 3, 2007: Light snow & low 30s (32°/24°)
December 4, 2007: Light snow & 20s (27°/19°)
December 5, 2007: Snow & teens (21°/17°)

Click for the Leelanau news archive from December 2006!

Here's a photo from last week. Not many hours later, Leland Harbor was clocking sustained winds of 45 MPH and flying the flag with the black square on it.

Storm Warning
Formerly known as a "whole gale" warning, this signifies winds of 48 knots or more, or 48 to 63 knots (55 to 73 mph) in the case of a tropical cyclone.

The only bigger flag in their arsenal is the Hurricane Warning, and they don't fly that on the Great Lakes, at least as far as I can tell from this page on coastal warnings at NOAA.