The Leelanau News Blog
leelanau county news • traverse city news • michigan news

The Grand Traverse Lighthouse is located inside of the Leelanau State Park on the Lake Michigan shoreline at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. The lighthouse was occupied by the U.S. Coast Guard from 1941 until it was closed in 1972. It has since been restored to resemble the keeper's house of the 1920's and 1930's. The Lighthouse and Fog Signal Building both have exhibits on the maritime history of the area.

Cool things to do: check out the exhibits on shipwrecks and local history. Climb the tower and look at Lake Michigan and the northern Leelanau Peninsula. Listen to the restored air diaphone foghorn every Saturday. There are 8 1/2 miles of hiking and skiing trails, with picnic areas and a scenic overlook. There is alot do here.
There is also the Volunteer Lighthouse Keeper Program at The Grand Traverse Lighthouse which provides the perfect opportunity for people who love lighthouses. From April through December, you can spend one or two rewarding weeks staying in the lighthouse as a lighthouse keeper.

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.

Located in the heart of the Leelanau Peninsula, Lake Leelanau is a pristine lake running through almost the entire county. Lake Leelanau appears to be two lakes, and is even referred to as North Lake Leelanau and South Lake Leelanau, but the two lakes are connected by what is known as "The Narrows," a narrowing of the lake that looks like a river. The village of Lake Leelanau is located at the narrows. South Lake Leelanau is the shallower and warmer lake of the two, but both are breathtakingly beautiful and from top to bottom the North and South Lake total about 22 miles in length.

Lake Leelanau's water levels rose 12 feet when a dam was built on the Carp River (which connects Lake Leelanau to Lake Michigan) in 1854.

Cool things to do: boat around the lake (rent one from Stander Marine in Leland), swim (public access spots: Nedow's Bay, East Leland Park (on 641 at the northern end of North Lake Leelanau), Fisher "Fudgie" Beach (just south of Leland on M-22) Schneider's Beach (at the end of Popp Road (off M-204) 1.5 miles west of the village of Lake Leelanau), fish, or just hang out.

Head into Lake Leelanau for some fantastic vegetarian food and great antique shopping, Cedar for the best processed meat in the area and some great local ice cream inventions, or Leland for great shopping, delicious food, and much more.

According to the Leelanau Conservancy "Glen Lake, framed by a dramatic rise of Sleeping Bear to the west, and surrounded by high-forested moraines to the east and south, presents one of the most recognizable landscapes in Michigan. The waters of Glen Lake are so pure that with increasing depth, on a clear day the water colors shift from sandy hues of the shallows through aquamarine to some of the deepest blue known anywhere." A better description of Glen Lake cannot be found.

Local legend says that Glen Lake was recognized as "the most beautiful lake in the world" by National Geographic Magazine, (the magazine denies ever having published such a ranking), but anyone who has cast their eyes upon this body of water would agree with the legend. Glen Lake actually consists of two lakes: Big Glen and Little Glen, with a bridge that stretches over the narrow bit of water connecting the two. Little Glen Lake is below the Sleeping Bear Dunes, and Big Glen is less than a mile away from the town of Glen Arbor.

Cool things to do: canoe or kayak (rent one from Crystal River Outfitters), sail, paddle, or just hang out on a pontoon (rent them from On the Narrows Marina), waterski, wakeboard, wakeskate, or tube (rent the equipment and boat from Glen Craft Marina), or just relax in the water at the public access sites on the lake.

Check out the Glen Lake Association for in depth info about Glen Lake.

The Glen Lake Yacht Club is a great way to meet people and enjoy your favorite summer sports, from sailing to tennis.

Head into Glen Arbor for some great food and shopping.

Fouch was originally established by an African-American, by the name of Smith, who settled on the south end of Lake Leelanau sometime before the Civil War. Smith built a dock, known as Smith's landing where settlers who lived on Lake Leelanau could dock and then walk into Traverse City to buy supplies. Hardly anything is known of Smith, and it is said that he only stayed in the area for four or five years.

In 1866 the 21 year old John R. Fouch, a Civil War veteran, arrived from Ohio. Fouch homesteaded 260 acres of land in Elmwood township. The acreage included Smith's landing. Fouch built a small summer resort at Smith's landing, a post office and railroad station.

In 1892 the Manistee and Northeastern Railroad came through Fouch from Solon to Traverse City. The stop at Fouch allowed people to travel by boat to Smith's landing and take the train into Traverse City, allowing them maximum time in the city. In 1905 Fouch built a resort hotel and named it Carp Lake House. The resort burned in 1915 and was never rebuilt. In 1927 Fouch sold the land to Daniel and Julia Perrin, of Detroit. They established a cabin colony and called it Perrin's Landing. The Manistee and Northeastern Railroad was abandoned in 1934, taking away the importance of the town. Today Fouch/Perrin's Landing is nothing more than a ghost town.

North Unity was a small settlement on Good Harbor Bay. It was first settled in the 1855 by Bohemian immigrants who came up the shore of Lake Michigan from Chicago to scout for a suitable place to start a settlement. The new settlers lived the first few years in a barracks that was 150 feet long and 20 feet wide with rooms partitioned off for each family. As more and more settlers arrived the village began to thrive. There was soon a schoolhouse, a sawmill and a store. In 1859 the town had a post office and gristmill. In 1871 the village was destroyed by a fire and the villagers moved inland to Shalda Corners. St. Joseph 's Catholic Church was built in 1888 and blessed by the first Bishop of the Diocese of Grand Rapids. Today nothing more remains of North Unity than St. Joseph's Catholic Church at the intersection of S. Bohemian Road (County Road 669) and M-22.

All that remains in the area of the once thriving town of Burdickville are two lone businesses. Laker Shakes and Trattoria Funistrada. Although both Laker Shakes and Funistrada are located in Burdickville, neither can claim that they are part of the history of the town. In the late 1850s William Burdick built a saw and grist mill. In 1876 John Helm built a general store. Not much more of the town is known other than the fact that one of the area's newspapers, the Burdickville Meteor in the 1870s was published in Burdickville.

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.

The Polish community in Leelanau County originally consisted of four small settlements one or two miles apart. These settlements, Shomberg, Bodus, Cedar and Isadore began in 1868 when Polish families first started arriving in the county. The first wave of Poles in the county came to scout out the area. In the 1870s a large second wave came to join the scouting families. Many of these new families moved to Isadore. At that time Cedar was a nearly a ghost town, bereft of the trees that had led to the founding of the town. As the first generation of Polish immigrants began to retire the younger Poles moved to Cedar, building a thriving town known as Cedar City. Today Cedar is Leelanau County's central hub. People stop by Pleva's Meat for some nationally known PlevaLean burgers and cherry sausage, or Cedar City Market for its huge selection of fine wines, liquor, organic local foods, and local eggs, or just to chat with owner Phil Thiel. Blue Moon Ice Cream is easily recognizable with its bright blue roof and some of the best ice cream around; make sure to try the Grasshopper Shake, or a Morel soft serve cone. The historic railroad depot is now a great antique shop, and Inish Knits is a great place to stock up on yarn. Cedar celebrates its Polish history every year with the Cedar Polka Fest.

Wikipedia on Cedar, Michigan