History and Geology of the Sleeping Bear Dunes

The Sleeping Bear Dunes were created at the end of the last Ice Age. Thousands of feet of ice once covered this area, part of an ice sheet that covered more than half of the North American continent. As the glaciers covering Michigan retreated between 10,000 – 14,000 years ago, the landscape that we recognize today began to emerge. As the glaciers melted, the large basins they had carved filled with water, leaving the Great Lakes of Michigan, Superior, Huron, Ontario, and Erie. The retreating glaciers also left moraines, large ridges of deposited rocks and sediment. Atop the moraines along the Lake Michigan shoreline near where Glen Arbor is today, the great perched dunes were formed as sand was blown and deposited along the ridges. Today, the Sleeping Bear Dunes reach 400 feet above Lake Michigan. The islands of North Manitou and South Manitou are visible from the shoreline.

The dunes get their name from a legend of the Ojibwa tribe (also known as the Chippewa): the Legend of Sleeping Bear. As the legend goes, a mother bear and her cubs were driven into Lake Michigan by an enormous forest fire on its western shore. They swam across the lake, with the two cubs lagging behind. Too exhausted to continue, the cubs drowned within sight of shore. The mother bear died waiting for her cubs, and the winds buried her under the sands of the dunes. Impressed by the mother bear’s determination, Manitou, or the Great Spirit, raised an island over the final resting place of each of her cubs to commemorate them.

People have inhabited the Sleeping Bear Dunes area since the Paleo-Indian period of 11,000 – 8,000 B.C.E., as evidenced by archeological discoveries such as spear points. The early inhabitants were hunters who likely passed through the area to find game close to the edge of retreating glaciers. During the Archaic Period from 8,000 – 600 B.C.E., the area became a point of trade of such goods as flint and copper, and during the Woodland Period from 600 B.C.E. – 1620 C.E., there is evidence of villages that were probably used for seasonal hunting and fishing. The area became home to the Ojibwa and Odawa (Ottawa) tribes, who along with the Bodowadomi (Pottawatomi) formed alliance known as the Council of Three Fires (or the Three Fires Confederacy). The period since 1620 is known as the Historic Era, the date marking the approximate time Europeans began making their entrance into the area.

The first Europeans to arrive were the French, who were taught by the natives how to grow maize, make birchbark canoes, and live off the land. Michigan became part of the territory of the French colony of Canada in 1668, and the French ceded it to Britain in 1763 after their defeat in the French and Indian War. After the American Revolutionary War, the 1783 Treaty of Paris expanded the United States’ boundaries to include nearly all land east of the Mississippi River and south of Canada. From 1787, Michigan was part of the Northwest Territory, until the Indiana Territory was created in 1800 to include most of Michigan. In 1805, it was separated and the Territory of Michigan was established. Michigan formally entered the Union on January 26, 1837, as the 26th state.

In 1836 and 1837, the native inhabitants entered into treaties with the US government to preserve the hunting, fishing, and gathering rights of the Council of Three Fires. The treaties were not honored by the government, however, and most of their lands were taken from them. The Odawa and Ojibwa tribes were forced on to reservations under the Ottawa and Chippewa Treaty of Detroit signed in 1855. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act was created with the stated purpose of preservation of native cultures and limited restoration of their rights, but applications for federal recognition by the Odawa and Ojibwa were denied in 1934 and again in 1943. It wasn’t until May 1980 that they were finally given recognition as the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

Believed to be the first non-native to settle in the Sleeping Bear Dunes area, John LaRue set up a trading post at the mouth of the Crystal River in 1848. More settlers arrived in the 1850s, including the Fisher and Dorsey families. John E. Fisher bought 1,000 acres of land on the north side of Glen Lake and gave one quiet hollow surrounded by woodlands the name of Glen Arbor. His brother-in-law, Charles C. McCarty, established a cordwood station at Glen Haven, built a 300 foot dock to service steamships, and constructed a dormitory for immigrant lumbermen. John Dorsey started a cooper shop to make fish barrels. In 1864, W. D. Burdick established a sawmill and a gristmill in the location today bearing his name, Burdickville. In 1870, the Northern Transportation Company bought Glen Haven and McCarty’s cordwood operation to serve its fleet of 24 steamships. In 1878, land developer David Henry Day arrived in Glen Arbor and within three years completed the purchase of the Company’s properties. By 1867, the township had a population of around 200 people, three docks, two hotels, four stores, a blacksmith shop, and a cooper shop.

While the core industry of the area remained lumbering, the market also expanded into tourism and agriculture. Passenger and freight steamers operated out of Glen Haven and Glen Arbor to Milwaukee and Chicago, and McCarty’s dormitory was converted into the Sleeping Bear Inn. Thousands of acres of land were dedicated for cherry and apple orchards and D. H. Day established the Glen Haven Canning Company. Day was also active in conservation efforts and served as Chairman of Michigan’s first State Park Commission. In 1920, he donated 32 acres of land along Lake Michigan between Glen Haven and Glen Arbor to the state to become the D. H. Day State Park, which is now part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

During the severe winter of 1870-71, numerous shipwrecks took the lives of 214 people on the Great Lakes, and Congress subsequently appropriated funding for professional rescue crews under the charge of the US Life-Saving Service, which was merged with the Revenue Cutter Service in 1915 to form the US Coast Guard. As maritime traffic increased in the “Manitou Passage” between the dunes and Manitou Islands, a number of rescue stations were established in the area. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore includes three former Life-Saving Service/Coast Guard stations.

In 1948, a man named Pierce Stocking, who had spent his youth as a lumberman, bought woodland from D. H. Day south of Glen Haven and set up a sawmill. Appreciative of the area’s beauty, he conceived of a road that would provide visitors with access to the top of the dunes. The Sleeping Bear Dunes Park became open to the public in 1967 and was operated by Stocking until his death in 1976. A sign at the entrance to Stocking’s park read: “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.”

The idea to establish a national park in this area originated in the late 1950s, under an effort led by Senator Philip A. Hart that lasted until 1970. Its establishment was controversial as the local population was strongly opposed to the idea. As the National Park Service explains, “More than 1,400 tracts of private land had to be acquired to create the lakeshore. A heavy-handed, poorly planned land acquisition program reinforced the bitterness that surfaced during the decade of struggle that preceded authorization.”

The effort to nationalize the land won out, and on October 21, 1970, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was established, spanning a 35-mile stretch of shoreline along Lake Michigan and including 21 inland lakes. In 1977, Stocking’s road became part of the national park. Several years later, due to popular demand, the road was renamed the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.

While the national park’s purpose is to preserve the natural features of the landscape, as buildings began to decay and be torn down, local citizens concerned about future demolitions of historic structures organized and in 1998 established Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, a non-profit organization aimed at preserving over 300 historic structures and cultural landscapes within the National Lakeshore.

In 2014, 32,500 acres of the park were designated by the US Congress as Sleeping Bear Dunes Wilderness.

The park is located about 25 miles west of Traverse City. The villages of Empire and Glen Arbor are within the National Lakeshore and have seasonal populations that very dramatically, but a year-round population of about 378 and 788, respectively, and local economies largely dependent on tourism. Traveling the area, names like Fisher Lake, Dorsey’s Corner, and Burdickville serve as reminders of its settler history, in addition to the reminders of the native history, such as the name of the national park itself.