Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore history · History of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
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History of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
History of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
According to a Chippewa legend, a bear and her two cubs swam across Lake Michigan to escape a fire on the other side. The mother reached exhausted safety on the shore, but was unable to save her cubs, who drowned within sight of shore. The Great Spirit Manitou transformed the mother into a huge sand dune (looking out toward the lake), and the cubs into islands.
The area became important to Great Lakes shipping in the 19th century, as one of the few large safe harbors on the way around the Lower Peninsula to Chicago. Farming, both for subsistence and to supply passing ships was an important local industry.
The National Lakeshore was assembled in the 1960s and 1970s, largely from private land (and not without some controversy), eventually including not only the recreational immediate area of Sleeping Bear Dune, but the geologically ? and scenically ? significant shoreline to the south and northeast, and the two Manitou Islands.
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Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.