Sleeping Bear Dunes A Nationalized Lakeshore: The Creation and Administration of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

The First Tourists

"Its lake front was very steep," recalled fur trader Gurdon S. Hubbard, "and it was with great difficulty and exertion that it could be ascended; the loose sand into which one sank several inches at each step, slid downward carrying one with it, so that progress was slow and tedious." Hubbard, at the head of an American Fur Company fur brigade, visited Sleeping Bear Dunes in the summer of 1823. Although he was charged with escorting down the lake shore the supplies required for the maintenance of a score of trading posts, the young fur trader could not resist the impulse to play tourist. After climbing the face of Sleeping Bear and enjoying the lake vistas afforded by the great perched dune, Hubbard and a companion started down the sandy slope to their boats. "I went down by quick jumps, but before reaching the bottom heard the shouts of the voyageurs, and though I could not look back, I knew full well the cause. When I had arrived at the bottom, I looked back and saw my companion struggling and rolling, while the sand flew in every direction. He landed close to my feet pale and frightened, but otherwise unharmed... .the men screamed with laughter." [1]

Hubbard's companion, an unnamed gentleman sarcastically nicknamed "La Beaute'" by the voyageurs, was not a fur trader, but instead a mere traveler. As such he likely qualifies as the first tourist to visit Sleeping Bear Dunes. Like so many visitors since, he yielded to the impulse to both climb and descend the giant sand dune. And like so many others, he enjoyed the view, but perhaps regretted the effort.

Sleeping Bear Dunes is one of the most imposing natural landmarks on the shore of Lake Michigan. From the space shuttle Columbia, orbiting the earth some 250 miles above, the dunes stand out against the blue border of the lake. Yet, strange to say, Sleeping Bear failed to elicit a sense of wonder from most of the early travelers along the east shore of the lake. As early as 1688 the dunes appeared on French maps of the region, but neither the French explorers nor the pioneer Jesuit missionaries lavished much attention on Sleeping Bear. Even Hubbard's contemporaries, American explorers Henry Rowe Schoolcratt and David Bates Douglas, were more taken with the Indian legend behind the place name of the dunes than with the majesty of the massive sand bluffs. This is unusual for an area destined to become a national park. Yellowstone and Zion, the Shenandoah and the Great Smokies all were early esteemed for their visual grandeur. The Pictured Rocks and Isle Royale, two Michigan landscapes on Lake Superior destined to become national parks inspired effusive outpourings from the pens of Schoolcraft and early government explorers. Although the scale of Sleeping Bear Dunes makes it exceptional, its uniqueness is a matter of relative degree. Virtually the entire east coast of Lake Michigan, more than three hundred miles, is given over to a landscape of lake, dune, and forest. Indiana Dune, Warren Dune, Grand Mere Dune, Saugatuck Dune, and Nordhouse Dune form a magnificent string of silica strands which left travelers and explorers jaded to sand dunes by the time they reached Sleeping Bear. Appreciation for the landscape that would become the national lakeshore developed slowly, only as the Lake Michigan frontier was gradually bent and reshaped to fit the needs of the national economy were its scenic values appreciated as an asset as tangible as furs, lumber, or grain. [2]

Lake Passage: The Settlement of the Sleeping Bear Area

The same forces of wind, water, and soil, which created the Sleeping Bear Dune also shaped the human history of northeastern Michigan. Of these Lake Michigan was the most persistent and powerful influence. Ottawa fur trappers, Irish fisherfolk, and Scandinavian lumberjacks all used the lake to bring their products to market. Lake Michigan's 1,180 cubic miles of freshwater were a vast blue-water frontier owned by no one, open to anyone hardy enough to paddle a canoe or skilled enough to pilot a schooner. The lakeshore was a threshold, a door open to the markets of Chicago and Detroit, or via the Erie Canal, to New York and the world, as well as a pathway to the wealth of the forested interior.

It was through this threshold that Ottawa and Chippewa hunters came each fall to conduct their winter hunts in the interior. Missionary settlements at Northport, Omena, and Eagletown helped to guarantee a permanent Native American presence in the lakeshore region by helping the Indians to both adapt to the growing market economy and protect their land holdings from white encroachment. Sawmill hamlets were the first wedge of European-American settlement. Glen Arbor, Glen Haven, and Empire began as small lumber towns, as did the now vanished ghost towns of Good Harbor, Port Oneida, and Aral The nearby Manitou Passage, one of the busiest navigation channels on the Great Lakes, ensured a steady demand for cordwood. Passing steamers came to rely on the small ports of the Leelanau Peninsula and the Manitou Islands to keep them supplied with fuel. Lumber schooners bound for the crowded lumber market of Chicago also made frequent stops at the piers built out into the lake at each of the saw mill settlements. While never prime logging country the Sleeping Bear area was the scene of several significant logging ventures during the period between the 1880s and 1920s. Most notable was the Empire Lumber Company, which grew into a formidable forest products operation. Founded by the T. Wilce Company, a leading manufacturer of hardwood flooring. Empire was linked to the forested interior by its own logging branch line, the Empire and Southeastern Railroad. Two docks served Chicago-bound ships and a channel was dug through the beach to South Bar Lake to create an inner harbor for the thriving lumber port. The D.H. Day lumber operation at Glen Haven was of a more modest scale. Most of Day's lumber was harvested in the vicinity of Glen Lake and Little Glen Lake. A tramway, and later a true logging railroad, linked Day's interior operations with the lakeshore. At Leland and Frankfort commercial fishing became the chief economic activity. For both the logging towns and the fishing settlements access to the lake was the principal geographic asset. [3]

The lake also had a determining impact on the agricultural prospects of northwestern Michigan. Its vast expanse acts as a great solar heat collector, moderating inland temperatures and extending the growing season. Unfortunately, the glacial soils of the Sleeping Bear region were generally not conducive to agriculture. Grain farms, which thrived elsewhere in Michigan, were hardscrabble operations at best along the lakeshore. Dairy farming was a more appropriate adaptation to the landscape. The Port Oneida fanning community is an example of a series of backwoods farms which evolved from subsistence homesteads emphasizing potatoes and grain, to dairy farms. Orchards of apples and later, cherries, were an even more successful adaptation. Fruit growing made maximum use of the region's weather and soil conditions. By the 1930s, northwestern Michigan was one of the leading cherry producing regions in North America. [4]

The period from 1900 to 1920 was in many ways a golden era for the communities of the Sleeping Bear area. The agricultural economy thrived with a growing demand for both grain and diary products. Fruit growing was successfully established as a new economic opportunity. The lake fishery remained strong during these years with the annual haul on Lake Michigan averaging between 1-3 million pounds. Most important of all the lumber industry continued strong during these years. Although the cordwood trade with steamers had ended, as the boats switched to coal fired engines, and the prime pine and cedar stands had long since been cut, saw mills kept busy in the Sleeping Bear area harvesting hardwood timber for a variety of special uses. Logging was critical to the viability of many of the small towns and forest farms of the area. Wages from logging and saw mill jobs circulated throughout the area providing businesses with their thin margin of profit and affording families on marginal land with both a local market for their produce and a source of supplementary wage employment. When the supply of hardwood trees began to slow in the early 1920s the Sleeping Bear area began to feel the chill of a cold wind that blew over the barren cut-over lands across the north country of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. [5]

At the time of World War I it was clear that Michigan's lumber industry in the Lower Peninsula was near collapse. Yet, there was little public concern over this because of confidence that agriculture would take over as the principal economic activity on the cutover lands. But the forest soils of the north country were generally not suited to agriculture, a fact made abundantly clear when the end of the war brought a steep decline in farm prices. By 1920 41% of all of Michigan's cutover lands had been transformed into farms, but in the decade that followed farming collapsed in the north country as the state lost more than 12,000 farms. Hundreds of thousands of acres of private property reverted to government control through tax delinquency. To manage these vast new holdings of devastated lands and to staunch the flow of population from the north country the state of Michigan embraced the banner of conservation. In the 1920s and 1930s, northern Michigan was reconceived, from a raw resource frontier with ninety percent of the land in private hands, to a carefully managed landscape based on a sustainable forest products industry and tourism, with the bulk of the land controlled by public agencies. Across the north woods of the lake states 8.8 million acres of state forests and parks were created between 1920 and 1945. During the 1920s Michigan established twelve state forests and by 1930 the Conservation Department was annually planting 16 million trees. The Fife Lake State Forest rehabilitated lands within the future lakeshore and throughout the Platte and Betsie river valleys. The federal government played its role in stabilizing the region through the creation of seven national forests, totaling 6.9 million acres, and a network offish and wildlife reserves totaling an additional half million acres. [6]

Tourism: A New Way in the Woods

The career of D.H. Day illustrates the change in the Sleeping Bear area. Day was a lumberman whose company harvested hardwood and cordwood. But unlike so many lumbermen, whose interest was in short-term profits, Day was committed to the future of the little towns of Glen Haven and Glen Arbor. During the 1880s he introduced the tourist industry to the area by operating two passenger and freight steamers between northern Michigan and Milwaukee and Chicago. Although the venture was not a success, it did serve to make the Sleeping Bear area better known in the cities along the southern rim of Lake Michigan. A medical doctor from Chicago who visited the area in the wake of World War I argued: "The great charm of Glen Lake is its natural beauty which to date is largely unspoiled. There is no spot in Michigan, nor for that matter anywhere in the middle west, that can compare with it." While lumber was the core of his business activities, Day was also an early proponent of fruit growing. His farm boasted 5,000 acres of apple and cherry trees as well as a large dairy. When his logging operation declined, he tried to transition his business and the community into fruit growing and tourism. To develop the former he established the Glen Haven Canning Company and for the later the Sleeping Bear Inn. The inn was a holdover from the nineteenth century, which was thoroughly remodeled in 1928 to take advantage of the growing number of automobile tourists. He founded a local tourist council that later developed into the Western Michigan Resort Association. Day's biggest bet on tourism was Day Forest Estates, a subdivision of his private second-growth forest. He promoted the area as the "Adirondacks of Michigan." At the time the elite of Chicago and Detroit were building "Great Camp-like" personal estates in northern Michigan. One brochure for the promotion even speculated that the area was "deemed fit for the permanent Summer White House" as well as the site "for homes of the residents of the Gold Coast of Chicago or Millionaire's' Row of New York." But the expected millionaires did not come to Sleeping Bear as fast as Day's failing fortunes required. Even an eighteen-hole golf course could not attract enough buyers to keep the venture from failing in the Depression. Day's heirs, following his death in 1929, continued to promote tourism by operating the Inn and a fleet of "dunesmobiles," cars that transported excursionists over the sand hills. [7]

Day's work in the field of conservation had more of a lasting, if delayed, impact on the development of a recreation industry in the area than his real estate endeavors. A dedicated and important member of the Democratic Party in Michigan, Day served as the chairman of Michigan's first State Park Commission. In 1919, Day set an outstanding example by donating thirty-two acres on the shore of Lake Michigan. This area was named D.H. Day State Park, and it was the first commitment of public lands to recreation in the Sleeping Bear Area. The area included only just over thirty-two acres and 708 feet of frontage on Lake Michigan. The Commission established a campground, log cabin pavilion, and access road at the park. Unfortunately, public conservation developed very slowly after Day's grant. The single other park project in the Sleeping Bear area was Benzie State Park, created in 1923, which included 180 acres near the mouth of the Platte River. These two small state parks were the germ from which grew Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. [8]

Lumbermen like David Day played a role in developing a recreation industry in northern Michigan. Throughout the region men with investments in land and buildings tried to adjust to the altered economic landscape. The bunkhouse of the Glen Arbor Lumber Company was converted into the Sylvan Inn and opened to tourists. But more significant than lumbermen's efforts to attract tourists was the unlikely alliance between hay fever, religion, and the railroads. Before the development of antihistamines thousands of Midwesterners suffered through the spring and early summer from wind-blown pollen. Most suffered through the season, short of breath and with tear-blurred vision. The middle class, however, had the option of seeking relief in a hay fever-free environment like northern Michigan. Colonies of hay fever exiles began to form during the 1880s. Informally they were known as "Achoo Clubs." Mackinac Island was a favorite retreat, although in 1882, the Western Hay Fever Association named Petoskey, Michigan its headquarters. That village was deemed the "most favorable resort for hay fever sufferers." Another spur to tourism was religious retreat camps. The biggest of these in northern Michigan was the Bay View Association, founded by the Methodists in 1875. What started out as an informal gathering of like-minded Methodists on vacation in the Little Traverse Bay area, developed into a major Chautauqua-like summer resort, complete with religious and educational programs and a resort village of private summer cottages quaintly styled with Victorian gingerbread detail The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad recognized a good thing and offered financial assistance to develop Bay View. Railroad access was critical in determining which locations in northern Michigan succeeded in attracting tourists. As lumber declined in the region, transportation companies came to rely on tourism more and more to sustain their operations. [9]

Early recreational developments in the Sleeping Bear area reflect these same trends. At the mouth of the Crystal River the site of John LaRue's 1847 trading post was utilized by William Beals, a Missouri school teacher who fell in love with the area, as the spot for Camp Leelanau, a summer boy's camp. Camp Leelanau offered boys a rustic experience with army-style dormitory tents set-up right on the beach and the only real structure the Beals' frame summer house, the Homestead. Founded in 1921, Camp Leelanau had two purposes: education and recreation. In later years the educational mission developed into the Leelanau School, a private college preparatory school, while the recreational function matured into the prosperous Homestead Resort. Spurred by a major investment by the Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Northern Michigan Railroad, Frankfort also bid to develop as a recreational center. In the 1880s, the railroad chose the town as the eastern terminus of its Lake Michigan car ferry to Kewanee, Wisconsin. By 1928, there were six boats on regular runs across the lake. An 1898 traveler's guide praised Frankfort's "quiet beauty" and noted "it is always left with a little sigh of regret." In 1901, to induce visitors to make Frankfort a destination the Ann Arbor Railroad built a major resort hotel in the town. The Royal Frontenac was an imposing 500-foot long wood frame hotel in the tradition of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island or the railroad lodges in the American West. Elegant and popular, the Royal Frontenac attracted tourists from across the Midwest. Frankfort's bid, however, to become a resort city was short-circuited when the Frontenac burned to the ground in 1912. Railroad access, however, did succeed in making the Crystal Lake area a popular place for summer homes. Cottagers from Ohio, Indiana, and other points south took advantage of "resort special" trains replete with Pullman cars. They would disembark in Frankfort and board a little shuttle train that took people along the shores of Crystal Lake to Beulah. [10]

By the turn of the century a pattern began to emerge in Michigan's developing recreation industry. Close to the major urban centers weekend or day trip destinations developed. For Detroit these were located along Lake St.Clair and the accessible shore of Lake Huron. Chicagoans via steamers and trains had colonized southeastern Michigan with a string of resort towns between the Indiana Dunes and Saugatuck. There were elite resort communities and those with a more egalitarian atmosphere. There were communities which specifically catered to Methodists or to Jews, who were often excluded at elite resorts. Towns like Grand Haven and Benton Harbor promoted their mineral springs while Harbor Springs and Petoskey emphasized their pollen-free cool lake breezes. Those interested in boating and fishing, with all the comforts of home, might favor the Les Cheneaux Islands while those looking to rough it might settle for a tent or shanty in the Upper Peninsula. Mackinac Island, of course, was the premier resort destination in the Midwest, followed closely by the Little Traverse Bay communities of Petoskey, Harbor Springs, and Charlevoix. Here elegant fall-service hotels catered to long-standing, long-staying, and discriminating customers. On Grand Traverse Bay a more complex picture presented itself. More than most of the towns in northwestern Michigan, Traverse City had developed an industrial character, yet northward along the bay were a string of resorts which clearly fancied themselves as a slightly more rustic extension of genteel Charlevoix. Leelanau County was influenced by these developments. While Frankfort and Benzie County failed to make the most of then-opportunity to utilize their railroad connections to attract an elite, out-of-state, tourist clientele when the Frontenac Hotel burned down, Leelanau County was picking up the spill-over from its successful resort neighbors to the north.

As late as 1884 Leelanau County was dismissed with the observation: "There is not a single village of any commercial importance, and not a railroad in the county." But by 1900 tourism had begun to shape the county's growth. Steam launches were put to work on Lake Leelanau which allowed vacationers traveling north by rail from Traverse City to comfortably reach the area. Large hotels were built in Leland in 1901 and 1908, while summer homes were built along Lake Leelanau's extensive shores. In 1903, a branch line was built from Traverse City to Northport and the tourist industry thrived. As elsewhere in Michigan Leelanau County developed a distinct pattern of recreation.

Resorts did best along the shore of Grand Traverse Bay, particularly at Suttons Bay and Northport, while summer homes dominated the shore of Lake Leelanau. Transportation connections determined who came to build those summer homes. People from Illinois, especially the Chicago area, and Indiana, mostly Fort Wayne and Muncie, dominated summer home ownership in the Leland area. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad gave the Hoosiers direct access to Traverse City and Northport. The railroad also had a summer policy of attaching Pullman cars originating in Chicago to the trains as they went through Grand Rapids. Chicagoans also had the opportunity of availing themselves of the regular steamer routes to the Sleeping Bear area. A review of a resort directory for the Leland area in 1937 indicates that about ten percent of summer cottage owners were local residents of Leelanau or Grand Traverse counties while more than half of the summer residents were from Indiana and Illinois. These "summer neighbors," as they styled themselves were an economically and socially distinguished group: numerous industrialists (including F.E. Ball of Muncie), the expected large number of lawyers and physicians, as well as a surprising number of scientists and academicians. The yacht and country clubs were the gathering place for evening or afternoon socializing in a setting that was both congenial and controlled. [11]

The little towns of Glen Haven and Glen Arbor, at the extreme southwestern comer of Leelanau County, were on the fringe of the county's developing tourist industry. Glen Haven could boast excellent steamer connections to Chicago and that made it the point-of-entry for many of the first vacationers in the area. The first resorts were rough affairs run by local cherry growers or city folks charmed by the gentle pace of life into relocating in the Glen Lake area for the season. The Tonawathya Resort was purchased in 1906 by a burned-out Chicago businessman and run by his wife for several decades. The resort enjoyed a faithful clientele, largely from the Windy City. Meals were served family-style and featured locally grown fresh produce. Boating was a prominent feature of the recreation scene at Tonawathya. Over time, each of the resorts along the lake developed its own character, reflecting the interests and personality of its owner. George Grady's Sylvan Inn was noted for its good food, Dunn's Resort catered to guests from Detroit, the Glen Eden Hotel, located near Fishers Point was run by a homeopathic doctor and functioned as something of a health resort. The resorts served to introduce to the region many urbanites who eventually purchased lakeside summer homes of their own. Not infrequently they purchased lots near the resorts at which they stayed during their first few summers in the Glen Lake area. Most visitors arrived by lake steamer. During the period between 1910 and 1931 crowds would gather at the Glen Haven docks on Saturdays and Sundays. Motorcoaches awaited newly arriving resort guests while many summer home residents rode to the docks to meet husbands or fathers arriving from the city. "They leave Chicago Friday night," explained a tourist publication, "and get here the next morning; first stop. They're with their families until Sunday night when the boat takes 'em back again, ready for the job. Great for 'em!" [12]

But such gloss could not obscure the fact that the lack of good rail connections, which were the backbone of most successful vacation spots, retarded the growth of a recreation industry in the Sleeping Bear area. A Chicagoan who purchased 170 acres of wooded land on the shore of Glen Lake in 1919 credited himself with having "discovered" the area: "I say I 'discovered' it," he wrote a friend, "because it was readily accessible only by boat from Chicago, the main roads being little more than sand trails." David Day understood the importance of improving road access to the Glen Lake area. As president of the Western Michigan Development Bureau he was one of the early leaders of the "good roads movement" in Michigan. In 1910, Day joined the Western Michigan Pike Association, and for a decade he served as county road commissioner. It was with the rise of automobile travel that the Glen Lake area of the lakeshore began to really experience the tourist boom. [13]

Just as the fur trade had transformed land use and population distribution in seventeenth century Michigan and the logging industry had radically altered the state's landscape during the nineteenth century, tourism and conservation reordered land ownership patterns and public attitudes toward the north country during the twentieth century. The tourist industry had begun in Michigan via steamers and railroads but the industry drove to prominence in the state on the wheels of the automobile. America in 1920 was for the first time in its history a largely urban nation. The automobile, which did so much to expand Michigan's industrial cities, was also responsible for providing average working people with a new flexible means of accessing the countryside. Michigan became a case study in the linkage between transportation and recreation. It is no accident that state park development began in the 1920s, a decade when automobile ownership became a part of the American Dream. In 1920, there were 8 million cars on American roads. Of those, an estimated 5 million were used for camping trips to the countryside. Unfortunately, there were literally no facilities available for these visitors. Not only were there no camp grounds, there were no roadside public restrooms. The first public roadside rest area was established in Iron County, Michigan in 1919. Before that time car campers put up tents where they pleased on private land, utilized farmers' out houses, and disposed of their trash as they saw fit. County and state parks were a way to preserve public access to attractive camping and picnicking grounds but they also were a needed step to channel the unregulated flow of campers away from private property. State action in promotion of tourism was essential on two fronts: the acquisition and management of recreation lands and in the establishment and maintenance of surfaced roads to expand urbanites' range of access to the countryside. [14]

The opening of M-22 in Leelanau County was one of the most important developments in the spread of tourism in the Sleeping Bear area. Quick to cash in on this more mobile tourist trade, the Leelanau County Association of Commerce produced a glossy color promotional booklet in 1924: The Captives: Being the Story of a Family's Vacation in Leelanau County (Michigan), The Land of Delight. The narrative told of a fictions all-American family's discovery of Leelanau County's many attractions and reveals the way tourist promoters of that era wished to present the area. The father, a iron-bottomed, hard-driver, is determined to push down the highway to Mackinac, but wife and children persuade him to turn off the main road and take M-22's "Seventy-five miles of Lake all the Way." With stops at Empire, Glen Lake, and Glen Haven the father is gradually seduced by the gracious people, charming accommodations, and landscape so striking, that when he looks down from the vista at Miller Hill "there were no exclamations, no cries of delight. It was too tremendously beautiful for that." The family enjoyed meals such as "they had not tasted in months" swam at beaches so level and pure that there was "no chance of accident or disease," caught creels of trout, played golf, camped, and canoed. The moral of the tale was summed up by a kindly local who, after recounting the history of the area, says: "Folks 've been comin' ever since to settle and now city folks 've found out that we've got better roads, that we're off the beaten trail and they've come to find contentment... like you have, friend." [15]

Despite the egalitarian tone of such an appeal, there is no doubt that during the 1920s and 1930s the Glen Lake area aspired to the elevated social standing of Petoskey and Mackinac. Day Forest Estates billed itself as "America's Premier Exclusive Summer Community" and agents for the subdivision pitched lots to some of the most wealthy and influential men in the nation. The inclusion of an air-strip and golf course in the initial plans for the project reflected this orientation as did the 1929 brochure which promised readers: "Estates ideally restricted." The Glen Lake Country Club was more blunt. It specified "Gentiles Only" on its 1931 program. The Crystal Downs golf course had a large rock outside its entrance emblazoned with the same anti-Semitic sentiment. At the time, such restrictions were common at the watering holes of the well-to-do all across America. Such policies reflect summer residents desire to control the social interactions. Not infrequently lake lots would be sold only to friends, cousins, or acquaintances from the city. Strangers lacking such personal connections often found it hard to purchase property on Glen Lake or Lake Leelanau. [16]

The automobile created two new types of outdoor recreation in America that would shape the development of the tourist industry in twentieth century Michigan. The middle class summer cottage owner were the first of these, while the institution of the "vacation" and the "weekend" were the second. The automobile democratized access to the countryside. Rural retreats were long a symbol of the status of the wealthy. Beginning in the 1920s, a cabin on a lakeside lot gradually became both desirable and attainable for a broader range of the population. Collective bargaining agreements won by organized labor in the automotive and steel industries during the 1930s gave an even large circle of Midwesterners both the time and the money to acquire their own piece of the north woods. The ritual of going "up north" begun by the working class in the 1920s as a male-only recreation became, with the acquisition of a family car and paid vacation, an annual family ritual A ring of development pressure radiated outward from the major cities of Michigan, planting summer cottages with increasing density along the shores of all available lakes. The Sleeping Bear area, due to its location was not as severely affected by this trend as popular downstate resort lakes such as Paw Paw, Kent, Gull, and, of course. Lake St. Clair. Nonetheless, during the 1930s and 1940s the shores of Crystal, Platte, and Glen lakes all saw an expansion of summer cottages.

The other type of outdoor recreation created by the automobile was, of course, the car camper. This group grew dramatically from its beginnings in the 1920s. By the eve of World War II car campers had clearly exceeded the capacity of public facilities in southeastern Michigan and even remote parks in northwestern Michigan began to overflow with campers on holiday weekends. The Michigan Department of Conservation, the largest single landowner in northern Michigan, became the vehicle through which the ordinary citizens attempted to influence the direction of Michigan's recreational boom. This multiple-use agency was called upon to balance the needs of outdoor recreation with timber production, the growing demand for summer homes with the obvious need for more state parks, and calls for game stocking with the need for habitat protection. A National Park Service study of outdoor recreation planning in Michigan, done as part of the 1941 A Study of the Park and Recreation Problem of the United States predicted that the future of the tourist industry in the northern part of the state "will depend upon proper land use, the proper distribution of public areas and private holdings, and enough control over private developments to protect community interests." Yet, the dependence of the recreation industry in its early years on government expenditures was problematical because there were few established revenue streams to fund the infrastructural investment needed. Public officials were forced to choose between competing goals and often, competing communities. [17]

A Sleeping Bear State Park

In 1941, residents of Benzie County were interested in protecting their own recreational opportunities from the increasing privatization of lake shore lands as well as attracting a larger share of the automobile camper trade. They prevailed upon the Department of Conservation to survey their area for a potential new state park. There was a very popular, but very small, 180-acre state facility, Benzie State Park, near the mouth of the Platte River. The park had been created in 1923 through donations and exchanges between the State and J.W. Dye. Frankfort lobbied for that park to be expanded or for a second park to be created in the dune country between Point Betsie and the west end of Crystal Lake. At the same time Leelanau County, just to the north, also coveted a state park. Three members of that county's board pitched their area to the director of the agency. Diplomatically he agreed to extend the Conservation Department's survey of potential parklands to the entire Lake Michigan shoreline between Frankfort and Leland. [18]

John Rogers, the Assistant Chief of the Division of Parks and Recreation, headed the survey and evaluation of the region. He was dismayed by the crowded and inadequate size of Benzie State Park, but was skeptical of the possibility of expanding the park to ease congestion there. Rogers' evaluation was strongly influenced by his interpretation of the mission of state parks as scenes of active recreation. The attractiveness and safety of the beaches, the suitability of back areas for campgrounds, the type of activities which could be promoted to visitors, were all critical considerations that inclined him to discount the Benzie County sites. Rather it was the Glen Lake area which he felt offered the "greatest attraction."

The first recommendation I would make is that if the state was to have only one state park in the Leelanau Peninsula (Benzie and Leelanau Counties) that it be located in the vicinity of Glen Lake and the Sleeping Bear Dunes...this possible area...in the writers opinion, is the outstanding area in the lower peninsula. We have here in Michigan our Tahquamenon Falls, our Huron and Porcupine Mountains, our Copper Country, etc. which we proclaim to the vacationer that he should see because of their grandeur. In the writer's opinion this possible park area at Glen Lake is the equal of any of those places and is entirely different. Michigan would have a park that very few states in the nation could boast an equal.

The area Rogers recommended for park status was composed of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, the D.H. Day Forest Estates, and a small portion (1,000 feet) of the north shore of Glen Lake, a total of 5,800 acres. Rogers recognized that the Sleeping Bear Dunes had the grand scale that could attract visitors from around the Midwest, while Glen Lake offered protected water recreation, and the Day Forest Estates provided the vistas to appreciate each. The uniting of the dunes, backlands, and interior lakes into a single park plan made objective sense to a veteran recreation planner like Rogers, yet it laid the seed for the controversy in which the National Park Service was embroiled almost a generation later. [19]

Rogers' report was received enthusiastically in Lansing. Unfortunately, the Department of Conservation would face years of frustration before his recommendations could be acted upon. World War II was the first roadblock. As most public resources were focused on winning the war no action was taken on state park expansion during the conflict. Five years later, in May of 1946, Rogers revisited the area and found that save for some commercial logging within the Day forest, the proposed park area was little changed. In short order the Conservation Commission voted to approve the Sleeping Bear Park Project. This action set the boundaries for the future state park but did not provide the land acquisition money to make the project a reality. The Conservation Department opened negotiations with the Grand Rapids Trust Company, which took over supervision of the failed Day Forest Estates project, and negotiated an option to purchase a large portion of the trust lands for $100,000. There the project stalled. The independent Conservation Commission refused to approve further land acquisitions until the legislature agreed to approve larger regular appropriations for site development and maintenance at the existing state parks. The Sleeping Bear—Glen Lake park plan was caught in the middle and the option lapsed. [20]

The close-knit Glen Lake community supported the state park proposal, which only included 1,000 feet of frontage on Glen Lake. They took deep pride in the scenic lake and for years they boasted that National Geographic Magazine had declared it was "among the five most beautiful lakes in the world." When a genuine National Geographic representative visited the area in 1934 he disputed the validity of the statement, but did agree "I have never seen a lake more beautiful." Christopher G. Parnall, a shoreline property owner from Ann Arbor, had boosted state park status for a portion of the lake as early as 1924. When the state let its option lapse Parnall attempted to rally Glen Lake property owners to purchase the land themselves. Parnall was deeply concerned that an outside private owner intent on aggressive development might purchase the Day Estates. On May 8,1949 about fifty interested people gathered in Glen Arbor and pledged subscriptions to a fund for the purchase of the Day Forest Estate. An escrow account was established. For every $1,000 subscribed toward the purchase of the whole property each contributor would be entitled to one hundred feet of frontage on Glen Lake or Lake Michigan and a pro rata share of the remaining back lands. Parnall's effort, however, fell short. Although more than $70,000 was initially pledged; only $50,000 was actually placed in the escrow account. An attempt to pool the funds of the Glen Lake owners and the Department of Conservation also failed and the plan had to be abandoned. The effort was another manifestation of the Glen Lake owners desire to control conditions around their beloved lake and indication of the financial resources at then-disposal. [21]

Lacking acquisition funds the Department of Conservation was forced into a patient, catch-as-catch-can development approach. Existing state lands in the area, which included most of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, were consolidated under state park administration and over the years small additions to the park project were made by gift and purchase using fish and game funds or modest appropriations. Nonetheless, considerable lands within the boundary of the park remained in private hands. By 1963, the state owned only 2,044 acres of the proposed 5,800-acre park. Realization of the dream of a Sleeping Bear Dunes—Glen Lake park had to wait until the creation of the national lakeshore. [22]

The failure of the Conservation Department to realize its vision for a Sleeping Bear state park was not unique. The famed Pictured Rocks region of the Upper Peninsula was similarly created as a state park project in 1953, only to falter for lack of acquisition and development funds. The Grand Sable Dunes on Lake Superior bad been declared a state park in 1931, but a generation latter the park consisted of little more than an inaccessible and unmanaged collection of tax delinquent lands. The fact was that Michigan's state parks were in a state of crisis in the wake of a boom in outdoor recreation following the end of World War II. By 1948 attendance at Michigan state parks was approximately twice that of the population of the entire state. With that heavy use came the demand for modem conveniences such as flush toilets and paved roads. But flat budgets meant that the agency was barely able to maintain Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration era improvements, which were beginning to suffer deterioration, let alone sponsor extensive new development. In 1953, when the existing system was swamped with more than 14 million visitors, the legislature appropriated little more than ten cents per visitor to pay not only for maintenance but to fund new facilities as well. The state tried to solve the revenue crisis in recreation by instituting an annual two dollar state park automobile admission sticker. The millions brought in from this source, however, proved only a temporary solution as ever-increasing usage increased the demand for expensive new developments. The funding crisis was part of a general cash shortfall that effected the entire state government and resulted in a $100 million dollar budget deficit by 1959. Democratic Governor G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams rather unrealistically proposed a corporate profits tax as a way to reinvigorate state agencies. The Michigan Republican party, not to mention the giant automotive manufacturers in the state, did not take kindly to this solution, and countered with a proposal to increase the sales tax. The dispute that followed paralyzed Michigan and left it in such financial shambles that people bitterly joked that the favorite drink in the state capital of Lansing was "Michigan on the rocks." [23]

During the late 1950s the Department of Conservation consolidated their holdings in the Sleeping Bear region into a unit named D.H. Day State Park but which included that portion of the Sleeping Bear-Glen Lake park which had been acquired as well as Benzie State Park. The consolidation was in many ways an admission of failure. In 1954, Charles F. Boehler a planning consultant to the Conservation Department, had recommended that the state double the size of Benzie State Park to include both banks of the Platte River, a portion of the Platte Plains, and the Empire Dunes. The Michigan Natural Areas Council, a group of scientists and conservationists who represented the Nature Conservancy in Michigan, enthusiastically seconded this plan. But the initiative at Benzie, like the development of the Sleeping Bear Park, was stymied by the state's fiscal crisis. The park superintendent at D.H. Day State Park had to sit frustrated on the sidelines while the land at the mouth of the Platte and along the shore of Glen Lake was subdivided and sold. [24]

A major loss to the state park project was the purchase of the Day Forest Estate by Pierce Stocking, a Cadillac, Michigan, lumberman. On the surface Stocking was just the type of purchaser both the state and the Glen Lake summer homeowners had tried prevent from taking possession of the scenic tract. He was a small-scale independent lumberman, a by-the-seat-of-his-pants entrepreneur, leveraged to the hilt and in need of a quick turnaround on his investment. The sate guaranteed that Michigan's first private forest reservation and the land once set aside as the playground for millionaires would be immediately brought under the bite of the chainsaw. Stocking had made his first purchases in the Sleeping Bear area in the late 1940s. He also made extensive purchases on South Manitou Island. The fogging operation there nearly bankrupted him due to high transportation costs and the challenge of bringing logs across the Manitou Passage. Whatever Stocking made in his ventures he returned to extending his operations, either through equipment purchases or the acquisition of new real estate in the area. Like many a previous sojoumer to the Sleeping Bear, Stocking fell in love with the area. Against his wife's objections he built his home on the Day tract, high on a hill overlooking duned lakeshore. At his own expense he built and maintained a nearby scenic overlook and picnic area to share the dramatic vistas with others. Stockings' attempts to develop other tourist facilities on his portion of the dunes brought him into conflict with the Department of Conservation. [25]

The Sleeping Bear—Glen Lake park area was a patchwork of property lines with the State of Michigan, Pierce Stocking, and Louis Warnes being the largest owners. Warnes was the son-in-law of David Day and with his wife Marion, Day's youngest daughter, he inherited much of the Glen Haven property of the old lumberman. For years they operated the Day store in Glen Haven, until by chance, they discovered a way to profit from their proximity to the dunes. In 1934 and 1935 the Frankfort Glider Club used the high perched dunes at Sleeping Bear to launch their sail planes. To get the cumbersome gliders to the top of the dune one club member equipped his Ford with oversized balloon tires. The car worked so well on the sand slopes that Louis Warnes, who cooperated with the club, decided to fit-out his own vehicle the same way and offer tours of the dune country. For the next forty-three years motorized dune tours were a principal way visitors to Sleeping Bear saw the sites. Warnes was a supporter of the state park and he made several significant land sales to the Department of Conservation. The dunesmobile rides continued under a state concession license. Business was so good in 1956 that Warnes, backed by a new ten-year concession agreement, purchased ten brand-new Oldsmobile 88's. A second concession, a lunch counter at the foot of the dune climb area, was also granted to Warnes. Competitors, however, were beginning to encroach on his trade. Francis Harrigan, a Saginaw businessman, opened his own dune ride using a modified pick-up truck and following a route partially across state parklands. Warnes naturally appealed to the Department of Conservation to stop Harrigan's operation. More of a challenge was Pierce Stocking's request to use a portion of state land to operate his own dune ride and his critique that Warnes ride was both harmful to the environment and too expensive for the average citizen too enjoy. Out of what appears to have been a mixture of genuine concern and personal cussedness, Stocking tried to get the state to either allow his plans to go forward or to agree to limit further tourist development within the state park. Stocking's leverage for such a request was that the patchwork of ownership in the area was such that while he needed state permission to reach some of his lands, the state operated areas like the dune climb which gave visitors access to dune lands owned by Stocking. To complicate things further there were tracts within the park project area in which the Department of Conservation and Stocking shared an ownership interest. Throughout the 1950s the state and Pierce Stocking each continued to make land purchases in the Glen Lake area, their contentious relationship a constant reminder of Michigan's botched opportunity to develop a Sleeping Bear park. [26]

The Great Lakes Shoreline Survey

The problems experienced by Michigan in attempting to meet the expanding public demand for recreational lands were by no means unique. The number of Americans engaged in camping, fishing, hiking, and boating grew every year during the 1950s. Annually the Department of Conservation brought new recreational lands under state management—state park acreage actually doubled between 1948 and 1972, but the rate of growth was too slow to stay ahead of the demand curve. "Never before in the history of recreation and wildlife conservation," observed a federal report, "have the Great Lakes been faced with the magnitude of recreational uses that has roared into the parks, game areas, fishing sites." Those diverse uses created a competition among users for the vital commodity demanded by all outdoor enthusiasts—water recreation sites. In 1945, Michigan Conservation Magazine predicted the boom:

"When the war's over I'll trade this foxhole for a boat livery on some lake back home"—"We're saving our bonds for a cottage on a lake."—When there're tires and gas again we're going to find a little home on a lake and enjoy life."—Today's dreams, tomorrows realities."

The silence following the final burst of gunfire in this terrible conflict will be counterbalanced by a swelling sound a hemisphere away as once again the hum of wild-ward bound traffic resumes over now deserted highways. War weary soldiers and work-weary stayers will respond alike to the call of nature's tranquility, and Michigan's outdoor playground will be visited by increasing thousands—some to return and stay.

Summer homes, already common in Michigan before World War II, spread at an even more rapid rate in the 1950s. On popular southern Michigan lakes such as Paw Paw Lake cottages were planted on increasingly smaller lots, giving portions of the lakeshore an urban-like appearance of density. Although there are 8,000 named lakes in Michigan, those lakes accessible to Chicago, Toledo, and the cities of southern Michigan bore the brunt of this deluge. Savvy buyers looked farther north where less money bought more frontage. A Michigan Conservation Magazine writer encouraged this strategy: "great improvements in travel facilities is probable in the near postwar future and mileage distances may represent shorter and shorter travel time. Scores of beautiful lakes in the state have not been developed simply because of their remoteness." The Department of Conservation's aborted plans to expand Benzie and D.H. Day state parks were part of a conscious effort to get ahead of the rising tide of recreational use and secure public access to the most favorable locations. [27]

Michigan actually did a better job than many other state's both anticipating and adjusting to the postwar recreation boom, but in the end the national trend required a national response. While little was done to expand the size of federal recreational holdings during the 1950s, the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower did lay the foundation for more aggressive action later through its strong support for upgrading current facilities and planning for future growth. Mission 66, a ten-year program begun in 1956 to improve visitor facilities at all national parks, was an example of the former. The establishment of the National Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission in 1958 made expanding recreational opportunities a high priority for the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, even the Army Corps of Engineers. A new federal agency, the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, was eventually created to spearhead the development of new recreation areas. But before that agency was in place the National Park Service accomplished the most important recreational planning initiative of the postwar period, the national shoreline survey. [28]

During the New Deal era, the National Park Service, supported by relief funds and inspired by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration's fascination with regional planning, undertook a study of seashore conservation. Survey teams were sent along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts. Out of this fieldwork came the recommendation that fifteen select coastal areas be added to the national park system. One of these sites. Cape Hatteras National Seashore, was actually pushed through Congress and became a reality. The outbreak of World War II brought war to America's shores and the momentum that had been built to create additional seaside units was lost. Conrad Wirth, the National Park Service director in 1956, had worked on the 1930s shoreline survey and felt it was "one of the most interesting and worthwhile of the New Deal conservation programs." Even before "Mission 66" was adopted Wirth made sure that shoreline conservation was an agency priority. In 1954, Wirth ordered the a second set of shoreline surveys, as the New Deal era data was nearly twenty years old. The park service director had an "angel" who shared his commitment to the nation's seashores, Paul Mellon. Along with his sister, Alisa Bruce, Paul Mellon was the heir to the Mellon bank fortune. Over the years the Mellon heirs used their wealth and influence to support conservation programs. Over time they would fund the establishment of the White House Rose Garden, the landscaping of Lafayette Park, and the purchase of Cumberland Island, Georgia. Their most important contribution to the American landscape, however, was the decision to recommend that their Old Dominion Foundation and Avalon Foundation fund the second shoreline survey. [29]

The survey, which began with the Atlantic Coast, was directed by a twenty-year veteran of the National Park Service, Allen T. Edmunds. The lanky former Navy Lieutenant Commander was a native of Battle Creek, Michigan, and a graduate of Michigan State University. His specialty within the park service was planning and he had considerable experience working with state and local conservation organizations. Managing the survey proved to be the greatest challenge of his career. Donor relations was a unique (for a government employee) and important part of the job. Paul Mellon had a strong personal interest in the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. He met frequently with Edmunds and occasionally accompanied him or other team members into the field. The successful completion of the survey of the east and southern shores of the nation won Mellon's confidence in the proposal to fund the survey of the Pacific and Great Lakes— areas with which he had less personal interest. In October 1956, the Mellon foundations awarded an additional $120,000 to the National Park Service. The Pacific coast study was budgeted at $60,000 and scheduled for one year, while the Great Lakes study, which was the first undertaking of its kind in the region, was budgeted at $80,000 and scheduled for two years. As Edmunds began the Great Lakes survey Director Wirth reminded him that it had taken fifteen years to get a single new national park out of the 1934-35 shoreline survey. If nothing came of the Great Lakes effort, "don't be discouraged." [30]

The Great Lakes survey began in June of 1957 with an aerial reconnaissance of the entire American shore of the lakes. A United States Coast Guard UF-1G Albatross took Edmunds and his survey team from the St. Lawrence River, along the shores of the lakes. The flight took the better part of five days and twenty-eight hours of time in the air. On June 17th the team was over northwestern Michigan. Even at 600 feet and at 150 miles-per-hour they were struck by the "fine possibilities" offered by the region's undeveloped shore of beaches, dunes, and bluffs and it was immediately marked for closer on-the-ground evaluation. The flight made clear that the bulk of the areas of potential national significance were to be found on Lakes Superior and Michigan. Flying along the shore of Lake Erie Edmunds thought of a statement recently made by Henry T. Heald, President of Ford Motor Company. In twenty years he predicted the shores of the Great Lakes would be "unrelieved urban areas," from Milwaukee to Buffalo. The flight was followed by a series of informational meetings with state conservation officials in the states along the Great Lakes. Ownership maps were obtained and the park service team was briefed on the development plans and pressures at work in each state. Field studies began immediately afterward and in the 1957 season were limited to the Upper Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan, and Huron). Careful coordination by Allen Edmunds resulted in outstanding inter-agency cooperation. The Coast Guard provided boats and helicopters, the Wisconsin and Michigan Conservation departments gave the field team access to their planes. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan presented the greatest challenge to the survey. Large portions of its shore were inaccessible by land, yet its wild nature—ninety percent undeveloped—made much of the shore a prime candidate for close inspection. In the end the Upper Peninsula yielded what the survey team regarded as the two most outstanding natural areas on the Great Lakes—the Pictured Rocks area and the Huron Mountains. [31]

The field team during 1957 was composed strictly of planners. E. Winton Perkins, reassigned at the last minute from the Lower Colorado River Survey, was the chief-of-the-party. Edmund B. Rogers, Assistant to the Rocky Mountain Regional director, was loaned to the survey for a portion of the summer while Howard Chapman, a recreation specialist, was a member of the peripatetic team from the beginning to the end of the project. "Since the first of June," Perkins wrote, 'I've traveled 25,000 miles by plane, train, car, bus and boat which left very little time for lounging on those Great Lakes beaches." Although the team worked hard, recreation was their principle interest. Prime undeveloped country in their view was land which, in addition to having outstanding scenic values, could be utilized for a variety of outdoor recreation pursuits. Their instructions, however, cautioned them to consider recreation "in its broad sense" and to look for areas of "scenic, scientific and historical interest as well as those chiefly valuable for active recreation." This broader emphasis to include historic and scientific values differentiated the Great Lakes survey from the narrower Atlantic and Gulf surveys. To meet this goal the survey added a historian, James Sullivan, and a biologist, Donald Humphrey, during the second season to aid in evaluation of the areas of prime interest. Early on the survey attempted to create a point classification to aid in comparative evaluation, but the effort was abandoned as too arbitrary. In the end what proved the most reliable index for comparing values was the fact that the survey covered every foot of Great Lakes shoreline on the United States side of the lake. This allowed them, in Edmunds's words, to "think in terms of genuine superlatives." The ultimate goal of the effort was to select areas "that should be properly included in a well-rounded and adequate National Park System." [32]

The second field season of the survey began with another set of comprehensive overflights, this time by helicopter. The ground team then worked their way west from the St. Lawrence. Their findings along the Erie and Ontario shores confirmed the aerial observations that the prime park prospects were in Michigan and that is where the bulk of the 1958 field season was spent, closely examining those areas that had been identified as having a high potential. The Sleeping Bear area was intensively explored in July. The dunes at Empire and Sleeping Bear drew close inspection as did the Platte River plains and Point Betsie. South Manitou Island received the most enthusiastic comments: "There is something about South Manitou Island that is very charming: in its gently sloping terrain, its mixed forests, the old settlement, the lighthouse, combined with the gull colony on the tip, giving it an other worldly quality." In view of the firestorm of grief it would later cause the park service. Glen Lake was treated in the field-notes very matter-of-factly. There was no hyperbole about it being one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, only the observation that although there was "considerable resort development all along its shore" the combination of the inland lakes and the dunes made for "an extremely well-balanced park area." The reconnaissance was made by the entire survey team, some of the time escorted by the staff of the Michigan Department of Conservation. This commitment of time and staff indicates the seriousness of the survey's interest in the area but also that, as one of the survey members confided to a supporter, "they had been a little hesitant about Sleeping Bear." [33]

The survey teams tried to be thorough as well as discreet. Follow-up visits to promising sites always included a careful review of the land ownership pattern, including ascertaining how much land was in public hands, the scale of subdivisions or resort developments, and the per-foot cost of waterfront and backlands real estate. The results of such economic analysis were balanced with recreational and natural values in assessing the potential of an area. Discretion was important in order to get accurate information and to avoid precipitating a speculative wave in a high potential area. Genevieve E. Gillette, President of the Michigan Parks Association, later a strong supporter of the survey's recommendations, tried to hunt-up the park service team when they were working in the Sleeping Bear area. At the Park Hotel in Traverse City, however, she could not, even with the help of an obliging desk clerk, find any registered guests from Philadelphia or Washington, D.C., let alone from the Department of the Interior. Only by recognizing several Michigan conservation representatives on the hotel porch was she able to link-up with the survey team. [34]

The survey was completed by the end of the 1958 field season and Edmunds directed his staff in the production of a final report of their findings. The report. Remaining Shoreline, was a vital step in the expansion of the National Park Service into the Great Lakes region. At the time it was released there were only three existing national park units in the region: Isle Royale National Park, Grand Portage National Monument, and Perry's Victory National Monument. In the wake of Edmunds's visionary report six major national parks were established in the Great Lakes region, thereby giving the National Park Service a much greater opportunity to directly serve the 40 million residents of the region.

The Great Lakes Shoreline Survey made thirteen specific recommendations:

1. A minimum of fifteen percent of the shoreline of the Great Lakes should be in public ownership, around urban areas the figure should be twenty percent.

2. Marshes and swamps may not be scenic but they require protection as a wildlife area.

3. As natural areas gradually disappear, examples of outstanding biotic communities become more important for preservation and study.

4. Historic sites along the shoreline also deserve to be protected and interpreted.

5. When military or Coast Guard facilities are decommissioned they should be dedicated to public recreation.

6. Great Lakes islands need to be protected as "unspoiled settings and biotic laboratories for the future."

7. Facilities for boat dockage on the Great Lakes should be a major public concern.

8. Except for a few outstanding, outlying sites recreation resources should be concentrated near major cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland.

9. Near urban areas consideration should be given for creation of additional shoreline recreation sites via landfills.

10. Port sites should not be developed in conflict with recreational values.

11. Development of existing highways "should receive careful planning and controls to prevent unrestricted development which could adversely affect or destroy existing intrinsic values. Alignment of any future lakeshore highways should be carefully planned so as not to restrict ultimate development of existing and proposed recreation areas.

12. Water pollution threatens recreation and biotic values. Legislation and enforcement are required.

13. In view of their possible national significance, further study should be given to Pigeon Point, the Huron Mountains, the Pictured Rocks, Sleeping Bear, and Indiana Dunes to determine the best plan for their preservation.

In retrospect these recommendations seem a mixture of the visionary and the time-bound concerns of another generation. The report recognized the importance of wetlands as a means of preserving biodiversity, but did not appreciate the role of wetlands in fighting water pollution and flooding. They acknowledged the growing problem of water pollution in the Great Lakes area, but did not foresee how it might negatively impact the demand for outdoor recreation on the lakes. Like so many planning documents, then and now, it tended to project unchanged the trends of the moment. In their view recreational demand would continue to grow unchecked, leisure time would continue to grow, and the urban populations of Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland would continue to grow. Like so many of the other government observers of the period Edmunds's team over-projected the significance of the St. Lawrence Seaway, an enlarged set of canals designed to offer larger ocean vessels access from the lakes to the oceans. Although the seaway did trigger harbor construction, which horribly scarred the Indiana Dunes, that process was not repeated elsewhere. The seaway was hamstrung by east and gulf coast congressman who only agreed to the project after it was amended to ensure that it would prove no long-term threat to their own regions. The expected maritime revival of the seaway turned out to be an economic blip, not a boom. [35]

In many ways the survey report was a conservative document. The recommendation that fifteen percent of the Great Lakes shoreline should be in public ownership was not as bold as it sounded, since the park projects they recommended were in areas such as northern Michigan where up to forty percent of the shoreline was already publicly owned. Fred A. Seaton, Secretary of the Interior, had expressed the opinion that the National Park Service should recommend no more than three sites for potential park status out of the combined surveys of the Atlantic, Gulf; Pacific, and Great Lakes shorelines. This type of pressure, the experience of the long struggle to create Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and, of course, the known shortage of land acquisition funds combined to constrain the survey's conclusions. Edmunds clearly exceeded Secretary Seaton's recommendation when he recommended four areas from the Great Lakes alone as potential national parks. Left out of the report was any federal role in urban recreation, clearly one of the great needs in the region, save perhaps for the recommendation to preserve the Indiana Dunes. Only that latter site was located anywhere near the region's population centers. The other recommended sites. Sleeping Bear, Pictured Rocks, the Huron Mountains, and Pigeon Point, were all remote from the cities. Even in the thinly populated Lake Superior region the survey team moved deliberately. Conspicuously absent from the shoreline survey report is the recommendation that Wisconsin's Apostle Islands be made a national park. Local boosters had urged such an action consistently since the 1920s. A park service representative at that time decried that as a park project the cutover islands and shoreline there did not "amount to a hill of beans." The Great Lakes Shoreline Survey a generation later viewed the landscape of the Apostle Islands more positively. They urged the state of Wisconsin to preserve the beaches along Lake Superior and suggested one of the Apostle Islands might make a good state park. The Apostle Islands, today a successful national lakeshore, were not viewed by Edmunds and his team as one of the region's outstanding recreational resources. [36]

It was the political pressure of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson that forced the National Park Service to look again at the Apostle Islands. Clout also played a role in the demise of the Huron Mountains as a potential national park. Allen Edmunds's team were more impressed by this area than any other part of the entire Great Lakes region. Located on the shore of Lake Superior just west of Marquette, Michigan, the Huron Mountains were unknown to most residents of the Upper Peninsula, let alone most Midwesterners. After their first look at the area the survey team noted: "There is practically no development, its scenic qualities are superior and its variety of features is unequalled. Its shoreline consists of 50' - 100' red rock, sheer cliffs, granite outcroppings, and white sand beaches. There are interesting offshore islands and beautiful inland lakes." Closer inspection of the area by boat, helicopter and foot backed up these original conclusions but also presented a problem. The Huron Mountains were almost entirely privately owned, largely by the forest products company Celotex and by the elite Huron Mountain Club. Founded in 1889, the Huron Mountain Club, was a unique Midwestern expression of the same outdoor impulse that led east coast industrialists and financiers to build elaborate, rustic summer retreats in the Adirondack Mountains. Fifty families, for almost five generations controlled 22,000 acres of mountains, lakes, and canyons. Lumber and land magnet John Longyear was one of the original members, others were manufacturing or steel tycoons, attorneys and physicians. Henry Ford was left dangling on a waiting list for seven years before his membership was accepted. Some of the summer homes were beautiful log structures in the style of the Adirondack "Great Camps," others simple summer cottages, and some, in the words of the survey team, were little more than "glorified shacks." Locked gates, fences, and guards assured the members of their privacy and kept the area all but unknown. Since the club's creation the logged-over Huron Mountains had regrown its forest cover and the entire area appeared to be a splendid near-wilderness. [37]

As much as the survey team was intrigued with the Huron Mountains contact with the leadership of the club seems to have inclined them to back off from recommending the area as a potential national park. A 1957 progress report concluded: "no active program or pressure for state acquisition is recommended for this area. However, continued contact with the present organization is suggested in order to be in on the ground floor should an opportunity for acquisition arise." This diffident evaluation, however, did not stand. In July 1959 National Park Service Director Conrad L. Wirth inspected for himself the highlight areas identified by the shoreline survey. He was "very much impressed" by the Huron Mountains area and ordered that it be included among the sites to be recommended for consideration as potential parks. Alarmed by this decision the Huron Mountain Club made its case for continued private ownership in the press while remaining constructively, if not fully cooperatively engaged with the park service. Requests by park planners to enter club lands were fended-off while contacts and informal visits by high level National Park Service officials were courted. An Outdoor America article posed the issue as a choice between a noisy, crowded public park and "a private wilderness for those who own it—and who have faithfully preserved it." The park service also sought high level discussions with the club, hoping to sell them on the idea that a Huron Mountain park might be developed which would include the club owners summer homes as an in-holding. For its part the club pointed out their existing policy of allowing accredited naturalists access to their lands. An April 1960 meeting between club President Kent Chandler and Conrad Wirth brought an end to the prospect of a Huron Mountain national park. At that time Chandler likely revealed his political hand to Director Wirth, for the latter immediately changed his tune. The "frontier is gone," the park service director wrote shortly afterward, and the National Park Service had a huge job trying to preserve what was left of the American environment, therefore "I am not worrying about the relatively few remaining natural areas managed like the Huron Mountain Club property, so long as they are in the hands of the present owners." The extent of the clout the club brought to bear is suggested by the fact that unlike the Pictured Rocks and Sleeping Bear Dunes, the much more promising Huron Mountains were never proposed for national park status by a single Michigan senator or congressional representative. The fifty well-heeled owners of the Huron Mountains accomplished what the hundreds of less well-connected cottage owners in the Sleeping Bear area could not do—stop a national park. [38]

The Great Lakes Shoreline Survey, however, did succeed in bringing the National Park Service into the Great Lakes region in a major way. For years the agency had fended off requests from the residents of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan to create a national park in their area by disparaging the region's second growth forests and its lack of monumental grandeur similar to the great parks of the mountain west. The demand for outdoor recreation that followed World War II had changed that by forcing the agency to look at the region in a new way. In the process the National Park Service found in the Pictured Rocks and Sleeping Bear Dunes sites that possessed both the water recreation areas so typical of the north woods and landscapes with scenic assets which compared favorably with the best of America's national parks.

"National Parks are where you find them," a park planner advised a summer homeowner critical of the recommendation to federalize the dunes. What he meant was that in the late 1950s the Sleeping Bear area fit perfectly the blend of recreational, natural, and esthetic requirements required by the shoreline survey. Sleeping Bear Dunes, although it was not as close to major urban areas as the Indiana Dunes, nor as scenic as the Pictured Rocks, nor as unspoiled as the Huron Mountains, probably possessed better than any other area the blend of features sought by park planners. It was more unspoiled than Indiana Dunes, more spectacular than anything offered by the Apostle Islands, and much closer to major population centers than the Pictured Rocks. Sleeping Bear was a recreation area on the cusp of change when it was discovered by the shoreline survey. For nearly twenty years the Michigan Department of Conservation had tried with limited means and limited success to shape the development of Sleeping Bear toward public access and resource preservation. Now the National Park Service saw in the Sleeping Bear and Pictured Rocks a chance to create a new type of national park. But if from a park planner's point-of-view parks "are where you find them", from a political perspective national parks are created in the stow, imperfect give-and-take of the legislative arena. By no means would the park envisioned by Allen T. Edmunds and his planners be the park that emerged from the legislative process. The best the park service could hope was to avoid, as they could not with the Huron Mountains proposal, a complete shipwreck of their work. E. Winton Perkins, head of the Great Lakes Survey field team, understood what was at stake. "As this is being written," he concluded his report, "surveyors are subdividing some of the remaining beach areas and bulldozers are opening new access roads. Time is of the essence....." [39]