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

On a blustery March night in 1971 the Sleeping Bear Dunes were remade—not by congressional mandate or according to a developer's scheme—but by natural action. Twenty-acres at the northern end of the bluff tumbled without warning into Lake Michigan. It was only the second time in the century that such a major shift occurred in the face of the great sand plateau. Environmentalists tried to use the incident to make the point that the dunes were a mysterious and fragile resources that required careful management and protection. Those who had opposed the creation of the lakeshore, with equal validity, drew an opposite lesson: no amount of federal regulation can control nature. Yet the remarkable thing about the incident was that on the eve of a controversial change in the way land was owned and managed in the Sleeping Bear country, nature gave its own object lesson. The sands which had been piled on the east shore of Lake Michigan since the Pleistocene were no more permanent than the hunting grounds of the Ottawa, a Homesteader's certificate, a summer home owner's deed, or a congressional mandate. In time the sands will shift and the dune will consult no management plan or seek no easement. In human affairs and in nature's order change is the only constant. [1]

The National Park Service came to the Sleeping Bear not to stop change but to try and manage it. In itself that was an audacious assignment. It was made manageable only to the extent Public Law 91-479, which created the national lakeshore, and the established procedures and traditions of the National Park Service provided guidance for the women and men who would take up the challenge. The administrative history of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore is the story of the actions and decisions those people undertook, within the parameters of public law, bureaucratic procedure, and in interaction with a dynamic natural environment. It is a story of a remorseless yet farsighted policy, of foibles familiar and human, of creativity under constraint, and failures balanced by successes. It is a story that will continue as long as there is a will to manage environmental interactions in the Sleeping Bear country. It is a story that begins in 1971 with Julius Martinek.

Starting From Scratch

"So far we have not had one cent of federal money to buy land," Julius Martinek said one year after the creation of the national lakeshore, "and yet we have had people coming from all over the country who have heard that Congress created a new park here and expect it to be ready for use—instantly and magically, I presume." Martinek was the first superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes and like the head of any new entity he had more problems than staff, higher public expectations than budget lines, as well as the added burden of a local population that was, in large part, committed to opposing the lakeshore. Nothing came easy in the early years at Sleeping Bear Dunes.2]

Allen T. Edmunds carefully chose Julius A. Martinek for the difficult assignment. Although Martinek had been born in Cleveland in 1922, he had grown up in Traverse City, Michigan. His family had a cottage on Long Lake and his first experiences hiking and camping were in the forests in and around the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Edmunds had attended the World Congress on Conservation with Martinek and had taken to the latter's straitforward style. Edmunds also liked Martinek's broad experience within the agency. The forty-nine year old had started with the park service in 1949 after military service in the Navy during World War II and college at Michigan State University. The forestry graduate put in stints as a back country ranger at Mount Rainier National Park and Sequoia National Park before moving to Washington, D.C. and working as a planner in the office of the director. Martinek was on the "fast-track" within the agency. In 1967, he headed a National Park Service team seconded to the United Republic of Tanzania to plan Mount Kilimanjaro National Park. His administrative experience included serving as Assistant Superintendent at Yellowstone National Park and, just prior to coming to Sleeping Bear, as Director of the National Capital Parks. Martinek had followed Philip Hart's tortuous attempt to create a Sleeping Bear park and he had long desired to take on the challenge of building a new park "from scratch." [3]

Martinek was well suited to the inevitable challenge of trying to build a new park with few resources. He had a "hands-on" style of leadership and a flair for "do-it-yourself" solutions. When he was a ranger at Mount Rainier, he once resolved his frustration with budget cuts that removed funding for a picnic area near a backcountry trail by building the site himself, tables, outhouses and all, with little more than a chainsaw. Many times during the lakeshore's early days Martinek would grab a shovel or hammer or saw and pitch-in to whatever job needed to be done. Conversely, Martinek could also be a good listener. This was critical for the first superintendent because there was a real need for property owners in the area to vent their frustration with the federal government in the early 1970s. A lot of people who opposed the park had never had a chance to participate in the congressional hearings and the superintendent was the one on whom they "unloaded." A considerable portion of Martinek's time that first year was spent at meetings to explain what was going to happen to local stakeholders. No other member of the National Park Service, save perhaps Allen Edmunds, exerted as much influence over the type of park Sleeping Bear evolved into than Julius Martinek. This was not only because he was the first superintendent but because of his particular energy and vision. Twenty years after his term as superintendent ended Martinek's stamp was clearly visible on the lakeshore. [4]

The first lakeshore headquarters was in Frankfort, Michigan, at the site of the former State Savings Bank, a terra cotta trimmed commercial building located on Main Street. Martinek, a former Traverse City resident, would have preferred that location as a temporary headquarters. But the park service had already committed itself to Frankfort, besides, Benzie County had a number of long-time supporters of the project and Martinek was informed they were offering space in the bank for free. The space had to be thoroughly renovated, teller cages removed and carpets put in, and ended up costing the agency $700 dollars a month in rent. Of greater assistance to the lakeshore was Ted Carland's offer to the superintendent to publish in the Benzie County Patriot a series of columns (eventually titled "Bear Facts") to explain park service policy and give readers an update on the development of the lakeshore. Some Leelanau County residents resented the headquarters location in Frankfort because the lakeshore "directly affects the affairs and property of far more Leelanau County residents than Benzie County residents." Martinek was appointed in May and by early summer he was at work in the lakeshore. The bulk of the park service staff in Frankfort that first year were land acquisition specialists who did not report to the superintendent. Martinek spent the bulk of his time familiarizing himself with the park resources and developing liaison with local governments, organizations, and meeting property owners. Although he had next-to-nothing as a budget and little land to manage, the problems immediately placed before him were intimidating. The gull nesting ground on South Manitou island was reported to be suffering a sudden and severe population decline, the Coast Guard station at Sleeping Bear Bay was suffering structural damage from years of neglect, and the State of Michigan proposed to build a modern boat harbor at the mouth of the Platte River. On top of that throngs of tourists anxious to see the newly legislated park had so packed D.H. Day State Park on Memorial Day as to back-up traffic on Highway 109, and last but not least, his office was packed with landowners, some anxious to sell their land, others making it clear that the park service would have it only over their dead bodies.5]

Land Acquisition

For the majority of the new national parks created in the 1960s and 1970s the process of land acquisition was a bitter, often protracted, prelude to the agency's normal job of presenting and protecting natural and cultural resources to the public. Historically Americans have loved their national parks. The National Park Service, as the protectors and presenters of the parks historically enjoyed public esteem. But unlike the western parks carved out of the public domain during the early years of the century, condemnation of private property was necessary to create all of the national lakeshores. It was the land acquisition officer, not a friendly ranger in a "Smokey the Bear" hat that provided many local people with their first exposure to the personnel of the National Park Service. At Sleeping Bear the inevitable sense of loss experienced by people moved out of the park area was unfortunately underscored with a feeling of resentment based on the perception that they had not been dealt with fairly. The reasons for the lingering atmosphere of resentment, which is still palpable a generation after the creation of the lakeshore, are a combination of procedure, personality, and circumstance.

Land Acquisition Officers came into an unenviable situation in 1971. Ten years of opposition to the concept of a national park had resulted in the demonization of federal employees. New federal procedures for land acquisition restricted the freedom of action of federal employees in real estate negotiations. The Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970 was designed to ensure uniform and fair treatment of people forced to leave their homes due to federal projects. On the positive side it provided for moving costs and replacement housing. It also mandated that the government would not pay less than the fair market value of a property, as determined by an independent appraisal. The effect of the law was to remove flexibility and discretion from the acquisition officer and make the independent appraisal all-important. Because of the law sellers found government buyers almost totally unwilling to negotiate and they felt they were left with "like it or lump it offers" for their property. This accentuated the personal dynamics of the acquisition program. None of the land acquisition staff had long experience with the National Park Service and most were not committed to living in the project area. The tone set by James E. Williamson; the chief Land Acquisition Officer was unsympathetic, unsmiling, and unrelenting. 6]

Williamson was a large, gruff, bear of a man. He dominated a room by his physical presence and his aggressively blunt manner. He came to the National Park Service, like most of the men involved in the Sleeping Bear Dunes land acquisition program, from the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Immediately before coming to Frankfort he had been stationed at the Apostle Islands. Land acquisition is a difficult business under any circumstances. As John F. Pattie, one of Williamson's assistants, joked "I've been cussed at, kicked downstairs, and had dogs sicced on me, but I have never been insulted!" Being thick-skinned was a necessary characteristic for a lands officer. Yet the men who came to Sleeping Bear Dunes from the Corps of Engineers brought with them a tough, uncompromising style. John Pattie recalled that Williamson and his staff were "hard riding, hard shooting kind of people." Williamson was particularly efficient at his job, "but he did not care about making a good impression." The original chief of land acquisition for the project had been Donald Campbell who bought a home in Frankfurt and settled his family in the community. But Campbell was summarily removed from the project after less than a year because he took too deliberate an approach to the project. Where Campbell had been open and friendly, Williamson was terse and uncommunicative, but the latter style got results. A former bomber pilot, Williamson spoke with a slight southern drawl that marked him as an outsider in northern Michigan. He expected to be resented by people and he was. "You can see from history," he told a journalist, "the great lengths people will go to get land. So when you take their land you touch a sensitive nerve." He steeled himself to complaints with the consolation, "I'm just carrying out Congressional orders." [7]

After setting up the office, acquiring the necessary title information, and mapping the project area the lands program began the process of appraisal. All appraisals were done on a contract basis by independent Michigan-based real estate specialists. The first purchases, as was legislatively mandated, were the "hardship" cases. These were owners who due to their financial or personal circumstances needed to immediately know what they were going to be offered by the government for their land. Some of these were willing sellers, others were elderly people, or the executors of the estate of deceased individuals. Originally the number of "hardship" cases was about fifty. By summer of 1971 it climbed to 100 and by January 1972 over 150 tracts claimed "hardship" status. The effect of this was to slow up the overall program and to fragment into widely dispersed tracts the land that came into park service control. Williamson and the land acquisition staff would have preferred to have moved to acquire whole subdivisions at one time. That way, mapping, acquisition of title evidence, and appraisal could have been done jointly for all tracts in the area. Superintendent Martinek's job was rendered more difficult because he became responsible for the management of non-contiguous tracts often time-consuming to locate and always difficult to protect. [8]

Uncertainty on the part of property owners increased public anxiety over land acquisition issues. Although all owners of property within the lakeshore boundaries were notified of the existence of the park project immediately after the passage of Public Law 91-479, they were generally at sea concerning how it would affect them. Property owners had to come down to Frankfort and discover what classification their tracts had been assigned. If their land was projected for public use it was rated "Category I" and it was doomed to be lost to the government. These lands included all Lake Michigan beaches and their accessways. "Category II" lands, so-called "environmental conservation areas," were a new category to the park service and the source of considerable confusion to everyone concerned. These lands were seen as a backdrop to the public use areas. They had scenic values that needed to be protected but no public access to them was planned. Some of the Category II lands were earmarked for fee simple purchase, while others, less environmentally sensitive, were eligible to remain in private hands, subject to easements or use and development restrictions. Just what those restrictions might be even Superintendent Martinek did not know for more than a year. Owners of such property found themselves in limbo. They were unsure whether they could build on their tracts, and they were inhibited from selling because the value of the land was uncertain. Category III lands, "private use and development area," were more clearly destined to remain open to businesses and vacation homes, although they also were notified that they needed to obtain the National Park Service's approval before they undertook any improvements or modifications to their property. Finally, in November 1972 the National Park Service's Northeast Regional Office, after a review of the lakeshore's legislative history, determined that all Category II lands would be closed to new construction. Owners who objected to such restrictions could sell scenic easements to the government. Of course, once the opportunity to build a vacation house on many of those lands was removed, few tracts retained much value. The cost of such an easement would be so near the price of full value that from a management point-of-view it made more sense to simply undertake fee acquisition. This in turn gave the public the impression that while the park service talked about cooperation with landowners all they were really interested in was acquisition. 9]

Another source of uncertainty was the scenic corridors. Until the exact route of those proposed park drives were laid out several hundred land owners would not know if their land was going to be classified Category I or Category III. Superintendent Martinek made the completion of a centerline survey of the roadway an early priority, but delays in funding dragged out the process. Even more tenuous was the status of people who owned property developed after the December 31, 1964 cut-off date for improved properties to avoid condemnation. Some of these people deserved little sympathy. They had gambled that the lakeshore would never be authorized or that if it were they would be "grandfathered" in through another extension of the cut-off date. There were, however, people who were caught unawares by the prospect of condemnation. Some real estate agents and developers in the area sold property developed after 1964 without ever informing the buyer of the risk they might lose their new summer home. These unfortunates joined the hundreds of other lakeshore property owners, in the words of the Grand Rapids Press, "on pins and needles waiting to see if their land will be needed, or if they can remain." Under the land acquisition plan such owners were offered the option of a five-year retention of use and occupancy. The idea was to give a little time to enjoy their property and the opportunity to make "a transition to a new location."10]

According to the lakeshore's organic act owners of improved property built before the 1964 cut-off date were not required to sell their holdings during their lifetime. Land acquisition staff, however, did approach these property-owners with the option to sell their land and retain either a twenty-five year lease or a lifetime lease on the holding. In such cases a normal purchase price was arrived at, $50,000 for example, which would then be reduced by one percent per year of the total price for twenty-five years, ($12,500) to pay for the leaseback. Many cottage owners leapt at these offers that gave them a large cash payment up front ($37,500 in the above example) and still left them twenty-five years to enjoy their summer homes tax-free. In the case of a lifetime lease the terms were based on an estimate of the individual's life expectancy. The deal, however, did not look as good in 1998 or 1999 when the leases expired. In the 1970s waterfront property had a market value of between $250 and $300 per lakefront foot, twenty-five years later the value had climbed to between $2,500 and $3,000 per foot. The early purchase and leaseback properties were the best buy the land acquisition program made. That alone was reason enough for many property owners who did not want to sell in the first place to resent the program. [11]

In a situation beset by suspicion and uncertainty the dissemination of accurate information was the best way for the park service to calm property owners and begin to build local confidence in the agency. Superintendent Martinek tried to fulfill that role through newspaper columns, participation in public meetings, and one-on-one meetings with land owners. His efforts were, however, undermined to some extent by the almost secretive approach to land acquisition undertaken by James C. Williamson. The chief of land acquisition was close-mouthed about his management of the Sleeping Bear Project. Even the lands specialists working directly under him were kept in the dark as to the overall direction of the program. They were left having to compare notes with each other, or on more than one occasion, going through their boss's desk after hours. Julius Martinek was more than content to remain aloof to the unpleasant details of the land acquisition program, but he did need to have periodic updates as to how much land was nearing acquisition so as to plan site clearance and land protection. As superintendent he needed to provide the public with accurate information on how much land remained to be bought. In May 1973, Martinek tried to improve communication between park operations and land acquisition. After several informal attempts were rebuffed he was forced to send a formal memo to Williamson, even though they worked in offices only a few feet apart. But Williamson was not disposed to communicate with anyone but Eugene Little, who supervised National Park Service land purchases in the Great Lakes region from a field office in Duluth. At Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore the necessary division of authority between land buyers and management was in place, but the superintendent, Hugh Beattie and the chief of acquisition, Brooks Hamilton, liked and respected each other and worked together to avoid "checkerboard-mishmashes land acquisition." The absence of such rapport led to occasional but bitter clashes between Williamson and Martinek. The loser in such exchanges was the overall land protection program as well as the relationship between the agency and the landowners. 12]

Chief Land Acquisition Officer Williamson was not on the job more than a few weeks before his tight-lipped approach and icy disposition was the subject of public controversy. In January 1972, at his first appearance before the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Citizens Advisory Commission Williamson angered commission members by refusing to tell them the number of tracts which his staff had purchased to date. He reported that a total of 1400 tracts were going to be bought and that he hoped to have between 600 and 700 acquired by the fall of 1973 and that he hoped to close on the remaining number by the end of 1974. Aside from those projections, however, Williamson stonewalled virtually every question from the commission. Some commission members took Williamson's studied silence as an expression of thinly veiled contempt. In reaction they resolved that at every future meeting an exact accounting of the number of tracts purchased be made public. Williamson responded by rarely ever attending another Commission meeting. The fallout from the confrontation eventually made its way to Washington, D.C. Senator Philip A. Hart complained directly to Secretary of the Interior Rogers B. Morton that Williamson was "non-cooperative." "It is indeed unfortunate that this situation has to arise," commented a commission member. "We are all living in a particularly sensitive area as far as the lakeshore is concerned and it seems to me we need every bit of cooperation, credibility and good public and personal relations we can possibly muster up." [13]

The distrust engendered by Williamson's manner did nothing to inspire landowner's confidence in the probity of the process he headed. By contracting out all appraisals to independent, non-government real estate specialists the park service hoped to demonstrate the fairness of the process. Yet the large number of different appraisers produced widely different evaluations of similarly situated properties. There was an internal check on this problem. An appraiser in the Frankfort office reviewed all independent appraisals. If he thought an appraisal was incorrect, it was reviewed at the regional field office in Duluth. Only if that appraiser agreed that the initial valuation was wrong would a second independent appraisal be ordered. By the winter of 1972-1973 property owners were complaining in the press and to each other that the government was frequently undervaluing their land. John Stanz, a Glen Arbor resident appointed as one of Leelanau County's representatives on the advisory commission, complained that on one 2,000-foot stretch of Lake Michigan appraisals varied between $132 per foot to $158 per foot, in spite of the fact the tracts were nearly identical to one another. Charges were also made that park service land acquisition staff were using "high pressure tactics to force quick acceptance of their appraisals." Property owners countered that they "are entitled to a reasonable time to check comparables after you receive the government appraisal." The fact was, however, Williamson did not care what comparables property owners came up with. Federal law said he could not pay less than the price set by an independent appraisal, but once that official appraisal was done he did not intend to pay more than that value. "As it is now, the park service makes an offer based on one appraiser's opinion which may differ with the opinion of another appraiser—and won't even discuss it," complained John Stanz in 1973. "That's probably the biggest problem—the 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude of the land acquisition program." 14]

The inflexibility of the federal land acquisition guidelines was exasperated by the rapid rise in real estate values in the Sleeping Bear area during the early and mid 1970s. Improved property soared in value as the "halo" of national park status raised the profile of the dune country and the prospect of the lakeshore froze development to those sites built upon by December 1964. "Some land values have gone up 300 to 400 per cent since we've been here," commented Superintendent Martinek in late 1975. There were several results of such an explosive increase in value—all of them negative for the park service. Because the real estate market was volatile the lag between appraisal and purchase often led to disputes between the agency and landowners over the true value of the property. Even people who were willing sellers to the agency, or hardship cases who sold early, later adopted the position that they had been cheated out of their land because of the sharp increase in land values during the 1970s. People complained that the park service had picked up a lot of its early lands on the cheap. In reality the agency was in the unenviable position of inflating the very market in which it conducted land acquisitions. The farther the program advanced toward completion the dearer and dearer recreational property within the Sleeping Bear Lakeshore became. The general inflationary condition of the United States economy in the 1970s, when the rapid rise in oil prices and deficit spending spurred by the war in Vietnam caused sharp annual increases in the overall cost-of-living, further distorted estimated land values. [15]

Soaring land values soon outstripped the $19.8 million dollars authorized for Sleeping Bear by Congress. By July 1974, the agency had acquired only 639 tracts of the more than 1,400 needed to complete land acquisition. A new congressional authorization was required before the program could go forward. Two months later Senator Philip Hart continued his strong support for the park by pushing through the Senate Interior Committee a whopping $38 million dollar increase in the Sleeping Bear land acquisition ceiling. Unfortunately, funding efforts stalled at the authorization stage. The receipt of actual land acquisition funds was held up in the U.S. House Appropriations Committee. Here the vast expansion of the park service in the late 1960s and the runaway inflation of the 1970s created a log jam of new park areas all requiring more funds to continue land acquisition. At a September 1974 meeting of the Midwest Regional Advisory Committee, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to counsel the park service in the ten state heartland, one of the members complained that the delayed land acquisition programs in the region had "severely damaged" the credibility of the agency "and ridicule is evident." The lakeshore's old enemies were revived by the difficulties. "Hart's Fiasco should have been discarded as a waste of taxpayers money years ago," the Leelanau Enterprise editorialized. Hope was even rekindled that the whole project might be abandoned. Superintendent Martinek advised the regional office "many people think we are folding up." [16]

The shortage of land acquisition funds definitely hurt the lakeshore, but far from "folding up" there was serious consideration in late 1973 and early 1974 of expanding the Sleeping Bear park. In June 1973, Lynn Dillin the sole private landowner on South Fox Island was killed while attempting to land a plane on that island. At the time Dillin was involved in discussions with Congressman Vander Jagt and the State of Michigan regarding the sale of his island. South Fox Island is located twenty miles north of North Manitou Island and was never considered for inclusion in the lakeshore by Allen Edmunds' Great Lakes Shoreline Survey. Yet the island possessed the same combination of wild dunes and isolated beaches that made the Manitous a recreation asset. Sleeping Bear Advisory Board members Louis Twardzik and Mrs. Peter Williams proposed that the Nature Conservancy be enlisted to buy the island from Dillin's estate. Following an amendment of the Sleeping Bear organic act, the National Park Service could then repurchase the island for the lakeshore. From a long-term environmental perspective the plan was highly desirable. The problem, however, was the short-run problem that the National Park Service did not have money enough to buy lands within the existing park. Bold leadership within the agency might have seen an opportunity, not an obstacle in that the lakeshore would have to go to Congress to have its acquisition ceiling increased. But bold thinking was lacking. Superintendent Martinek was cool to the idea due to the potential management problems of operating another island. The Northeast Region Office recommended that the South Fox Island proposal not be encouraged by the park service because of the existing shortage of acquisition funds throughout the agency. 17]

The first hope of ending the budget impasse came in the spring of 1975,when President Gerald Ford included a $5.4 million dollar appropriation request in his 1976 budget. That plus some supplemental monies jump-started the stalled land acquisition program late in 1975. By that time frustration was running very high among landowners in the lakeshore area. Particularly disgusted were people who owned undeveloped property in portions of the park designated for public use. Many had purchased their tracts to build vacation or retirement homes. The creation of the lakeshore foreclosed that possibility. But their assets, in some cases life savings, were frozen in the unusable property until the park service could buy the land. They were locked in a position of paying increasingly high taxes on land they could neither use nor sell. In desperation, thirty-one property owners launched a class action suit to win a refund on their property taxes. Five years after the lakeshore had been created over their strenuous objections the worst fears of many landowners had been realized. [18]

The shortcomings of the lands program directly affected the land that was destined to become part of the lakeshore. People upset about the park service's non-negotiable offers or the delays in actual acquisition often reacted by opening their lands to logging. For some it was an economic necessity, for others a final gesture of defiance. Superintendent Martinek warned the public that clear-cut tracts would be purchased at a lower price than forested holdings. In June of 1972 the Advisory Commission debated the subject and requested supporting information from land acquisition so that Martinek could dissuade people from denuding their holdings. Not until a year later did Williamson bother to inform the superintendent that because of the small second growth timber on Benzie and Leelanau tracts, real estate in the lakeshore area had too little timber value to effect the final sale price. Of course, this determination undermined Martinek's public creditability. It was also another example of how the federal government's no negotiation acquisition policy worked to the long-term detriment of the lakeshore by actually encouraging people to have their lands clear-cut for pulpwood before accepting a park service offer. Local residents concerned with the beauty of the Sleeping Bear landscape could justly complain that park service policies were having a negative impact. Many denuded tracts came under lakeshore control littered with the slashings of a hasty logging job, devoid of aesthetic value and real fire hazards. [19]

Typical of the frustrations sparked by the land acquisition process were the negotiations with Pierce Stocking. The former lumberman owned one of the largest and most important tracts of private land within the lakeshore. Unlike many small property owners Stocking was in favor of the lakeshore. He even had made many of his purchases with the view of eventually selling to the National Park Service. What he had not bargained on was the protracted battle to create the lakeshore. The long legislative fight had prompted Stocking to seek alternate means to profit from his land, so in 1967 he opened his own dunes park. Sleeping Bear Dunes Park was popular with visitors. His scenic road offered people the only drive-up access to the dunes. Stocking had no intention of standing in the way of the lakeshore but he had made improvements on the land and wanted to be compensated for them. He had waited since 1961 to sell to the government, now that they were willing to buy he intended to get his price—after all, they could not have a viable lakeshore without his property. When the land acquisition staff approached Stocking with a take it, or leave it, offer of $2.8 million he was angered and dismayed. "The government is taking advantage of every possible hardship," the gray-haired, lumberman in his late sixties complained, "including the strain of years in order to pick up land at discount prices." Unlike ordinary summer homeowners Stocking had the clout to arrange a personal meeting with National Park Service Director Hartzog, but the solution they arrived at, to arrange alternate appraisals, fell through. The National Park Service took the veteran lumberman into federal court where he insisted his 2,976 acres were worth $4.3 million. The case incensed many people who wanted to sell their lands to the government but who were told that acquisition funds had run out. For better part of a year the issue was in the hands of the U.S. District Court of Judge Noel Fox. Finally, a settlement was reached in the fall of 1976. Stocking received about $3 million for his lands, the day after the payment was delivered he died of a heart attack. 20]

Nothing came easy at Sleeping Bear, not even the transfer of state lands to the new lakeshore. From the beginning the Michigan Department of Natural Resources had supported the establishment of the park. But during the legislative fight the issue of state park lands and the fears of Sleeping Bear communities about the loss of a tax base for public education had become merged. To help break the log jam that prevented action on the lakeshore issue the Michigan state legislature broke with precedent and pledged to provide temporary payments to the effected communities, beginning when the state park lands were transferred to the park service. While the legislature was nearly unanimous when the tax reimbursements were purely hypothetical, opposition arose in 1973 and 1974 when attempts were made to transfer state lands to the lakeshore. Governor William G. Milliken refused to let the legislature back-out of its commitment to the dune communities and he opposed any land transfer until the tax reimbursement was granted. Finally, in December 1974 the state Senate passed a bill providing a total payment of $2.5 million, to be portioned out over a ten-year period. But no sooner was that problem removed than another issue arose. The original grant of land for the creation of D.H. Day State Park had contained a reversionary clause returning the lands to Day's heirs if the State ever ceased to use them for a state park. Fortunately a suit by the Citizens Council and Leelanau County to trigger the reversion clause was rejected by Federal District Court as well as the Court of Appeals. A last ditch suit to permanently enjoin the State of Michigan from transferring the state park was thrown out by Leelanau County District Court in December 1974. Nonetheless, a suit by the heirs of D.H. Day remained active until 1981. Another issue that had to be settled was oil and mineral rights. To guarantee no future offshore oil drilling the Michigan Department of Natural Resources also agreed to turn over 10,360 acres of bottomlands to the National Park Service. With that final stumbling block removed the State of Michigan, fittingly on April 1, 1975, formally deeded its dune park lands to the national lakeshore. The acquisition brought the size of the lakeshore to over 20,000 acres, about one third of the lands mandated by Congress. [21]

The slow pace of land acquisition at Sleeping Bear Dunes was shared by scores of other national park units planned or created during Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall's expansive administration. Udall had wanted to double the size of the National Park system during his time in office, fifteen years later there were nearly a hundred more park units than when he had taken office. Although Udall's tenure ended in 1968 the park expansion machinery he set in motion kept on running. Between 1973 and 1976 alone there were twenty-three new national park units created. Congress, however, displayed less alacrity when it came to appropriating the funds to allow the parks to actually be established. In 1976, National Park Service Director Gary Everhardt complained that the agency suffered from a land acquisition backlog, which approached the $500 million mark. While Sleeping Bear had been granted permission to spend an additional $38 million on lands, it received actual appropriations in annual drips of $3 million or $5 million, funds which were exhausted in three or four months. At almost any time in the mid-1970s Jim Williamson's land acquisition staff had more than a million dollars worth of transactions ready to go but for the actual funds to seal the deal. When the lakeshore had been created, the National Park Service promised local stakeholders that they would be dealt with fairly and promptly. "Well, here it is six years later," Superintendent Martinek ruefully observed to a Herald Washington reporter, "and we're still promising them the same things we were then." [22]

The obvious solution to the crisis was for Congress to find more funds for the National Park Service. In 1976 both the House and the Senate passed separate bills designed to increase the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Federal off-shore oil leases, which provided the bulk of the money for the fund had burgeoned in value following the OPEC oil embargo in 1973. Since the oil embargo had been a prime catalyst in the national fourteen percent inflation rate that was playing havoc with land acquisition planning, it made sense to many legislators to increase the amount of federal revenues dedicated to conservation. President Gerald Ford, however, understood that runaway federal deficits were a spur to inflation and he insisted that off-shore oil revenues be directed to push the budget more in balance. Fortunately for the National Park Service 1976 was an election year. A compromise was reached between Ford's Office of Management and Budget and the Congress to expand the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The former Eagle Scout and the first President from Michigan, announced the Bicentennial Land Heritage Act in September of 1976, which proposed increasing the fund. The agreement buoyed hopes among the land acquisition staff that they would be able to complete their purchases by the end of 1978. Like every other expression of optimism about land acquisition it was far from accurate. [23]

North Manitou Island was a microcosm of the protracted land acquisition program. North Manitou Island was not purchased until 1984, when it could have and probably should have been purchased a decade sooner. The island had been somewhat reluctantly accepted as part of the lakeshore by conservationists and the park service during the highly politicized legislative process. It was largely owned by the William R. Angell Foundation which donated revenues generated from its management of the island's forest and game to a number of small Michigan colleges. The management of the foundation would have been vastly simplified if their title to the remote island could have been turned into several million dollars of endowment investments. Yet like other willing sellers the foundation directors held a much higher estimate of the value of the island than did the National Park Service's contract appraisers. In 1977, the land acquisition staff offered $4.5 million for the 15,000-acre island, an offer the directors termed an "insult." Like many other land owners the director's assumed that since "the park service made its first offer of purchase," it would be a "matter of negotiations" to close the deal. But no negotiations followed and the purchase hung in abeyance until condemnation proceedings were initiated. A three-judge federal land commission heard testimony from Angell Foundation witnesses that the island was worth as much as $20 million. When the commission finally presented its report to Judge Noel Fox it was clear that the park service appraisers had under-valued the island. In 1979, the National Park Service agreed to an interim settlement with the Angell Foundation in which the foundation ceased their activities on the island in exchange for a $3.2 million down payment on their holdings. A final settlement was expected shortly. Instead it was six more years before the purchase was finalized. During that time North Manitou was managed as what one former island resident called a "no man's land." Most private dwellings on the island were closed, it was off-limits to lakeshore visitors and, save for the foundation's caretakers, devoid of human activity. Finally in August of 1984, the Angell Foundation and the park service came to terms and the island was sold for $12.5 million. [24]

A generation after the bulk of the land acquisition took place a blanket of bitterness still covers the Sleeping Bear area. Stories of people being forced off their land linger in the conversations of those who continue to live, work, or vacation in the area. These stories are a very real part of the National Park Service's legacy in northwest Michigan. "If you do not come forward and sell us your meadows," a land acquisition officer is reported to have said to an elderly school teacher, "we're going to take all of your property and you're not going to have a place to go to. And your going to take very little money for it because we're going to take what we feel when we get you in condemnation court." The woman in question, Leone Adair stood her ground and retained a portion of her land. Others were intimidated by the government land buyers and accepted offers that later seemed criminally low, especially in light of the escalation of property values. 25]

The fate of the Joanne and Everett Kittendorf's Lake Michigan summer home is an example of the combination of motives that drove previously satisfied cottage owners to sell to the National Park Service. "A big tall man did come to the door, with a dark suit and sunglasses," Joanne Kittendorf remembered. The acquisition officer threatened, "We'll get your land one way or the other." That demeanor intimidated the couple. "Then we read an article in the paper that said 300,000 people would come up here for the summer. We decided that if the park developed there...it wouldn't be a good place to stay. So we sold to the government." They sold the house they had built in 1959 and 400 feet of Lake Michigan beach land for $60,000. [26]

Fear was an important factor which drove Sleeping Bear land acquisition. Williamson and his buyers used the threat of condemnation to "buffalo" some buyers into accepting the government's price. But the climate of fear in which the land sales took place was not all of Williamson's making. The scare tactics of those who opposed the creation of the lakeshore worked so well that hundreds of property owners convinced themselves that they did not want to stay in the area after the establishment of the park. The protections for property owners within the lakeshore so carefully planned by Senator Philip Hart were ignored by some land owners who feared the "feds" were going to take their land one way or another. Fear that their lands were going to be overrun by millions of tourists from Detroit griped some cottage owners. Fear that the park would lead to a rapid escalation in property taxes drove some farmers to sell. Most of the fear-mongers were sincere in their dire predictions for local property owners, although in any real-estate panic unscrupulous dealers can profit from hastily sold assets. One fear easily forgotten today was the fear of losing your summer home to Lake Michigan. The period from the late 1960s to the late 1980s was one of high water levels on the Great Lakes. Scores of lakefront homes literally tumbled into the lake during the 1970s. One antidote to fear of the future was a guaranteed government check. For elderly people or farmers in a marginal situation uncertainty about the future was a constant factor. To sell your property to the government was an alternative that walked right up to the door and made itself available. [27]

In the popular memory of the Sleeping Bear country the park service looms large as an agent of dispossession, an alien force severing people's roots in the land. Yet the truth of that memory must be balanced by the fact that hundreds of property owners were willing sellers. National Park Service personnel have their own selective memory of land acquisition that requires balance. "It seems that some of the land-acquisition people never understood the principles behind the Park Service," a lakeshore official explained to a journalist in 1990. The lands staff are usually described as "a breed apart" not of the "real park service,"—as if by disassociating the people who made the land purchases from the national lakeshore, the park could be spared the divisiveness of its origins. Yet, the fuzzy and warm park service that gives fireside nature talks and protects bald eagle nestings exists because the Jim Williamsons of the agency acquired the resource. The essence of Sleeping Bear lakeshore is the happy tourists who gather to enjoy spectacular sunsets along Pierce Stocking Drive and the solitary backpackers exploring North Manitou Island's dunes and forests. But just as surely it is also a nationalized landscape made available to the many through the sacrifice of the sacred property rights of an unfortunate few. Taking the land is as much a part of what the National Park Service is as is managing the land. [28]

By the spring of 1977 lakeshore land buyers had managed to secure the bulk of the small private land holdings within the park. Closings had been made on 27,000 acres of land. These acquisitions and the transfer of state holdings brought the total of lakeshore lands to more than half of the 70,000 acres mandated by Congress. This threshold marked a major turning point in the lakeshore's history. With half of the land base under park service administration the way was cleared for the official dedication of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in October 1977. Jim Williamson's name was not mentioned at the dedication ceremony, let alone were he or any of his staff formally thanked or invited to sit with the dignitaries on the stage. No sooner was the dedication completed than the land acquisition officers went back to their tract books and appraisals, the dirty job of making a park continued .

A Sense of Place: The Beginning of Historic Site Management

When Superintendent Martinek first arrived at Sleeping Bear Dunes, the only resource he had to manage were the United States Coast Guard Station buildings at Glen Haven. The buildings had gone surplus after World War II. During the long legislative wrangle over the lakeshore, Martinek would often visit the site while on summer vacation. The picturesque buildings, the glorious swimming beach, and the broad sweep of Sleeping Bear Bay were the images he held of the lakeshore while working at Yellowstone and in Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, by the time the park was created in 1970 the station buildings were in serious disrepair. With no caretaker the grounds had become overgrown and the structures were ravaged by vandals, scroungers, and beer-blasting teenagers. In the fall of 1971, when the lakeshore received its first park ranger, thirty-one year old Dean C. Einwalter, Martinek settled him and his family into a house adjacent to the station, and the ranger began the demanding task of restoring the run-down complex. The station became the lakeshore's interim contact station for visitors to the new area in part because it was picturesque, in part because it was situated in a highly visible location, but also because it was one of the few buildings owned by the park service at Sleeping Bear.29]

At an early date historical resources took on a significant role at Sleeping Bear Dunes for the same blend of reasons, timing and circumstance, that had led to the Coast Guard station being selected as the first visitor contact station. Like all of the seashores and lakeshores created in 1960s and 1970s Sleeping Bear fell heir to the lighthouses, life-saving stations, and coast guard facilities that had constituted the first federal presence on the nation's coastal waterways. Unlike other more remote national lakeshores such as Pictured Rocks and Apostle Islands, Sleeping Bear was located astride what was historically one of the busiest marine passage ways in the United States. During the nineteenth century the majority of vessels bound out of, or into, Lake Michigan had to make their way through the channel between Sleeping Bear Dune and the Manitou Islands. It was not unusual to have more than 100 schooners or steam propellers pass through the Manitou Passage in the course of a day. This legacy, with its tangible remnants of shipwreck sites and lighthouses, was barely alluded to in the early 1960s studies that recommend the creation of the lakeshore. The interim master plan for the lakeshore, however, did at least call for a maritime museum. By the time the lakeshore had been created by Congress in 1970, however, both the public and the National Park Service were more attuned to cultural resources. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which evolved out of the same national desire to save what was best of the American landscape as the lakeshore parks, gave the National Park Service an important new leadership role in the preservation of historic sites. Superintendent Martinek's personality also played a role. He was a hands-on manager with little to manage in the first years of land acquisition. He was a doer, sensitive to criticism that the park service was moving too slow in developing the lakeshore. Martinek was familiar with the outstanding job of preservation and interpretation that had been done with lighthouses and life-saving stations at the first national seashore, Cape Hatteras. He grasped the opportunities for historical interpretation offered by the park's setting and the National Historic Preservation Act and made a long-term commitment to historical resources.30]

Martinek's inclination to make an early commitment to historical resources in part emanated from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Advisory Commission. Preservation, historic and otherwise, was on the minds of the men appointed to represent Leelanau and Benzie counties on the commission. The greatest fear of local residents was that a national park would leave their roads clogged with out-of-state cars and the landscape transformed into tourist honky-tonk strips. One of the first substantive motions passed by the new advisory commission reflected their desire for the park service to use historic preservation to maintain the character of the landscape. At a June 1971 meeting commission members pressed Superintendent Martinek concerning the fate of the buildings on lands purchased for inclusion in the lakeshore. "There are some of the loveliest old barns up in this part of the world that you've ever seen in your life," advised Charles A. Boyer of Manistee. "To me it would be a catastrophe to bulldoze those things down or burn them down." Boyer advocated at least saving the boards from some of the old structures as they were made with planks cut from the hearts of old growth trees, the size of which no longer existed in Michigan. He also encouraged the superintendent to solicit local citizens for artifacts that might be used to interpret the history of the area. Others commented on the value of saving the old Coast Guard and lighthouse structures. At the urging of Leelanau County's Noble Travis the Commission fashioned a motion "that all areas of historic value be preserved such as a farm." The Commission Chair, Carl T. Johnson of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, clarified the motion for the members: "It means to protect all or as much as is possible of the historical value of the Sleeping Bear." When the motion carried on a voice vote Johnson commented: "That's one of the first motions this commission has passed." [31]

Superintendent Martinek wasted little time in acting upon the motion. He enlisted Gordon Charles a writer for the Traverse City Record-Eagle to help encourage the donation of artifacts and funds for historical exhibits. Funds and materials came in slowly, but it was not the amount or volume which mattered most. In undertaking the effort the lakeshore was carrying out the suggestions of the Advisory Commission and it was for the first time developing a positive relationship with the communities which had so bitterly opposed the park, yet with whom the National Park Service was inextricably bound. The effort struck gold when Martinek identified the Frederickson collection. This was a very large assemblage of photographs, documents, and artifacts largely collected in the Manitou Passage area by Arthur Frederickson, a Frankfort resident. For several years he and his wife exhibited the materials locally in a converted barn. After Arthur Frederickson died the upkeep of the collection became too much for his widow who sold the entire inventory to the Great Lakes Research Center at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Many people committed to the local history regretted the loss of the collection to an out of state institution. Martinek discovered that Professor Richard C. Wright, Director of the Center, was more interested in the photographs and printed materials than he was in the artifacts, which soon became a storage problem for the university. Wright offered to sell the artifact collection to the lakeshore for $12,000. The Frederickson artifacts were outstanding, including the nameplates of ships renowned in Lake Michigan history, navigation equipment, and life-saving technology indispensable in interpreting the history of the lakeshore's historic maritime buildings. Although the National Park Service had four new national lakeshores in the region, each of which had to interpret the Great Lake's maritime history, they would not come up with the acquisition funds. Public donations, although encouraging, were not enough to make an offer for the collection. Fortunately, in September of 1972 the Spencer family of Traverse City, in memory of their father who had grown up near Point Betsie, presented Martinek with a check for the full amount. Within a matter of months a portion of the collection was on display within the renovated Glen Haven Coast Guard station visitor's center. [32]

Nor did Martinek stop there. He successfully solicited the donation of a reconstruction of a nineteenth century U.S. Life Saving Service surf boat. Then, while perusing a list of surplus federal equipment, he discovered a thirty-two foot, self-bailing, motorized Coast Guard lifeboat. At first the regional office was cool to the idea allowing Martinek to put a claim on the boat. "We got two Coast Guard stations, one on the island and one on the mainland," Martinek reasoned. "There is nothing but old ladders and boxes in there. Wouldn't it be great if someone peeked on the window and saw a boat?" That logic secured permission to claim the boat but the lakeshore had no budget to transport it from the surplus depot in Toledo to Grand Haven. Again fortune favored the lakeshore. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources also tried to put a claim on the boat, but all they wanted was its motor. Martinek promised to give them the motor if they would deliver the boat to the lakeshore. In this manner with donations from the public and artifacts salvaged from the scrap heap the lakeshore, at a very early date in its development, built an outstanding maritime history collection. [33]

Although only open a portion of the season, the Glen Haven Visitor Center recorded over 7,000 visitors in 1972. The early efforts to preserve and restore for use the Coast Guard stations at Glen Haven and South Manitou Island gave the park service a positive presence in the area. The aggressive collection of maritime history artifacts in a small but significant way helped to bond the intruding federal agency to the isolated communities of northwest Michigan. At the October 27, 1972 meeting of the advisory commission members endorsed Martinek's actions and called for an even more extensive history program. Citing the legislative mandate for the lakeshore to protect "scenic, scientific, and historic features contributing to public enjoyment," two Leelanau County commission members proposed a motion that "money be made available to acquire tools, equipment, buildings and such other facilities as may be needed to set up within the confines of the Lakeshore, an old time farm, a sugar bush, an old saw mill, a lumber camp, and fishing boats and gear for public display and education. The motion carried and the lakeshore collected, as donations were made, items that related to those eras. Among the most significant of these were a personal collection of farm equipment and personal items documenting the early history of South Manitou Island. William Herd, a seasonal interpreter, provided what momentum remained after 1973 in the historical collection effort with a background in environmental education and a passion for history. Herd devoted considerable attention to maintaining and expanding the small boat collection begun by Martinek. [34]

During the first two years of the lakeshore's existence historic preservation and interpretation played a large role in management activities. Superintendent Martinek's commitment to the lakeshore's maritime history resources laid the foundation for a major outlay of financial resources to maintain a collection of buildings suffering from a generation of neglect and deferred maintenance. The acquisition of the Frederickson collection determined the emphasis of the interpretation program for years to come. Yet while there was a desire among local residents for an even more expansive history program within the lakeshore, the fact was that during the remainder of the decade of the 1970s the National Park Service was strained to meet its most basic land management responsibilities. Dreams of historical and environmental education centers remained just that, and awaited another day.

Interpreting and Managing the Lakeshore

The man who was given the task of preparing the Frederickson collection for public display was Charles R. Parkinson. The New Jersey native was a mid-career park naturalist who in June of 1972 began from scratch the lakeshore's interpretation program. Parkinson had a Master's degree in Geology, which proved useful in interpreting the park's complex glacial history. More important, Parkinson was a resourceful and independent worker. After joining the park in May 1972 he immediately set to work readying the Glen Haven station as an interim visitors center. Pretty much on their own he and Paul "Pete" LaValley, the lakeshore's first seasonal maintenance staff, swept out the decades of bird dung and broken glass to make the building useful. Then they improvised a small set of exhibits, utilizing a small part of the Frederickson collection. So crude was the contact station that when it first opened it even lacked toilet facilities. For two seasons the Glen Haven visitor's center was manned by the first of the lakeshore's seasonal interpreters, Joseph Jackson, a retired public relations man from Empire, Michigan. [35]

During that first off-season Parkinson began the lakeshore's environmental education programs with local schools. Yet hostility toward the lakeshore still ran high among the teachers, who felt that the park service threatened the overall quality of their schools by compromising the area tax base. It took years of frustrating work to build a network of teachers who would be involved with the park on a continuing basis. He also expanded the historical program by initiating a series of oral history interviews with individuals knowledgeable of the local history and began a collection of historical photographs of the park area. [36]

The quality of the interpretation program picked up considerably in 1973 when Parkinson was able to open a new visitor's center in a two-story house overlooking Glen Lake. The house had been acquired as part of the lands program and with minor alterations it was made into a very serviceable visitor center. Parkinson and Martinek purchased a stock of defective hollow-core doors and used them as highly effective exhibit panels. The first floor exhibits presented visitors with a view of the kind of park the lakeshore was planned to be as well as with an introduction to the area's glacial history. The second floor was devoted to the Frederickson collection and included the best of the ship name boards and a stunning Fresnel lighthouse lens. Visitation at the new center more than doubled what the interim Glen Haven facility had been able to handle. One of the nicest features of the new center was that it was surrounded by lakeshore land, which allowed Parkinson to make use of a closed road to lay out a one-mile nature trail. During the winter the trail was converted into a popular cross-country ski trail. This made the visitor center a busy location not only during the summer months but also during any weekend during ski season.37]

The location of the park's interim headquarters in Frankfort, well south of the lakeshore, was a source of frustration to all of the early employees. While Martinek, of necessity, made his home in Frankfort, he advocated the settlement of the other full-time park staff closer to the resource. There was, nonetheless, a lot of time wasted by the staff "dead-heading" from Frankfort to the more remote Leelanau portions of the park. Dean Einwalter, the first park ranger, particularly felt the logistical problems and isolation. Settled in a rental house near the Glen Haven Coast Guard station, Einwalter and his family were viewed by many locals as unwanted outsiders. His two daughters bore the brunt of hostility at the Glen Arbor school while he had the unenviable task of trying to head-off conflicts between lakefront property owners and visitors asserting the right to stroll on "public" beaches. As more and more properties were purchased Einwalter had to develop a regular inspection patrol to protect against vandalism and unlawful entry. While Einwalter functioned for a time as a Ranger Division of one, he also served as the first maintenance supervisor. Sometimes trying to do too much too fast came at a high cost. With the help of seasonal staff Einwalter took on the task of personally reinstalling over 400 broken window panes at the Coast Guard station. The job was completed, but not before Einwalter had to be hospitalized for inhaling toxic fumes from the torch he used to strip paint from the old windows.38]

The anger of many local residents toward park personnel blighted the early years of the lakeshore. Petty harassment in the form of graffiti or intemperate letters was frequent. "The animosity was fierce," recalled Toni Perfect of Leelanau County, "People were just terrified." For some, acceptance of the lakeshore developed quickly after they understood they would not be overwhelmed by thousands of tourists. Others stoked the fires of resentment for years. Raymond Kimpel, the lakeshore's first Chief Ranger, witnessed an extreme example of this bitterness. He and another park employee stopped to admire a tree on the property of an elderly resident. The man rushed to his garage, took out a chainsaw and cut down the tree. Fortunately, most local people adopted the attitude of a Glen Arbor store owner, "You can't carry bitterness and rancor forever. It's here [the lakeshore], so the best thing to do is build upon it and not make it an albatross upon our necks."39]

One of the nagging problems facing Superintendent Martinek and his staff was the lack of development funds for historic preservation, transportation, interpretation, and resource protection. In 1972 some $242,000 of planning and development money earmarked for Sleeping Bear was lost through across-the-board budget cuts. Martinek's solution was "bootstrapping," a determination to go forward regardless of the lack of staff or budget. The renovation of the Coast Guard station was a case in point. Martinek had no maintenance staff to order to clean out the buildings or clear away some small cedar trees and brush that had grown up between the structures. Instead Martinek grabbed a chainsaw and with the volunteered help of a land acquisition officer he cut down the brush himself. He kept up pressure on the agency to properly fund the lakeshore, but the scores of new parks in the region made each request a hard fight. In 1972, Martinek asked the regional office for a full-time maintenance man, only to be greeted with the question: "What do you need a maintenance man for?" The superintendent, who knew how to make a point emphatically, shot back: "What the hell—what do you need a maintenance man for?" At first the park suffered from a lack of equipment. The lakeshore office had a single typewriter mounted on a borrowed typing stand. When the Frankfort Chamber-of-Commerce needed their typing stand back, the lakeshore had no where to put their only piece of office equipment. For more than a year the park staff had to use their personal vehicles for much of the lakeshore business. Tired of the lack of cooperation he received from the General Services Administration Motor Pool, Martinek set up his own motor pool. He combed the inventories of federal surplus centers in southern Michigan and Ohio. Army surplus jeeps became a temporary means of transportation. Martinek regularly led Parkinson and Einwalter on foraging expeditions to the surplus warehouses and returning with trailers filled with desks, office equipment, shovels, and tents—"anything you could possibly need in setting-up a park"—pulled by a surplus jeep or truck. So successful was Martinek at building his park with surplus equipment that superintendents at Apostle Islands and Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway sought his advice on how to fill their needs.40]

Day-to-day operations in the early days of the lakeshore were dominated by the delicate job of managing a transition from private to public ownership. All structures which were purchased through land acquisition had to be boarded up. A small number were converted to temporary staff housing, while most were sold to the highest bidder for removal or salvage. Access roads to such properties as well as many of the "two-track" roads improvised over the years by hunters or fisherman had to be closed off to regulate access to park holdings. Off-road vehicles, especially dirt-bikes and snowmobiles, were particularly hard to stop. In December 1974, Superintendent Martinek, citing the Congressional mandate to "preserve" the area, banned snowmobiles from the lakeshore completely. Signage was the best way to warn users of the restriction as well as to deter visitors from camping on private land or driving up to private residences. Some local residents were quite prickly about tourists who strayed on to private land. One fellow planted his own sign at the head of his drive: "Caution! This farm does not belong to the Federal Gov't yet, it is privately owned. Anyone caught trespassin' will be shot! Try me & see."41]

One example of the lakeshore trying to do too much too soon was the establishment of a branch of the International Youth Hostel at Sleeping Bear in 1974. Superintendent Martinek issued a special use permit to the American Youth Hostel in November of 1973 for their use of an almost new six unit motel near Glen Lake. The relationship, however, got off to a rocky start. Both the Grand Rapids and Detroit chapters alternated between trying to "take charge" of the facility and ignoring it. Further problems were encountered do to the unsatisfactory management of the hostel's initial managers or "house parents." Card carrying members of the International Youth Hostel were denied access to the facility in favor of friends of the local managers. Nor was the hostel well received in Leelanau County. Martinek received numerous complaints that the American Youth Hostel was being favored with use of an excellent facility over other groups, more locally based involved with promoting outdoor recreation. Over time, through the involvement of the National Hostel Director, the Sleeping Bear Hostel was placed on a solid footing. Nonetheless, it continued to be a source of problems to the lakeshore management. The hostel was surrounded by large tracks of private land. The Sleeping Bear hostel was popular with cross-country skiers who regularly ignored posted warnings and skied on to private holdings. Pierce Stocking became particularly angry at the way his lands were seemingly being used as a public recreation area at the very time the government was fighting him in court over the true value of his holdings. The fact was the lakeshore had too small a staff and too small of a land base to accommodate the hostel in the mid-1970s. In 1976, the permit of the American Youth Hostel expired and was not renewed.42]

The first resource management crisis for the lakeshore was the status of the gull colony on South Manitou Island. The nesting grounds of the herring and ring-billed gulls had been noted in the original Great Lakes Shoreline Survey as one of the reasons for including South Manitou Island in the lakeshore proposal. The colony was believed to have been created in the 1920s with its population swelling in the early 1960s. By the time the lakeshore was created gull populations throughout the Great Lakes region were in decline. Nonetheless, the initial Sleeping Bear Dunes master plan called for the Sea Gull Point area of the island to be a "public use and development area," which alarmed knowledgeable people that the nesting area might be over-run by tourists. Closer inspection of the problem revealed there was a particularly high mortality rate among juvenile gulls. Initially this was blamed on the presence of motorized vehicles in the area of the nesting grounds. An inspection of the area by the Regional Biologist Max Holden led to an end of the use of cannon nets to capture gull chicks for banding, and a less intrusive approach even by scientists. After acquiring the property at Sea Gull Point in the summer of 1973, the lakeshore commissioned a multi-year study of the nesting grounds. The study, conducted by Professor William E. Southern of Northern Illinois University, did lead to plans to provide more isolation from visitors for the colony. The study also indicated that a large part of the colony's decline was from natural predator action. Nocturnal raids by the island's foxes devastated the gull chick population. The study indicated the complexity managing the isolated islands and that management decisions needed to be based on broad based scientific knowledge. [43]

While natural forces were at work on the Gull colony, there was no doubt, however, that human action was at the heart of the major resource management crisis on North Manitou Island. The Angell Foundation had managed the island as a fishing and hunting preserve for years. As many as 1,500 deer browsed on the island. The only way the 15,000 acre island could support such a heavy population was through the maintenance of feed lots. The foundation's gamekeepers spent over $20,000 annually to bring in eighty tons of deer feed. The result was a phenomenal hunting ground with as many as 500 deer harvested each fall. Trouble arose in 1979 when the Angell Foundation accepted a down-payment from the park service for the island and suspended all management activities. The National Park Service was under the impression that the foundation had gradually reduced the deer herd through increased hunting and reduced feeding. That was a course of action agreed to by the foundation managers but whereas the park service thought there were only a hundred or so deer on the island there may have been ten times that number. Between 1978 and 1984, when the island's purchase hung in limbo, the deer herd was left to fend for itself. The result was a severe reduction in all understory plant life as the starving animals desperately searched for any source of nutrition. Each year hundreds perished from starvation. "There were dead deer everywhere," commented a 1978 visitor to the island. Critics complained that the National Park Service would have been more humane and less wasteful if they had allowed a special hunt to reduce the herd. But the agency had been down that road at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in 1977. The attempt to organize a special hunt in the former Beaver Basin game preserve had led to lawsuits, confrontations with local hunters, a legacy of bitterness with the community, and a raft of bad publicity. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore printed permits for a special hunt on the island in 1980 but at the last minute the foundation refused permission. After that the lakeshore had to content itself with monitoring the situation. A National Park Service contract with the University of Michigan studied the herd between 1980 and 1983, but there was no intervention. The pathetic details of their report which included finding dead deer in abandoned cottages, where in their last extremities they sought refuge from the winter, and starving deer foraging on piles of dead alewives, were not broadly publicized. Doing nothing on North Manitou became the policy because technically the agency did yet own the island and the plight of the animals was less visible than at Pictured Rocks because the island was all but closed to human intrusion. The result, however, was the same in each instance for the deer—starvation.44]

What the park service called "letting nature take its course," critics sneered was a policy of doing nothing. A prominent example of this dynamic in action was seen between 1972 and 1974, when abnormally high water levels in the Great Lakes caused an alarming amount of shoreline erosion. Warm winters and strong storms combined with the high water to threaten the Sleeping Bear shore by reducing the ice barriers that naturally fortified the base of the dunes. By 1973 the level of Lake Michigan was on an average five feet higher than in 1964. One particularly strong winter storm drove a family from their Sleeping Bear Point home when the waves surged over one hundred feet of beach and washed around the house. "We used to like to lie here at night and listen to the lake pounding on the beach," one Empire resident remarked, "but when there's no beach , it's a horse of a different color." All along the shore of the park property owners scrambled to devise means to hold back the water. One desperate homeowner in Arcadia, Michigan (outside the lakeshore) dumped several junk cars over the face of the dune to buffer the waves. Superintendent Martinek made clear that such actions would not be tolerated within the park. "We feel that the highs and lows in the Great Lakes water levels are natural and are part of what originally formed the dune country," he advised land owners. The lakeshore allowed people to take limited protective action. Temporary wooden breakwaters, known as groins, were allowed. The lakeshore itself repaired groins built by the Coast Guard to protect the severely threatened lighthouse on South Manitou Island. By the late 1970s the high water levels had begun to abate and calls for breakwaters and house relocations within the lakeshore receded as well.45]

The two most important and persistent resource management question to bedevil the lakeshore in its early years were the Michigan Department of Natural Resources' plan to modify the mouth of the Platte River and the attempt to determine which lakeshore lands should be managed as wilderness.

The Platte River Controversy

The chain of events which led to the controversy over the mouth of the Platte River, was set in motion during the mid-1960s when thousands of small, shiny fish called alewives began to wash-up on the shores of Lake Michigan. Originally a salt-water fish, the alewife is subject to periodic die-off on the Great Lakes. Such die-offs were extreme during the 1960s. Lakefront property owners either avoided the shoreline because of the stench of decaying fish or they took-on the laborious task of raking the alewife's into large piles and burning them with kerosene. The Michigan Department of Conservation's solution was to introduce a predator voracious enough to eliminate the alewives before they could become a nuisance. Pacific Salmon, particularly Coho and Chinook were the answer. Beginning in March of 1966 Coho Salmon fingerlings were annually placed in the upper Platte River at Honor, Michigan. Unlike other fish introduced into the lakes the salmon could not explode out-of-control because it was difficult for them to breed naturally in Michigan streams. More than 10 million salmon fingerlings were introduced into Michigan waters between 1966 and 1970. In 1969, the Department of Conservation opened the Platte River Anadromous Fish Hatchery at Honor. The location of the hatchery determined that the Platte River would be one of the best fishing spots in Michigan when the salmon matured and returned to the river to try and spawn. Beginning in 1967 "Coho fever" swarmed over the mouth of the little Platte River. The Coho planting program was a great success. It helped to stem the tide of dead alewives and it produced an exciting new sports fishing attraction. [46]

The Coho program was undertaken at the same time that the Sleeping Bear Dunes lakeshore plan was twisting in the congressional wind. The unsightly scene of unplanned development and mobs of fishermen at the Platte helped to convince many Benzie County residents that the lakeshore might be a necessary means to control the pace of change. The need for someone to take firm control was established when seven fishermen participating in the 1967 Coho run drowned in Platte Bay when their boat overturned in heavy seas. National Park Service Director George B. Hartzog agreed with the Michigan Department of Conservation that it was "imperative that a facility be made available to fishermen and boaters." When the lakeshore was created in 1970, the State of Michigan was granted the right to retain a 300 acre tract near the mouth of the Platte in order to develop facilities to manage the sport fishery. By the time Martinek arrived at the newly created lakeshore the Michigan Waterways Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had developed a $2 million plan to create a major sport fishing marina on the Platte. The river would be straitened and dredged more than a half mile inland and a breakwater would extend 1,000 feet into the lake. The rolling dunes and pine trees at the mouth were to be replaced by a huge paved parking lot. [47]

Environmentalists watched apprehensively but patiently while the harbor plans were being made. They did not want to do anything that would disrupt the coalition in favor of the Sleeping Bear lakeshore bill, so they held their peace until after 1970. Nor was there universal support for the large-scale project within the newly created Department of Natural Resources, which had been formed out of a merger of the Department of Conservation with a number of smaller agencies, including the Michigan Waterways Commission. The staff of the old Conservation Department who opposed the Platte project, however, had to proceed cautiously to avoid setting off a civil war within the newly created agency. Superintendent Martinek also proceeded cautiously. Cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources, which inherited D.H. Day and Benzie state parks, was essential to a smooth transition at Sleeping Bear. The sport fishing and visitor safety issues the harbor proposal sought to address were legitimate concerns for the new lakeshore and had been specifically supported by Director Hartzog. Yet, since the Director had made his comments the lakeshore's mandate, as reflected in the bill passed by Congress, had changed from being a recreation oriented park to one with a greater emphasis on preservation. The lakeshore's draft master plan called for the Platte to be managed as a natural area. The Platte River was one of the few natural river mouths on the entire Lake Michigan shore. The action of river current, lake waves, and sand at the Platte was an example in miniature of what the Chicago River and the Kalamazoo River and the Grand River looked like before harbor improvements prepared the way for urban development. The lakeshore had been created in the first place to preserve what was unique and special about the dune country and the Platte River mouth was clearly one of those features. The new superintendent, however, was caught between Director Hartzog's commitment of the agency to some type of harbor and the congressional mandate to protect the landscape. Little wonder Martinek took a position, which was guarded, but cooperative toward the plans of the Michigan Waterways Commission.48]

It was the Sierra Club which took the first decisive stand against the Platte River project. While the National Park Service appeared to be waffling on both sides of the issue, the Mackinac Chapter of the Sierra Club, in December 1970, testified before the Michigan Natural Resources Commission that the Platte Harbor proposal threatened the integrity of the new lakeshore. Some of the groups that in the past had been supporters of a strong Sleeping Bear park showed much less resolve. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs was initially split among those who saw the harbor as a boon to sportsmen and those who saw it as an environmental disaster. Ironically, the Sierra Club found itself in unintended alliance with many of the same people who had opposed the creation of the lakeshore and who now wanted to control its development. In June 1971, John Stanz, a Leelanau County representative on the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore Advisory Commission pointedly challenged his fellow commission members to "stand up for something." Those members representing the Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan Waterways Commission must have squirmed in their seats when he said "if we're going to have a National Park, let's have a National Park." What he did not understand was how "the first thing you are going to do is turn around and make a development in the heart of it." 49]

The hopeless division over the Platte River harbor between overlapping state and federal agencies made a decisive stand by the National Park Service all the more important to the resolution of the controversy. State officials hoped that the National Park Service, with its national prestige in recreation planning would serve as a "catalyst" to bring the disparate interest groups--boaters, fishermen, and environmentalists--together. A hearing by Michigan's Environmental Quality Council blasted the harbor plan and chided the National Park Service's "demonstrated evasiveness, fluctuating thought of mind, timidity of public reaction and lack of dedication to the current concept at this public meeting." In June 1971, Governor William G. Milliken, who had serious reservations concerning the harbor, wrote to Secretary of the Interior Rogers B. Morton requesting that the park service take a clear stand, for or against the Platte project. Northeast Regional Director Chester L. Brooks drafted a response for the Secretary which expressed the sentiment that it would be "regrettable" to destroy the natural mouth of the Platte when a less sensitive site could be selected in Good Harbor or Sleeping Bear bays. This tepid response did allow Superintendent Martinek to formally express reservations regarding the proposed harbor. Following Martinek's objections to the waterways commission plan, the focus temporarily shifted to the study of an alternate Platte Bay site, away from the mouth of the river. That seemed to be the solution to a controversy that had already dragged on for four years. [50]

But the Platte harbor plan would simply not go away. Keith E. Wilson, the Director of the Waterways Commission, was an absolute bulldog when it came to the project. The opposition of the Secretary of the Interior and the Governor of Michigan did not deter him. In July 1973, he advised the Michigan Natural Resources Commission that after studying alternate sites his engineers concluded that they must "either build the harbor and marina in the mouth of the Platte or not build it at all." There was no support from the Washington, D.C. office of the park service for stoping the project. The Acting Director, Raymond L. Freeman warned the Northeast Regional Office that while the agency was not pleased with the harbor proposal, there would be no official action against it, "the State has decisions to make, and that if the State decides to complete its development at the site we will accept it." On the local level, however, the need for park service leadership was acute. The reaction of Noble Travis, an Advisory Commission member from Leland, was typical of many people involved with the Sleeping Bear project. "Let's stop piddling around with this Platte River harbor thing...We have already gone on record as opposing it at the mouth of the Platte." [51]

The Platte River harbor controversy was a case study of the way issues became entwined and positions entrenched in the Sleeping Bear Country. At its heart it was a conflict between the old style of conservation based on outdoor sports and the new environmentalism focused on slow growth and ecological quality. Either the National Park Service or the Department of Natural Resources could have completely killed the ill-advised scheme. The environmental review process and the waterways commission's need for federal funds gave the park service a virtual veto, even if it did not control all the land at the mouth of the river; nor was the Department of Natural Resources going to stand up to Governor Milliken's opposition. Yet, both agencies were also on the record as in favor of some type of facility for public safety and to provide access to the lakeshore's island units. The 1969 Master Plan for the lakeshore called for a marina/boat launch facility near or within the park. Before the creation of the lakeshore the commercial boats that took visitors and mail to North and South Manitou were based in Leland harbor. But at a public meeting in the summer of 1971 residents of Leland "emphatically" made it clear that they did not want the congestion the ferry service would bring to their town. Wilson and the waterways commission were also in conflict with the village of Leland. In 1969, the waterways commission expanded Leland's little river mouth port into a formal harbor of refuge by adding a large stone breakwater. Over the years they added a paved parking lot and a boat ramp for sport fishermen. By the time the Platte River controversy was reaching its climax, a number of Leland residents took the waterways commission to court to stop any further expansion of the Leland harbor. Faced with this road block Keith Wilson's temporary stop-gap was to plan a boat launch at Good Harbor Bay, an area the park service had planned as a roadless, walk-in beach. The Platte River issue drove the Leland harbor issue, and vice versa. The result was probably the best that could be expected, nothing was done at Platte River, within the lakeshore, or in Leland. [52]

The Michigan Waterways Commission was loathe to give up the ghost of the Platte marina and their plans continued to be debated in public into the mid-1970s. Long before that, however, Superintendent Martinek and the Department of Conservation had worked out a temporary management solution to the issues at the Platte. A drag-line was brought in each fall during the salmon run to keep the mouth of the Platte deep enough for the launching of small fishing boats. Toilet facilities and parking conditions were gradually improved by the National Park Service and through cooperation between the state and township authorities. The National Park Service bought out and closed a restaurant, motel, and hot dog stand located on lakeshore lands adjacent to the Platte. The adhoc solution became permanent when "Coho fever" slackened in the 1980s. Salmon and Steelhead runs became popular all along the Lake Michigan shore as the hatcheries expanded their release locations. Although the mouth of the Platte remained one of the busiest locations in the lakeshore, it was also one of the most beautiful.53]

Planning a Wilderness

Like the controversy over the Platte River harbor the issue of wilderness designation at Sleeping Bear Dunes was another case of the National Park Service lagging behind the public's environmental consciousness. The wilderness designation process at the lakeshore presents a history similar to that which took place at scores of other park service units during the early 1970s, with the agency taking a timid approach to designating lands as "wilderness" and the public forcing the park service to greatly expand its initial proposals to nearly double the protected acreage. The wilderness designation process also became another line of battle in the struggle between the National Park Service and a core of local stakeholders. Having failed to stop the creation of the lakeshore, opposition groups looked to wilderness restrictions as a way to control the pace of change brought by the new lakeshore. [54]

In 1964, after a generation of agitation by a progressive coalition of conservationists, Congress passed the Wilderness Act. This act created a means to designate and protect from intrusion large tracts of roadless land. It specifically ordered the Secretary of the Interior, within ten years of the act, to review every roadless area in the National Park System of at least 5,000 acres in size for possible inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Public Law 91-479, which created the lakeshore park, specifically set a four-year deadline for the Secretary to evaluate the Sleeping Bear area for eligible wilderness areas. Undertaking that review was one of the first and most important planning initiatives of the new lakeshore park.

The wilderness review took place within the context of a preliminary effort to revise the lakeshore's master plan. In 1968, when passage of a bill authorizing a Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was still very much in doubt, the National Park Service prepared a master plan for the proposed project. The goal of the plan was to "preserve this portion of Lake Michigan shoreline for the inspiration, education, recreational use and enjoyment of the public, while at the same time stabilizing private development within the area." The plan was a throwback to the "can-do" Kennedy-era with large campgrounds and a wide variety of recreational developments to facilitate: "touring or driving for pleasure, bicycling, hiking, riding, nature walks, dunemobile riding, canoeing, and snowmobiling." Environmentalists in favor of the proposed lakeshore were very concerned that the "heavy use" called for in the plan would threaten "fragile land like sand dunes." "Well, let's be still about it," counseled Genevieve Gillette, "and see how we come out." Heedless of such concerns park planners went on and designed beach facilities at Good Harbor Bay and Glen Haven that would have included bathhouses, locker rooms, and food concessions. There was no mention of wilderness areas within the lakeshore, save perhaps for the plan to encourage "primitive camping" on North Manitou Island. But even in the case of that island the plan was heavy handed with the provision to improve the island's landing strip to accommodate small commercial aircraft. "Many points noted in the plan are still valid," Superintendent Martinek noted in 1976, "but experience and events have changed some of the original thinking." More than anything else the wilderness review revealed the shortcomings of the master plan. [55]

Superintendent Martinek began the wilderness review in 1972. Initially he was dubious of the process. Like most National Park Service staff, Martinek's understanding of wilderness was shaped by his years of working in the vast open spaces of the mountain west. "As we see it we have no area that will qualify as wilderness," he confided to the Northeast Regional Office. "Both the islands and the mainland have been extensively logged by man." Also discouraging to the Sleeping Bear staff were the wilderness planning guidelines prepared by Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nathaniel Reed. He warned the park service not to create wilderness areas "at the expense of losing the essential management prerogatives that are necessary to fulfill the purposes for which the areas were originally intended." This caused a bit of a dilemma for the lakeshore, for although it had originally been envisioned as a recreational park, the final bill that passed Congress placed a greater emphasis on preservation of the Sleeping Bear Dunes area. Wilderness designation was a clear-cut way to try to prevent large areas of the lakeshore from being changed by recreational use. The risk that park planners feared, however, was that if too large a portion of the park was managed as an undeveloped wilderness then the thousands of peak-season visitors to the lakeshore would all be funneled into the few remaining non-wilderness areas, creating congestion and a heavy impact on a small area. In the end the lakeshore staff, with help from the Denver Service Center, sorted out the proper way to define wilderness and how to envision a low-impact park. The lakeshore's wilderness study team identified six areas, North and South Manitou Islands, the Platte River area, the Otter Creek area, the Sleeping Bear Plateau, and the Pyramid Point—Good Harbor Bay area, as all having a high potential of being wilderness units. [56]

The potential wilderness areas totaled more than 35,000 acres, better than half of the lakeshore. Within the agency it was debated that this might be too much wilderness for such a high-traffic area. When the preliminary recommendations were made the proposal was pared down to three areas, North and South Manitou Island and Otter Creek, a total of 26,060 acres. As mandated under the Wilderness Act a public hearing was held to solicit a public response to the preliminary recommendation. The hearing was held on July 12, 1974 at the Beulah Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. John C. Preston, a veteran National Park Service manager, served as the hearing officer. Better than 200 people attended the hearing and, not unexpectedly, the overwhelming majority was in favor of including a much larger proportion of the lakeshore in the wilderness proposal. What was surprising at the hearing, however, was the way in which the antagonists in the long fight over the creation of the lakeshore found themselves in reversed roles. The Citizens Council, which had for nearly a decade argued that no federal protections were needed in the Sleeping Bear area, put forth a plan for all six of the potential wilderness areas to be recommended to Congress for designation. On the other hand E. Genevieve Gillette, the emeritus President of the Michigan Parks Association and the tireless crusader for federal protection of the dunes since 1961, opposed the inclusion of the Platte River area as wilderness. Instead she favored a nature center at the mouth of the river and the use of the area for environmental education. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, also consistent supporters of National Park Service management of the Sleeping Bear, opposed the wilderness plan. Instead they supported designating only South Manitou Island as wilderness. Among other things, they were concerned that wilderness status would prevent the artificial maintenance of the deer herd on North Manitou Island. These old-line conservationists were, however, out of step with the majority of individuals and organizations responding to the wilderness proposal. Out of 479 total responses 419 called for more, not less wilderness protection. [57]

In spite of the overwhelming response at the public hearing the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Advisory Commission voted to recommend only three areas for wilderness designation: the Manitou islands and the Otter Creek area. Particularly incensed by this rejection of the popular will was Mrs. Peter Williams of Traverse City, the only woman on the commission. She strongly favored all six potential wilderness areas be designated. Williams took the fight to the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, which was scheduled to hold a public meeting in August 1974 adjacent to the lakeshore at the Sugar Loaf Resort. The meeting was a chance for environmentalists, led by the Sierra Club, to lambast the Department of Natural Resources recommendation that only South Manitou Island be designated a wilderness. "Frankly we were dumfounded that DNR would recommend less wilderness than the National Park Service," complained the Sierra Club's spokesperson. Expressing the fervor for wilderness that was typical at the meeting was an Ann Arbor man who predicted that "those areas designated wilderness now may well be the only such shorelines in Michigan open to the public by the year 2000."58]

Behind the boom for a largely wilderness park was a conscious desire on the part of Leelanau County residents to constrain the development of a lakeshore recreation area. The Leelanau Enterprise-Tribune encouraged support for a broader wilderness designation by reminding its readers "the main idea behind additional wilderness area [sic] is to preserve some of the most lovely and fragile areas of the Lakeshore against recreational use and use by campers." Mrs. Williams blatantly based her support for more wilderness on the grounds of preventing a "huge mass of visitors" from ruining the area. What was not appreciated by these pragmatic supporters of wilderness was that in order for some of the mainland wilderness areas, such as the Pyramid Point-Good Harbor unit, to be designated wilderness the National Park Service's condemnation authority would have to be extended to purchase the non-federal lands within the units. Only with a solid block of federal land ownership would it be possible to close private access two-tracks and make the area truly roadless. With this proviso the National Park Service recommended to Congress that six wilderness units, totaling 35,060 acres be designated at Sleeping Bear. The process ended more in a whimper than a clear-cut result because at the time the National Park Service did not yet own most of the land in question and neither the executive nor the legislative branch was disposed to move quickly on the recommendation. Nonetheless, the most important and far-reaching management decision that would ever be made at Sleeping Bear had taken place. [59]

Master Plan Revisions

"I believe that decisions on wilderness designation should not be made in isolation," wrote Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, "but should reflect the overall management plan and development program for the Lakeshore." The congressman very succinctly summarized the lesson that Superintendent Martinek drew from the controversy over the mouth of the Platte and the wilderness designation process. The Sleeping Bear master plan was badly in need of revision. Instead of acting as a guide to important long-range policy decisions it was largely superfluous because it did not reflect the type of park the public wanted and Congress authorized. South Manitou Island was a good example of how out of touch the 1968 report seemed in the mid-1970s. During the wilderness debate all parties agreed on only one part of the lakeshore being designated a wilderness, South Manitou Island. Yet, the master plan called for a lodge to be built there and visitors to be carted about the island on roving minibuses. At the Michigan Natural Resources Commission hearing on wilderness Commissioner Carl T. Johnson (also a member of the lakeshore Advisory Commission) called for the outdated plan to be changed. In the autumn of 1974 the lakeshore began the process of revising its master plan. [60]

A master plan development contract was established with the National Park Service's Denver Service Center to spearhead the creation of a new document. On September 20, 1974 lakeshore staff and representatives of the Denver Service Center held a public meeting at the Beulah VFW hall. The goal of the meeting was to gather public responses prior to drafting a planning directive for a new plan. "The original Master Plan needs to be scrapped entirely," was a common refrain from the public. Three issues dominated the discussion, the stalled land acquisition program, the wilderness proposal, and the location of the legislatively mandated "scenic parkway." Wilderness continued to be touted as a way to prevent "a high density recreation area." But it was the scenic parkway proposal that clearly emerged as the most important unresolved issue. Objections were raised as to both the need for the parkway as well as its proposed location. [61]

The scenic parkway had been added to the Sleeping Bear proposal in the wake of Senator Hart's initial proposal to include large portions of the inland lake district adjacent and south of the dunes in the national lakeshore. The idea of the parkway was to provide vistas and corridors from which the natural history of the area could be interpreted to visitors, as well as to control the anticipated flood of summer visitors to the lakeshore. The exact right-of-way of the scenic roadway was not made clear for several years after the authorization of the lakeshore. Finally, in August of 1973 the Federal Highway Administration began an on the ground survey to stake-out the center line for the new road. Unfortunately, before the surveyors could complete the northern portion of the parkway they exhausted the survey budget. It was several years before the exact route of the parkway was determined but even then there were no land acquisition funds allocated to bring the right-of-way into federal ownership. For years the scenic road existed as a question mark, in the worried minds of landowners along its right-of-way and on the optimistic planning maps of the National Park Service.62]

The scenic parkway was one of several proposed lakeshore developments which promised a major impact on the nearby Benzie and Leelanau County communities. In 1972, those counties' planning commissions contracted with Chicago-based consulting firm Wilbur Smith & Associates to prepare a report to help local governments develop the zoning and planning necessary to absorb the environmental and economic impacts of the new lakeshore. The National Park Service contributed $25,000 to the study and while not bound by its findings, neither could the lakeshore easily ignore the results. The heart of the Wilbur Smith study, which was completed in April of 1974, was zoning recommendations for the neighboring communities. The report did, however, critique several features of the lakeshore master plan, especially the location of the visitor center off the scenic parkway in the highlands south of Glen Lake. The Wilbur Smith study also questioned the desirability of undertaking major road building effort like the new parkway, with all of its attended damage to the environment, until it was clear that lakeshore traffic patterns necessitated a new circulation system. The consultants also advised that if the traffic became heavy it might make better sense to adopt a mass transit solution to lakeshore circulation. These recommendations had an important long-range impact on the lakeshore. In the short run the Wilbur Smith study gave momentum to calls for a heavily revised master plan and the need for some new thinking at Sleeping Bear. [63]

The promise of a new master plan conditioned almost every policy statement made by Superintendent Martinek between 1974 and 1977. Questions about the scenic road, the fate of South Manitou Island, the wilderness recommendations, the location of the permanent visitor's center all were qualified with the statement that those issues were being "reviewed and reconsidered" by the National Park Service. The fact was, however, that for three years the master plan revision was stuck on "hold" by a shortage of funds. The scores of new national parks created in the 1960s and 1970s were all competing for scarce development funds. At Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore their revised master plan gathered dust because of an almost complete absence of funds to carry out its grand designs. The Sleeping Bear master plan did not advance beyond the very preliminary Planning Directive stage. Part of the problem was that the lakeshore's much delayed land acquisition program had still not completed its work and Superintendent Martinek was constrained by the small amount of actual acreage under his control from leveraging planning and development funds. Those requests he did send to Philadelphia encountered another problem. As the nation prepared to celebrate the Bicentennial of American Independence the Northeast Region of the National Park Service naturally had to undertake significant capital expenditures to prepare its large number of historic parks for the anticipated surge of visitors. Even though Sleeping Bear Dunes had been shifted to the Midwest Region in 1974 it and other newly created lakeshores had to wait for additional resources and a change of priorities. "I do not really hold too much hope that a new master plan will be done soon," confided Fred Kass, the chief of the park service's Planning and Development Division. [64]

The very public slowdown in lakeshore planning and development, coming on the heels of the protracted land acquisition process dealt another blow to the National Park Service's tarnished image in northwestern Michigan. Yet behind the scenes Superintendent Martinek did a very good job keeping the lakeshore moving forward by putting together several of the internal documents that would form the foundation for a new master plan. In February of 1976, the lakeshore completed its new Statement For Management, a summary of the objectives, planning requirements, legal constraints and influences on the management of the lakeshore. Charles Parkinson completed an Interpretive Prospectus, which laid out a visitor use plan for the lakeshore. This document recommended several important changes in visitor planning including removing the location of the proposed Maritime Museum from South Manitou Island to the Glen Haven Coast Guard Station. Yet such draft documents were no substitute for having an approved plan that managers could use as a blueprint for actions which effected the entire lakeshore. Besides, by 1975 the Sleeping Bear staff was fully engaged with the day-to-day challenges of trying to meet the needs of more than 700,000 annual visitors.

Taking Charge

The pace of the National Park Service's management of Sleeping Bear Dunes picked up appreciably between 1975 and 1976. The transfer of state park holdings in April of 1975 and the acquisition of the Stocking lands in the fall of 1976 at last gave to the lakeshore staff large blocks of recreational land to manage. Emergency development funds allowed the park service to undertake some modest improvements to the campgrounds at D.H. Day and Platte River. But the shortage of regular development monies and the lack of a viable master plan ensured that any improvements were minimal. Even picnic tables had to be borrowed from the state for the first season of park service ownership. The Stocking tract posed several problems, the most persistent of which was controlling vehicle access. The old lumberman's lands were criss-crossed with dirt two-track trails favored by hunters and off-road vehicle users. The closing of these roads and the park service's attempt to restrict access to unofficial camping grounds near Aral and Good Harbor Bay were unpopular with some local residents. Complaints also arose from campers when the park service, in keeping with system-wide standards, removed the electric outlets at the lakeshore campgrounds. Holiday weekends, particularly Memorial Day, found the lakeshore unprepared for the flood of visitors and the frequency of incidents related to alcohol, drugs, and attendant disorderly conduct. It was several years before the ranger division was able to manage the campgrounds without the assistance of local sheriff's departments. The inadequate size of the lakeshore staff and development budget irked local residents already opposed to the lakeshore. In May 1977, Congressmen Elford A. Cederberg and Guy Vander Jagt prodded Assistant Secretary of the Interior Robert Herbst to accelerate the flow of resources to Sleeping Bear. Within a week $150,000 was found to improve the roads at the Platte River campground. [65]

When the agency acquired the state and Stocking lands it also acquired several popular visitor service concessions. With no viable master plan and little in the way of a development budget Martinek was loath to eliminate any existing visitor services. The most longstanding of these park businesses was the Dunesmobile Ride, which had been offered to visitors continuously since 1935. Louis Warnes, son-in-law to D.H. Day, the grand patriarch of Glen Haven, had founded the business. His thirteen Ford pickup trucks had been modified to carry fourteen passengers on a thirty-five minute tour from Glen Haven to the crest of the dunes. Between 50,000 and 55,000 visitors annually availed themselves of the ride. The problem with the dunesmobile ride was the clay and gravel road, which Warnes had designed and maintained to get his vehicles across the deep sand of the dune. The dune vehicles were also a visual intrusion for hikers. Martinek liked Warnes and felt he ran a "class operation." From 1975 through 1978 Warnes continued the dunesmobiles as a concession on a special use permit. Also continued on that basis was a snack shop and souvenir store at the base of the dune climb operated by the Warnes family. "We are quite certain that long-range planning will not include the dune climb concession," Martinek confided to the regional office, but this site was also continued on a special use permit with only a slight reduction in the scale of the souvenir shop. The dunesmobile ride and the concession stand were popular and profitable businesses and were long an established part of the Sleeping Bear summer season experience. Many of the junior members of the lakeshore staff wanted the National Park Service to move decisively to close the ride. Martinek, however, moved cautiously, so as to avoid "rocking the boat" and causing "local area and public relations problems for the National Park Service."66]

The concession on South Manitou Island was both less profitable and less visible than those at the mainland dunes. It was a small commercial marina with a restaurant and a small grocery store. A commercial vehicle tour also operated on the island. In 1974, the lakeshore acquired the marina property. For several years the shadow of uncertainty hung over the future of the marina. If the master plan was going to be implemented as it was originally conceived, with a lodge and motorized tours on South Manitou then the marina development was a long-term asset. On the other hand, if Congress accepted the wilderness proposal then a commercial marina might not be needed in the long term. While these issues were undecided Superintendent Martinek attempted to keep the marina concession operating on a special use permit. The marina on the remote island was a marginal operation at best and attempts on the part of the contractor to expand the range of their operations were met by the superintendent's reminder "the island is scheduled for wilderness, therefore we do not desire to build up the public usage." In 1976, because it looked likely that the wilderness plan would prevail and Martinek granted what he anticipated would be a final three-year extension of the special use permit. However, in 1979, the lakeshore management elected not only to issue another permit but also to rehabilitate the entire marina-restaurant complex for use by day trippers to the island. Even the motorized island tour was expanded through the use of dunesmobiles from the defunct Warnes concession.67]

Pierce Stocking's Sleeping Bear Park presented another type of management challenge. The scenic drive that Stocking had laid out through the woods and out to the top of the dune was very popular with visitors. Initially Superintendent Martinek opposed keeping the Stocking road open after the lakeshore acquired the tract in the fall of 1976. At public hearings environmental groups had persuaded the park service to include this land in a wilderness zone, which of course meant the road had to be closed. When the ramifications of the wilderness policy were announced to the Sleeping Bear Advisory Commission the local members exploded in outrage. They thought Stocking's park had been one of the highlights of the area and a "key to the future." It was the easiest way for senior citizens and others unable to get out and hike on the dune to and see the best views of both Sleeping Bear and Glen Lake. Commissioner John Stahlin, speaking with great emotion, accused the park service of once more "throwing the people out." Superintendent Martinek, however, was critical of the Stocking's road, which he thought was too steep and laid out over fragile dune terrain. Martinek eventually settled for a compromise. He closed several portions of the road, including a loop, which went out over the dune. The blacktop road was then patched and opened to the public. The lakeshore was influenced in this decision by the desire of the Washington office of the National Park Service to have a marquee feature of the park named in memorial of Sleeping Bear's legislative founder. That political imperative settled the future of the scenic drive that was then opened to the public as the Philip A. Hart Trail. The opening of the road without Stocking's former $5.00 per car charge was a huge boost to the park service's image in northwestern Michigan. [68]

Another image boost, as well as a much needed helping hand to the lakeshore's strained maintenance staff, was the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC). The program was a Great Society throwback to the New Deal's renowned Civilian Conservation Corps. Operated on a much more modest budget and administered through colleges and universities rather than the Department of Defense, the YCC played a quiet but important role in the new national parks of the 1960s and 1970s. At a time when staffing and development were severely constrained the YCC undertook vital, if mundane, tasks at parks like Pictured Rocks, Cuyahoga Valley, Indiana Dunes, and Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway. Superintendent Martinek, whose youth on the streets of Cleveland was turned around by summers in the Sleeping Bear area, was especially supportive of the YCC concept. In the summer of 1976 the YCC program at Sleeping Bear was initiated by moving a contingent of fourteen enrollees into the former motel that had been used as the American Youth Hostel. A second YCC camp was operated on South Manitou Island where a former warehouse had been converted into a dormitory. The YCC program was responsible for a variety of important tasks, not the least of which was the assembly of 400 picnic tables and the scraping of the lakeshore's historic Coast Guard lifeboat. On South Manitou Island the YCC rebuilt an historic boardwalk, removed barbed wire and fence posts from abandoned farms, and cleared the old settlers cemetery of overgrown vegetation. Among the least pleasant tasks performed by the YCC was the cleanup of beaches fouled by alewives. An added bonus of the YCC program was to boost the image of the lakeshore in Benzie and Leelanau counties. The program enrolled exclusively boys and girls from northwestern Michigan.69]

The Advisory Commission

Public Law 91-479, the lakeshore's organic act, specified the formation of a citizen's advisory commission to counsel the National Park Service on the management of Sleeping Bear Dunes. The first such advisory commission was created in 1961 as part of the Cape Cod National Seashore, and citizen's commissions became a feature of all of the shoreline recreation areas created during the 1960s and 1970s. Like these other commissions the Sleeping Bear Advisory Commission was a purely consultative body and had no decision-making authority. It was composed of individuals appointed by the State of Michigan, Leelanau County, and Benzie County. There was no compensation for service on the commission. The commission met for the first time with National Park Service Director George Hartzog on March 9, 1971 in Washington, D.C. After that virtually all meetings were held near the lakeshore on a quarterly basis. [70]

The most important function of the commission was to serve as a forum to inform the public of issues before the lakeshore management team, and to allow for comment on park service actions by individuals with roots in Michigan and the communities adjacent to the park. The commission fulfilled this function well on an issue like the preservation of the Sleeping Bear area. The commission usually advised the National Park Service to move forcefully to protect the lakeshore from outside intrusions such as the Platte River harbor, which the commission strongly opposed. The commission offered very farsighted advice to Superintendent Martinek regarding historic agricultural resources within the lakeshore. With inholders like John D. Stanz and Frank C. MacFarlane among the original commission members, the park service was guaranteed that the commission would serve as a vehicle by which the land acquisition program would be critiqued and monitored. In 1974 and 1975, when the lakeshore had run out of land acquisition funds, the commission played a substantive role by lobbying the Michigan congressional delegation to raise the acquisition ceiling and to shake loose appropriations. Again in 1977, direct lobbying by commission members led to a critical increase in development funds for the lakeshore.71]

Although no Sleeping Bear superintendent ever said as much, the Advisory Commission could occasionally be a thorn in the side. At the October 24, 1975 meeting of the commission Superintendent Martinek was forced, for better than two hours, into the familiar bureaucratic posture of "flak-catcher." Noble Travis of Leland served as chair of the commission at the time. The lack of action on land acquisition had strained relations between the lakeshore and the commission. Chairman Travis repeatedly "rebuked" Martinek, demanding a date when the new acquisition funds would be released and threatening "if they had to pull the information out of him, they would do it." At one point, "Chairman Travis told Mr. Martinek he had done a lousy job of management." Several commission members congratulated Travis for his "great speeches." The tenor of the meeting changed completely, however, when Carl T. Johnson, a member of the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, arrived late. While no rubber stamp, Johnson understood the practical problems with managing a conservation project. He advised the commission that "now was not the time to irritate the situation anymore than it already was" and he announced that he had recently been in contact with Congressman Vander Jagt and that the funds would be arriving soon.72]

Most meetings of the commission were not so confrontational and the mere existence of the forum provided a means by which disagreements and irritations with the lakeshore could be voiced in a cordial and cooperative setting. The Frankfort and Leland press covered the meetings so that the announcements and debates of the commission meetings were shared with the people of northwestern Michigan. During the 1970s the Advisory Commission helped to shape the lakeshore that exists today by its attention and advocacy on issues such as the Platte River, the scenic parkway, land acquisition, and wilderness designation. While many of the members made a distinct contribution to the lakeshore Carl T. Johnson of Cadillac played a special role. As a member of the Natural Resources Commission he acted as a very effective liaison between the lakeshore and the Department of Natural Resources. Johnson was also respected throughout the state as the leading advocate of sportsmen's interests. An enthusiastic hunter himself, Johnson knew how to bring the fish and game community's considerable political clout to bear. In 1979, he used that influence on the lakeshore area's congressional representatives to secure funding to improve park campgrounds. He was an important asset to both Superintendent Martinek and his successor, Donald R. Brown.

Martinek Retires

In 1976, the lakeshore's permanent staff doubled with the addition of five new full time positions; a Chief Ranger, a District Ranger, Facility Manager, Administrative Clerk, and a Maintenance Mechanic. The park looked like it was finally coming together. The land acquisition program had finally given the lakeshore staff a resource they could protect and interpret. Plans were underway for the formal dedication of the lakeshore in 1977. But despite these optimistic developments 1977 was a year of frustration and disappointment for Superintendent Martinek. [73]

In the spring of 1977, Julius Martinek was relieved of his responsibilities as lakeshore superintendent. Martinek was suffering from high-blood pressure. His doctor ordered him to "get away from the office for awhile." A hands-on superintendent, Martinek had been working especially hard in the two years following the turn-over of state park lands. He liked his staff to show initiative and he could be an "in your face" administrator if he did not think the results measured up to his high expectations. He himself had to take considerable abuse in his dealings with local residents, the Advisory Commission, and the press. That after getting Sleeping Bear up, off the ground and nearly thirty years with the agency, Martinek needed a medical leave was not surprising. [74]

Unfortunately, Martinek also left Sleeping Bear under the cloud of an Inspector General's Office investigation. The roots of this problem were firmly set in the very "boot-strapping" style that allowed Martinek to be so successful in establishing Sleeping Bear Lakeshore. Over the years the lakeshore had acquired a bewildering array of surplus federal equipment: trucks, jeeps, tents, hand tools, etc. On one occasion Martinek acquired ten aluminum aircraft wing tanks on the expectation that someday they might be useful building a floating dock. In addition to acquiring odd bits of surplus equipment, Martinek was a master of using the material as trade or barter with non-federal agencies. With this in mind he sometimes acquired items for which the lakeshore had no immediate need. In addition to the government surplus there were also a lot of items salvaged from lakeshore properties acquired and slated for demolition. Furnaces, refrigerators, and stoves, while generally removed by previous owners or sold at bid, were sometimes left for use by the lakeshore to prepare quarters for seasonal employees. Around the park, in barns, garages, and most especially at the Empire Air Force base the lakeshore had a large inventory of surplus items in storage. At the other Great Lakes parks and in the Regional Office the word went out with a nod or a wink, that when you visit Sleeping Bear make sure you get a tour of "all the neat stuff Marty's got up in storage." Martinek's interest in this material menagerie was both professional and personal. Unfortunately, over the years of "bootstrapping" and using his own vehicles, the line between items he had acquired on his own and those he acquired through or for the lakeshore became blurred. In the spring of 1976, a disgruntled member of the lakeshore staff filed a formal complaint against the Martinek with the Regional Office charging him with misappropriation of government equipment.75]

Superintendent Martinek was veteran employee of the park service with an outstanding leadership record. He had a lot of friends and colleagues in the leadership of the agency, however, the staff of the lakeshore sometimes blanched under the paternalism of his "old park service" administrative style. The charges against Martinek took on greater gravity when the issue was referred to the Inspector General's office in the Department of the Interior. After being left to make do as best he could for so many years, Martinek was aggravated by all of the sudden attention from Omaha and Washington, D.C. In disgust over the handling of the issue, depressed by personal matters, and beset with health problems Martinek retired from the National Park Service. Not for the first time in the history of Sleeping Bear, that which began in optimism and confidence ended in bitterness. [76]

At Long Last: The Dedication of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

On a blustery but sun-kissed Saturday morning, October 22, 1977, Sleeping Bear Dunes was formally dedicated as the nation's newest national lakeshore. To the strains of patriotic marches played by the Frankfort High School Marching Band, dignitaries from Washington, D.C. and Lansing gathered on a platform at the base of the Dune Climb. They had come to celebrate a day in the making since 1959, when Congress first proposed a federal Sleeping Bear park. Typical of the way things had gone, the Sleeping Bear dedication took place under a cloud of litigation. The United States District Court had to brush aside a final attempt to block the transfer of D.H. Day State Park to the national park. Even a 1976 federal law designed to compensate local governments for federal land acquisitions in each state, which should have returned more than $120,000 to Leelanau County, was challenged in court by township officials who wanted to have the money disbursed to them instead. No restraining order, however, prevented Merrill D. Beal, Midwest Regional Director, from taking the podium as the master-of-ceremonies. William G. Milliken, Michigan's popular Republican Governor, gave the principal address. [77]

The dedication was as much about closing a chapter in the history of Sleeping Bear as it was honoring the opening of the new lakeshore. For the property owners who had lost the long fight to prevent the national lakeshore the dedication was not a day of celebration. Also missing at the ceremony were two of the people most responsible for the creation of the lakeshore, Philip A. Hart and Genevieve Gillette. Gillette had made her last contribution to the lakeshore during the wilderness hearings. At that time the old warrior for Michigan conservation found herself in opposition to the Sierra Club's proposal to designate the Platte River area as wilderness. Her plan that the area be managed for natural history education was seen as too "pro-development" by the new style environmentalists and it was rejected. She had fought long enough and successfully enough to suffer the fate of most long-lived activists—to be passed by their own movements. Senator Hart's name was mentioned frequently during the dedication. Less than a year before he had died of cancer. Governor Milliken, in his address honored Phil Hart and stated that the creation of the lakeshore was one of the "two most gratifying projects of his long governmental career." Hart rather naively took on the Sleeping Bear project with little inkling of the difficulties before him. To his credit, however, he had the perseverance and commitment to stay his course during the long legislative fight. The dedication ceremony also marked an end to the work of Allen T. Edmunds. The retired park service planner had played a crucial role in creating lakeshore parks at Indiana Dunes, Sleeping Bear, Pictured Rocks, and Apostle Islands. The dedication ceremony marked the end of a process of expanding the role of the National Park Service in the Great Lakes region begun in 1958 with Edmunds's Great Lakes Shoreline Survey. Edmunds had the great satisfaction during his retirement of watching his new parks grow. [78]

At the dedication "Marty" Martinek wore his National Park Service dress uniform for the last time. The autumn wind tousled his thick hair as he summarized the difficulties encountered in establishing the lakeshore. Had the park not been created "in 1970 it may never have been," he recounted. All the right pieces came to together at that last moment and the lakeshore was authorized. That moment was now past and with it an impressive, perhaps even in environmental history terms, a "heroic" period of national park expansion came to a close. The land of the Sleeping Bear remained, but the people who had done much to shape it and who had come to love it now had to leave the dune country to the stewardship of others. [79]