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

"Time has helped to calm the anger," observed the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council in 1996, "and the National Lakeshore is now widely regarded as a local and national treasure." By the late 1990s the lakeshore was annually visited by more than a million people. Sleeping Bear Dunes had emerged as the premier recreational attraction in the popular northwest Michigan tourist area. The broad expanse of publicly owned beaches, the roadside agricultural landscapes, and the sparkling hills of wind-blown sand were a striking reminder "of what the region once was, and of the beauty lost." A broad consensus emerged by the 1990s that had the lakeshore not been established when it was, that this most beautiful portion of the Great Lakes region might well have been subdivided and condoized beyond recognition. In the twenty-five years since coming to northwest Michigan the National Park Service had succeeded in meeting the Congressional mandate to protect the Sleeping Bear from "developments and uses which would destroy the scenic beauty and natural character of the area." [1]

What most visitors to the lakeshore did not appreciate were the conflicts, sacrifices, and choices thrust upon the park service and the people of the dunes country to create the landscape so enjoyed each summer. Sleeping Bear had not been a wilderness for nearly two centuries. Between 1970 when the lakeshore was created and mid-1980s the National Park Service gradually established direct control, or indirect administration in the case of the several hundred lease holders, over the roughly 71,000 acres of the park. In managing all of these lands the Congressional mandate to "preserve" the land had to be balanced with the right of the public to "enjoy" the dune country. During the 1980s and 1990s park managers at Sleeping Bear were continually faced with the nagging question of preservation: what time is this place? Is there a particular moment in vegetation succession, the mythic "climax," that is the goal of preservation? Will the public visit and appreciate a landscape defined strictly by geologic time, or will historical experience be revealed through the land? Whose story will emerge along the beaches, trails, and roadsides of the Sleeping Bear: farmers, mariners, Ottawa Indians, vacation cottagers? For the park service these landscape-shaping decisions have been, by necessity, as much political, economic, and legal as they are aesthetic, ecological, or historical.

For years the Traverse Bay area has promoted itself as "God's Country." Anyone who has known the region's crisp clear mornings or spectacular Lake Michigan sunsets would be inclined to agree. The dunes have been bathed red in the alpine glow of those sunsets for thousands of years, but for the past generation a significant portion of "God's Country" has been a landscape managed by the National Park Service. The sometimes mundane, all too human process by which federal officials and local people make decisions to shape the Sleeping Bear area is the ongoing theme of the lakeshore's history.

Road Wars

The movement of visitors through the lakeshore was one of the primary and has been one of the most enduring concerns of the National Park Service in the Sleeping Bear area. The original master plan for the lakeshore called for the creation of a scenic road system which would relieve tourist congestion on local roads and provide interesting overlook points. While even in the early plans M-22 and M-109 were planned to be partially used by visitors, the agency hoped, as much as possible, to "separate Lakeshore traffic from local or residential traffic." But that plan, dating from a time when parks were unabashedly designed landscapes, did not survive the more preservation-oriented 1970s. The preparation of a new general management plan for the lakeshore between 1978 and 1980 brought with it two features which would have a great impact on road policy at the Sleeping Bear. The general management plan endorsed the aggressive designation of large areas of the park as wilderness and removed the Leelanau County portion of the scenic road system from the lakeshore. The Benzie County scenic road corridor was effectively rendered defunct by local opposition during the early 1980s. These decisions seriously exacerbated what under any circumstances would have been a thorny relationship between park management and the local government authorities charged with maintaining area roads.

One of the defining features of wilderness is the lack of roads. Roadless character is critical for an area to meet the legal requirements of the 1964 Wilderness Act. When the new general management plan validated the decision to administer more than half of the lakeshore as an official wilderness, the park service was set on a collision course with the Leelanau County Road Commission. As the lakeshore completed more and more of its land acquisition the park service planned to close vehicular access to large portions of the Sleeping Bear landscape. But the roads throughout the park were maintained by the local road commission, whose funding came from local property taxes and state appropriations based upon the amount of road mileage under their jurisdiction. The road commissions in both Leelanau and Benzie counties had already been hurt by the establishment of the national lakeshore because it took more than 40,000 acres off of the local property tax rolls while at the same time attracting thousands more tourists to use the local road system. Wilderness designation and its roadless requirement hit those commissions a second time by threatening road closures that would trigger a drop in state appropriations. The conflict between the interests of the local road commissions and the National Park Service came to a head on North Manitou Island.

During the late nineteenth century North Manitou Island was a microcosm of the rest of northern Michigan. The 14,000-acre island was inhabited by 300 people who either worked for a lumber company cutting Manitou timber or they scratched out a living from forest farms. The people on the island had a school, baseball team, and their own railroad-a narrow gauge logging line. A network of roads linked the remote farms to the logging dock and the U.S. Life Saving Service station. The disastrous crash of the forest economy in the 1920s helped to spur the depopulation of North Manitou. From the 1930s to the creation of the lakeshore North Manitou was largely depopulated, save for a handful of summer homeowners and the sporting activities sponsored by William Angell and later by his foundation. Nonetheless, the Leelanau County Road Commission had kept on their books forty-two miles of roads on North Manitou. By 1984, when the island was formally and finally acquired by the National Park Service, the annual payments received by the road commission for the all but unused Manitou roads was $40,000. In return for this large sum all the road commission had to do was retain a part time maintenance worker on the island to occasionally remove a fallen tree with a chain saw. As a New York Times reporter observed North Manitou was used by the Leelanau Road Commission "as a sort of interest-bearing account for years." Wilderness designation threatened to foreclose on that account. [2]

Both the National Park Service and the road commission anticipated a problem regarding the closing of the island roads. As early as 1972 Leelanau County asserted that roads within the lakeshore would remain under local government control because they had no intention of giving them up and the lakeshore's enabling legislation prevented it from acquiring public land by condemnation. In 1979, Superintendent Donald Brown reviewed with the Leelanau County Road Commission the implications of the new general management plan. Brown believed that the only resolution of the conflict between the wilderness and road revenues was for a new source of funding to be made available for Leelanau County. He recommended that no time be lost exploring new legislation, on both the state and federal level, to make up the difference.

That advice fell on deaf ears. Yet as late as 1983 no legislative action had been taken. Part of the problem was that the local road commissions were unsure how much federal assistance to request. "We know we need assistance in doing the job," a Benzie County Road Commission engineer admitted, "but we don't know how much to ask for." Part of the problem was institutional, in that county road commissions are fairly powerful local entities in Michigan. They are run by pragmatic-problem solvers, jealous of their prerogatives. They found the National Park Service's bureaucratic style of issue resolution plodding and unresponsive. "They are quick to raise objections, but slow with solutions," complained James Gilbo, engineer and manager of the road commission. "If something is not black and white in their plan, they tend to shutdown and say an action is not authorized by Congress." [3]

Also a problem was Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, who did finally sponsor a bill to provide federal assistance for Sleeping Bear road building in 1984. Vander Jagt was a fiscal and philosophical conservative. He strongly supported President Ronald Reagan's efforts to reduce federal domestic spending programs. In 1986, Vander Jagt even advocated repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, so that Reagan could be elected to a third term. Failing in that Vander Jagt called for Reagan to run for the House of Representatives, so he could lead the nation as Speaker-of-the-House. The Congressman regularly voted zero funding for the Department of the Interior during House budget debates. His special pleading for extra Interior funds for his district did not win much sympathy among the Democratic majority. Even the Reagan administration testified against Vander Jagt's bill during a House hearing. National Park Service Director Russell Dickinson reminded Vander Jagt that seventy percent of the lakeshore's visitors were Michigan residents and that the federal government already provided the state with millions of dollars from the Highway Trust fund. Part of the problem with obtaining federal funds for local roads within the lakeshore was the fear of establishing an expensive precedent for scores of other parks. Vander Jagt tried to point out that Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore already had been receiving special annual appropriations with which to improve locally owned roads. The powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Chicago Congressman Sidney Yates had special affection for the sister lakeshore park but an antipathy for Guy Vander Jagt. The latter had lent uncolleageal support to a Republican who had given Yates a tough reelection challenge, which made Yates more than happy to rain on Vander Jagt's lakeshore road initiatives. Another congressman, with less ideological and interpersonal baggage, could have won at least temporary federal assistance for Leelanau and Benzie county.4]

With no special federal relief in the offing the roads within the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore continued to suffer from neglect. Arthur Clark, the Benzie County Road Commissioner, complained that the roads and bridges in the area were deteriorating faster than he could repair them. "Someone could get killed," he complained. This was only a slight exaggeration. A 1982 Department of the Interior study of M-22 and other highways in the lakeshore described the roads as "heavily impacted" by tourist traffic and "deficient" in design and surfacing. To maintain the roads properly the road commission estimated they needed $16.7 million in additional revenues over ten years. They would surrender no existing revenue sources until new monies were forthcoming. [5]

North Manitou Island became the symbolic battleground between the park service's determination to follow through with their management plans and the road commissioners insistence on holding on to every financial asset at their disposal. The National Park Service had requested that other roads within the lakeshore be closed, but North Manitou became the battleground because it was a large, insular portion of the park to which the park service could control access and it had forty-two miles of defunct road. [6]

Without receiving federal funds to make up the shortfall the Leelanau County Road Commission refused to surrender the island roads. In August 1984, the Commission voted to explore "all possible commercial uses" of the road rights-of-way, including commercial logging and the operation of motorized scenic tours through the wilderness island. Meanwhile the park service, which had just completed the purchase of the Grosvenor's ferry dock on the island, announced it would not allow the road commission use of the dock, as their actions threatened the island's environment. The road commission, headed by strong willed Glen Noonan, refused to be so easily outflanked. They asserted ownership of an abandoned dock at the end of one of their island roads and notified the park service they would use it to bring road equipment to North Manitou. Superintendent Richard Peterson knew that dock was in severe disrepair so he "authorized" the road commission to conduct operations on the island for one year but placed severe restrictions on their activities, including the provision "no timber may be cut or destroyed from federal property." The road commission dispatched a forester to the island to estimate the value of the timber along the county's road right-of-way. In October 1984, the commission's attorney warned Congressman Vander Jagt, "Something serious" was about to happen between the feuding agencies. [7]

The "something serious" was the enforcement of North Manitou's wilderness status by park rangers. All unauthorized vehicles were ordered removed from the island. In August a private vehicle leased by the road commission was impounded by island rangers. The 1973 Chevrolet Blazer belonged to James M. Munoz, a local schoolteacher and charter boat operator. He had the truck on the island for several years and made it available to the road commission when they needed access to the island's roads. Munoz had ignored a registered letter warning him to have the Blazer removed from the island. "I have been wronged," Munoz complained to the road commission, after the park service shipped the truck to a mainland storage facility. Congressman Vander Jagt expressed "shock" at the rangers' action and offered to intercede in the dispute. The truck was eventually returned to Munoz, but only after he signed an agreement pledging not to leave it overnight anywhere in the lakeshore. The road commission responded to the incident by giving Suttons Bay High School permission to transport a vehicle to the island, use it to give students a tour of North Manitou, and keep the truck on the island indefinitely. The commission also informed hunters preparing to participate in the North Manitou deer hunt that it was all right to bring motorcycles on to the island. Munoz struck his own blow against the lakeshore by proposing to the Leland Board of Education that the one-acre site of a former North Manitou school house be developed for educational or commercial recreational use.8]

The road commission-park service melodrama took on a tragic dimension on December of 1986. A single engine plane on a training flight from Marquette, Michigan, to Traverse City became caught in a winter storm. With the craft's carburetor icing badly, it began to lose altitude. The flight instructor attempted to make an emergency landing on the partially frozen surface of Lake Manitou, on North Manitou Island. The ice could not hold the plane, which broke through and sank to the bottom of the interior lake. Before that happened one of the men, although badly injured, managed to escape from the wreck and make his way to the shore. Unfortunately he yielded to hypothermia within an hour. The attempt by park rangers and the Leelanau police and firemen to search for survivors and find the lost plane fed local discontent with the National Park Service's plan to manage the island as a wilderness free from motor vehicles. The three-day search took place amid blowing snow and gusty thirty-mile an hour winds. Searchers on the island requested the use of snowmobiles so that they could more quickly reach the priority search areas. Lakeshore officials demurred, but the State Police and the Coast Guard approved the use of snowmobiles. Unfortunately heavy seas prevented their transportation to the island. The parents of the missing student pilot were dismayed to discover that two pairs of cross-country skis were the only equipment available to speed the searcher's efforts, and immediately contacted their congressional representative. Red-hot calls from Washington, D.C. encouraged Superintendent Richard Peterson to belatedly offer the use of the lakeshore's all-terrain vehicles. But by that time the pedestrian patrols discovered the crash victims. [9]

Loudly voiced criticisms to the contrary, nothing the lakeshore did hindered the use of motorized equipment in the search. Weather conditions were simply too rough to transport any equipment to the island. The road commission, which claimed to maintain vehicles and roads on the island, did not look much better. They had offered rescuers the use of their four-wheel drive vehicle ("if they can get it running") and were forced to admit to the State Police that there were many downed trees blocking the roads. Superintendent Peterson responded to the lessons from the crash by having several snowmobiles prepositioned on the island to aid any future winter rescue. Ironically the lakeshore agreed to allow a heavy flatbed truck on the island to transport the fallen plane from Manitou Lake to the Lake Michigan dock. Still to many people the incident gave the appearance that the National Park Service valued the sanctity of wilderness more than the prospect of saving human lives. [10]

The bad blood between Leelanau County and the lakeshore continued into the following year. After the road commission's North Manitou dock was wrecked in an autumn storm, the National Park Service blocked their efforts to obtain a Department of Natural Resources construction permit on the grounds it wanted only one dock on the island. The lakeshore offered the road commission the right to use the new National Park Service dock that was being planned. Rather than greet this offer as an olive branch, the road commissioners saw it as a plot to control Leelanau County's options. The response came in August of 1987 when the park service's own dock required a Department of Natural Resources permit. Officials in Lansing requested Leelanau County's approval for the dock because it would be used for a Leelanau County commercial operation, the island ferry. After sitting on the permit for several months the Leland Township supervisor tore up the park service application. The supervisor, who also blamed the park service for traffic congestion in Leland, had met with Superintendent Peterson and hoped to interest him in a shuttle system from the lakeshore to Leland. Peterson was unwilling to compromise on either North Manitou roads or Leland's traffic woes. "It's like talking with God," the supervisor complained. "They're nothing but a bunch of buck-passers." In disgust he declared "tell them to go suck an egg."11]

The war of words between the park service and the county became more heated when a third party to entered the fray. The slow pace at which the lakeshore was implementing the wilderness recommendations in the general management plan dismayed many environmentalists. After six years of waiting for North Manitou to be purchased and another five years for the wilderness plan to be put into effect, the environmentalists were ready for action. In August of 1986, the Sierra Club announced that if the park service did not act to have the road commission removed from the island it would initiate legal action. The Sierra Club lobbied Michigan Governor James Blanchard to investigate the road commissions collection of revenues based on the unused island roads. An investigation by the state attorney general followed. "We don't care whether the county gets any money for the roads or not," declared Anne Woiwode, head of the Sierra Club's Mackinac Chapter, "but we are not going to sit by and watch them degrade this proposed wilderness area." The Sierra Club's threat of a suit brought prompt action from the lakeshore. On April 6, 1987 the National Park Service published a public notice of its wilderness rules for North Manitou in the Federal Register. "Use of vehicles in wilderness areas is prohibited under federal statute," the notice made clear.12]

By this time the Sierra Club was not the only one threatening legal action. In March of 1987 Leelanau County filed a complaint with the federal district court to force the park service to allow them to maintain the island's roads and to establish that the road commission were the rightful owners of the right-of-way. The Sierra Club then filed suit to be named co-defendant in the suit, with the goal of insuring that environmental considerations would be given strong representation in any negotiated settlement. Leelanau County, however, objected to the Club's involvement and filed a brief in opposition to their joining the case. For its part the court did not seem to anxious to take on the case. Judge Douglas W. Hillman was slow to set deadlines for the pre-trial motions, leaving the lakeshore and the county to find their own way through the issue of road management.

By 1988, it was clear that the fight over the roads on North Manitou Island had spiraled out of control. "I don't understand what this is all about," Lakeshore Assistant Superintendent John Abbett admitted in a moment of candid frustration. The fate of the roads on an offshore wilderness was not really important to Leelanau County. What did matter was money. The county needed more of it to provide appropriate care for heavily used tourist roads. But the old bitterness over the creation of the lakeshore, the land acquisition process, and the general management plan had been allowed to bleed into the road maintenance issue. "The main issue is the public's rights," Glen Noonan told his fellow commissioners. "Are we going to let the National Park Service dictate the final policy of the Road Commission?" Both the lakeshore and the county looked in vain to Congressman Vander Jagt to solve the road commission's problems. Unfortunately, Vander Jagt had tried and failed to even convince his own political allies to provide the county with federal support. That left the road commission with two practical alternatives: a local property tax increase and a larger share of state highway funds. As the prospect of a meaningful legal victory in federal district court faded the county turned to these other solutions. In 1987, Connie Binsfeld, Glen Lake's Republican representative in the Michigan Senate, shepherded a bill through the legislature, which increased the amount of road funding received by Leelanau and Benzie counties from the state. Leelanau's share of $146,000 for 1988 came with the provision that the funds be "used exclusively" for construction or reconstruction which provided "safe and efficient...access to national parks and lakeshores." [14]

The National Park Service also sought creative alternatives to the regular head-butting with the road commission. An out of court settlement was crafted between the lakeshore and the county in which the Nature Conservancy purchased the bulk of the county's rights-of-way on North Manitou for around $150,000. The National Park Service then purchased the land from the Conservancy, thereby getting around the lakeshore's legislative mandate to acquire public lands only by donation. In the wake of this settlement a more constructive relationship between the road commission and the park service gradually emerged. A turning point came when the road commission sought to make improvements to County Road 616. The hilly road had several dangerous curves the commission had long wanted to have straightened. Glen Lake school buses had to make long detours in winter to avoid its winding, icy surface. Superintendent Peterson made a special effort to accommodate the commission's need to use park land to realign the right-of-way. The lakeshore also worked with the road commission on applications to the Public Land Highway Fund and to the state department of transportation. Such funding requests did not solve Benzie and Leelanau counties escalating transportation costs, but they did help to ease the local burden. "We'll take anything we can get," became the watchwords of James C. Gilbo, manager of the Leelanau Road Commission. Gilbo could even state publicly that "We're happy the Park Service is willing to explore solutions to the problem."15]

While the lakeshore was in the midst of their dispute with the Leelanau Road Commission, Superintendent Peterson ran head-on into an additional road controversy concerning planned improvements to Pierce Stocking Drive. The seven-mile dune road had become the single most popular attraction in the park. It had long needed to be resurfaced and partially realigned. The National Park Service believed the entrance to the scenic drive, which began and ended with a very steep hill, needed to be relocated and a more gradual approach laid out up the dune. A bike lane on the Scenic Drive and additional parking, especially for recreational vehicles and trailers were further planned. The project, budgeted at $2.2 million had been placed on the back burner many times due to funding shortfalls. When it looked like the road improvements were finally going to go through in May of 1986, the project hit a snag from an unexpected source.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Preservation Committee was the snag. Formed by Marie Scott, a Michigan native and a former lakeshore seasonal interpreter, the committee believed the road improvements as planned by the park service were too intrusive on the environment. The committee, which was largely made up of local people, also objected to the fact that the park service had not held public hearings specifically on the project. Superintendent Peterson contended that the realignment had been part of the general management plan, which was the subject of extensive hearings in 1979. Instead of building a new entrance road to the scenic drive, Scott's group advocated that the lakeshore partially take over the county owned Dune Valley Road. Superintendent Peterson, however, felt this would cause potential traffic problems with regular users of the county road, not to mention further conflict with the road commission which was loathe to lose more road mileage to the park service. Scott's committee expressed objections, which were shared by some lakeshore staff. One ranger, speaking to the press anonymously, complained that the scenic drive was being widened "so much that it doesn't become any different than any of the county roads." The design team from the Denver Service Center, however, had no problem with that criticism since the Stocking Drive had heavier traffic than most county roads. The complaint revealed a split in the ranks of the park service that was becoming increasingly common nationwide. Many younger employees saw the park system as an archipelago of ecological islands, protected from the rest of the world, while more traditional managers still thought of a park as primarily a recreational destination. [16]

Marie Scott elicited the support of the office of U.S. Senator Donald Riegle, which pressed Superintendent Peterson to hold hearings on the project. Peterson agreed to delay the start of the project and to entertain individual comment. The lakeshore management was not on firm ground and should have known it. There had not been an environmental assessment of the much tinkered with project. Superintendent Perterson demurred on holding hearings, although he did reluctantly scale back the bike lane and more importantly eliminate a large parking lot near the entrance. The parking lot had been a nonessential late addition to the plan and would have destroyed a large stand of mature hardwood trees. Driving the superintendent to push through objections to the project was the need to reopen the popular road as soon as possible. "We've answered all their questions," a lakeshore spokesman said after meeting with Scott and her group. "They just don't like the answers." One of management's objections to altering the park plan was the argument that the project was actually underway. Construction contracts had been signed and the realignment had been surveyed and flagged. It was, therefore, with grave suspicion of Scott's group that Superintendent Peterson viewed the news that during the first week of June 1986 someone had pulled up between 300 and 500 survey stakes at the construction site. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Preservation Committee strongly denied association with the "monkey wrenching" incident, which caused more than $1,000 damage. The group threatened to sue the park service if it went ahead with the construction, but in the end lacked the financial resources to make good that threat. The project was completed in November, a month too late for tourists visiting the park to appreciate the beautiful autumn hardwoods.17]

The incident was at once an illustration of the fact that for the National Park Service nothing ever came easy at Sleeping Bear. It also served as a warning that a transition was taking place in northwest Michigan. The old-style knee-jerk opposition based on the idea of "keeping the park service out," was gradually giving way to new coalitions of citizens who looked to the National Park Service to play a leadership role in preserving the natural and cultural heritage of the Sleeping Bear area. These citizen-activists could be articulate supporters of the lakeshore or vocal opponents. The warning of the Stocking Drive protest was that public participation would be insisted upon in all phases of the planning process.

Fort Empire: A New Headquarters For Sleeping Bear

Both the original master plan for the lakeshore and the revised general management plan called for the headquarters of the park to be located in Empire, Michigan. Yet from 1971 until 1987 the "temporary" offices in the former State Savings Bank Building in Frankfort served as the lakeshore headquarters. The space that Julius Martinek had found cramped and inadequate when the lakeshore was founded continued to serve as the base for twenty headquarters personnel sixteen years later. More so than even the site's space limitations, it was Frankfort's location well south of the lakeshore, that made the site such a frustrating headquarters location. Everyday park staff wasted hours of time driving back and forth from the lakeshore to the headquarters. That ended in January of 1987 when several Bekins moving vans emptied the old bank building of park service equipment, furniture, and records, and drove to the new centrally located headquarters in Empire. 18]

The long delayed preliminary plans for the headquarters called for a combined office facility and visitor center. The preferred location of the building was within a half mile of the intersection of M-22 and M-72. During the years when the headquarters was merely a line in an unfunded plan, lakeshore staff frequently speculated on just where the structure would be built. The more cynical would hold "we'll probably just end up in the lot behind Taghon's gas station."19]

It was not until 1984 that funding looked solid enough for planning to move forward. Realty specialists from the General Services Administration were given charge of the project. They issued a request-for-proposals for a 12,000 square-foot office, exhibition building. Although the building would be built to General Services Administration standards, it would not be owned by the government, rather the National Park Service would be a long-term tenant. For the village of Empire this had the advantage of making the structure a private and, therefore, taxable endeavor. For the lakeshore, which had little prospect of receiving a construction budget large enough to build their own facility, the involvement of the General Services Administration was a way to put the bulk of the costs for the new headquarters into the Washington, D.C. office's general facilities rental account. The downside of this creative budget management was that it ensured that the public would continue to pay for the building with rent long after the construction costs had been covered. More than a dozen developers bid on the project. A group called Empire Investments, formed by a group of local investors, won the General Services contract. The project was supported by a tax-free bonds issued through the Leelanau County Economic Development Corporation. The site that was selected was a large open field behind Taghon's gas station.

There had been considerable discussion about using the former Empire Air Force Base site, which already was serving as the maintenance center, as the headquarters site. Certainly there was plenty of space available, much of which could be easily adapted to office use. The general management plan, however, had called for a joint headquarters-visitor center facility. The lakeshore staff believed that the Empire base site, located nearly a mile off of M-22, was too remote from the stream of tourist traffic to function well as a visitor facility. The desire to implement the plan may have blinded lakeshore leadership to the opportunity to use the former base administratively and then upgrade the existing Glen Lake visitor center. Certainly the latter site seriously needed to be expanded, particularly the washroom facilities, which had been little changed from the days when the building had served as a private residence. In fact, the cost of new washrooms at Glen Lake helped to drive lakeshore management to accept the Empire site. By going with the General Services Administration plan the lakeshore's new headquarters was categorized as a "relocation," not a new construction project. [20]

The Chicago firm of Hammond, Beeby & Babka designed the new headquarters building. James W. Hammond, the principal architect for the building was a long-time summer resident of Glen Lake. Ironically, twenty years before he had been one of the many people worried about losing their homes to the national lakeshore. Two decades later he helped to build the park service's permanent headquarters. Hammond's original design called for a 14,000 foot square box, enclosed by a large cedar shaked hip roof and weathered cedar siding. Cost overruns, however, necessitated a late design change to a flat roof. This gave the building an appearance that at best was bland. In an effort to inject a bit of style Hammond added a tower. At first the idea was that the tower could be fitted with a staircase that would allow visitors to ascend to an observation deck that allowed at least a glimpse of the dunes and the Lake Michigan shore. Such an overlook would have made up for a principal shortcoming of the Empire site as a visitor center-it was out of view of the lakeshore. But safety and financial considerations prevented the tower from ever being adapted to serve as an observation deck. On the inside, the new headquarters and visitors center was a very functional and pleasant space. To visitors approaching the site, however, the low wood-sided building with the blockhouse-like tower looked a bit like a frontier fort. In fact among some of the local residents the headquarters came to be known as "Fort Empire." [21]

The new visitor center was equipped with an excellent set of exhibits and an auditorium for public programs. It lacked the "lodge-like" feel of the Glen Lake facility, which during the winter was often filled with cross country skiers or hikers warming themselves by the fireplace. That older visitor center was demolished, which cleared the view from M-109 of Glen Lake. The new visitor center offered a much more professional image and superior facilities for large groups of tourists. Within the first year more than 73,000 visitor contacts were made at the new facility. In July of 1984, National Park Service Director William Penn Mott visited Sleeping Bear as part of a swing through Michigan to meet park staff at existing National Parks and to inspect several prospective park projects in the Upper Peninsula. Mott was a crusty career park administrator and a landscape architect by training who was not afraid to speak both bluntly and humorously. After touring the new Empire visitor center the Director addressed the staff of the lakeshore. In what was supposed to be a morale boosting talk, he broke-up his audience by candidly voicing the expert opinion, "You have what must be the ugliest visitor center in the entire National Park System." 22]

Plovers, Swans, and Deer: Resource Management, 1984-1995

Probably the least controversial aspect of the history of the National Park Service at Sleeping Bear Dunes has been the management of natural resources within the lakeshore. That is not to say that there have not been challenges, rather the work of protecting and managing the plant and animal communities of the Sleeping Bear has always been less volatile than issues relating to property and people. Like most national park units personalities and chance have shaped the development of the natural resources management at Sleeping Bear. The Sleeping Bear lacked the influential congressional sponsorship that won for a few select parks in the region, like Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a sizable, independent scientific research staff. At Sleeping Bear the determining factor in the development of its program was continuity. Virtually since the creation of the lakeshore natural resource Max Holden has attended to management issues. A former Wildlife Ranger, Holden initially worked on Sleeping Bear issues as a member of the scientific staff of the Midwest Regional office. In that capacity he helped to prepare the initial wilderness plan for the lakeshore and advised Superintendent Martinek on resource management issues. After 1978 Holden was based at Sleeping Bear as a Resource Management Specialist. While natural resource research at many national parks waxed and waned based on personnel fluctuations, Sleeping Bear has had a consistent, steady program that helped the park to develop a solid environmental record of the national lakeshore area. [23]

Managerial continuity was enhanced by the baseline of scientific studies of the Sleeping Bear area inherited by the National Park Service. Large dune complexes were among the earliest and most intensively studied natural phenomena in Michigan. Beginning in the 1880s the study of Lake Michigan dune plant and animal communities by biologist Henry C. Cowles played a significant role in the development of modern ecological science. Studies and publications sponsored by the Cranbrook Institute of Science, the Michigan Academy of Sciences, and state universities continued the investigation of the areas during the period before the creation of the lakeshore. While research questions, to say nothing of methods, have changed considerably over time, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has benefited from a more rich and varied set of longitudinal data about its geology, flora, and fauna than most new park units. [24]

The task of utilizing this data and conducting new studies of the Sleeping Bear has been shaped by important institutional strictures common to all national parks. The most important of these has been the movement toward ecological management. Since the 1960s, an overt struggle had been waged within the service between management based upon the principles of scenic preservation and tourist supervision and a management philosophy grounded in the realization that park areas were complex natural systems. With the latter perspective came the recognition that detailed studies were necessary to guide management as well as the will to restore lands transformed by human action. Also important was a new set of federal environmental procedures. The National Environmental Policy Act established a review process to ensure no federally funded or licensed activities would be undertaken without taking into account the impact upon the environment. The act also created the Environmental Protection Agency, which has raised awareness of issues of pollution and toxic contamination throughout the country. Also formative has been the Endangered Species Act, which elevated the importance of identifying, monitoring, and protecting plants and animals in danger of extinction. [25]

The challenge of ecological management was most visibly seen in the resource management decisions relating to wildlife within the lakeshore. In spring of 1989, for the first time in the twentieth century, there were no seabird nests at South Manitou Island's Gull Point. When Congress created the lakeshore, the gull colony on South Manitou Island numbered in the thousands. The importance of the declining rookery for the threatened ring-billed gull was a significant consideration in the selection of the island for inclusion in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore proposal. In the past the loss of the rookery while the island was under park service control would have been chalked up as a major failure by park management. Indeed, during the early years of the lakeshore the National Park Service did step in to try and save the gull nesting grounds. It was scientific evidence, gathered by park service sponsored research projects, which changed the agency's view of the decline of the rookery from being a resource management problem to a necessary and inevitable ecological action.

Based on long term studies made by Northwestern Michigan College faculty, by a multiyear National Park Service contract conducted by Northern Illinois University scientists, and most important of all, research on the human history of the island, the lakeshore management staff concluded that the decline of the gull nesting grounds was a natural phenomena. During the nineteenth century the gull had chosen as a nesting ground the stony tipped end of South Manitou harbor. At that time the island was near its peak of human activity. Numerous farms dotted the island, small-scale commercial logging took place, as well as commercial fishing. Local farmers all kept broods of chickens for eggs and meat. Predators like the red fox were trapped or poisoned as a threat to livestock. The decimation of natural predators like the fox made Gull Point an ideal location for a rookery, as the young hatchlings could mature in safety. As farming on the island declined and the park service began to administer the island, the fox population rebounded. Crossing over the ice of frozen Manitou Passage, the fox reinhabited the island. As the number of predators increased the gull colony was hit hard. For several years the rangers on the island actually live-trapped red fox to reduce their nocturnal depredations among the baby gulls, helplessly pleating among the rocks. Over time, however, it became clear that what was taking place on the island was natural and that when predatory pressure became too great the gulls would simply relocate their rookery to one of the many small rocky islets that made up the Lake Michigan archipelago. The trapping of the fox was ended, and over the course of the decade of the 1980s the gull population relocated to a less vulnerable site. [26]

The gulls themselves acted as predators, preying on an endangered species within the lakeshore, the piping plover. The white and sand colored shorebird is known for its darting dashes across the sand and its melodious, whistling song. The piping plover was well on its way to extinction due to the loss of beach habitat when several pairs returned to North Manitou Island in 1980s. Beaver Island and Hat Island further up the archipelago also saw a return of the birds. The lakeshore cooperated with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in forming a Piping Plover Recovery Team. Beaches on North Manitou Island as well as at mainland locations outside the park, particularly Cathead Bay and Waugoshance Point were closed to the public to protect plover nesting sites. Two nests of the rare bird became a fixture on North Manitou while a third nest was established at the mouth of the Platte River beginning in 1994. The latter site posed a greater challenge to lakeshore resource managers because it was one of the busiest recreational beaches in northwestern Michigan. Fortunately, the erection of a barrier around the nesting area and the posting of park rangers in the area allowed the birds to successfully hatch their young at the improbable site. Another endangered bird species to make its way into the lakeshore was the bald eagle. In 1995 a pair of bald eagles built a nest on North Manitou Island. The return of the national bird to the island after an absence of twenty years was an endorsement of the contested decision to manage North Manitou as a wilderness.27]

Not all bird species, however, were welcome at Sleeping Bear. In 1919, the mute swan was introduced as a domestic species in Charlevoix County, Michigan. They soon escaped into the wild and spread to fourteen northern Michigan counties. During the late 1970s and early 1980s the mute swan population in the lakeshore dramatically increased. Previously limited solely to the Platte River and the wetlands around Otter Creek, the swans began to inhabit most of the inland lakes within the national lakeshore. The swans were bad neighbors. They frequently attacked native Canada geese, scattering family groups and leaving the young goslings isolated and vulnerable. At first park visitors were thrilled to see the large, graceful birds. Picnickers at Little Glen Lake would often feed the birds pieces of bread, only to be rewarded with a nip as soon as they turned around. Less graceful in flight than when floating majestically on a pond the swans would also occasionally fly into the side of a canoe the birds felt threatened nesting sites. More than a few surprised canoeists capsized, blaming the swans for attacking them. The aggressive birds were even known to harass swimmers. In 1983 park rangers removed several swans that were fouling the beach at Glen Lake. Thereafter, Resource Management Specialist Holden developed a formal management plan to deal with the feral species. The plan, approved by the region in 1984, concluded that the presence of the swans was "inconsistent and incongruous with the management principles of maximum protection of the natural environment." Developed in consultation with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the plan called for the removal of thirty swans from the lakeshore. The birds were to be live-trapped, their wings fixed, and then removed to Boardman Lake, where local residents maintained an artificial feeding program. The policy was in keeping with a statewide initiative to limit northern Michigan's swan population to no more than 1,000 birds.28]

While the policy was still under review at the regional office, and prior to any formal public comment, a minor controversy erupted when rangers trapped several particularly troublesome swans. Those who enjoyed the presence of the swans and those who were simply suspicious of any park action disputed this action. "Why do they go sneaking around without telling residents what's going on," complained a Glen Lake resident who found park rangers placing a trap near Little Glen Lake. The plan was later released for public comment, which was favorable, and adopted. [29]

The most high-profile wildlife management issue was the lakeshore's management of the North Manitou Island deer herd. The deer were introduced to the island in 1920 and because of a special winter feeding program, the population soared to more than 1,000. The herd suffered a pathetic crash when the Angell Foundation stopped the feeding program during the protracted condemnation suit to purchase the island. A multiyear study by University of Michigan wildlife biologists indicated that deer were seriously overbrowsing the island. Immature maple and pine trees as well as violets, trilliums, and other wildflowers were all but eliminated from the island by the deer. To restore the island's vegetation the park service in 1985 adopted the goal of reducing the white-tailed deer population to about 300 head, then after the natural vegetation had a chance to recover let the population rise again to a sustainable level of ten deer per square mile. In the fall of 1985, in an effort to bring the deer quickly under control the park service and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources raised the individual limit on deer from one per hunter to three. The news of this bonanza for hunters was widely reported, although it was tempered by the report that all North Manitou hunters would have to obey the strict wilderness guidelines that governed activity on the island. Nonetheless, more than 700 hunters were attracted to the challenge and opportunity of the island. The herd was trimmed by 825 deer. But this was not enough to prevent a large die-off the following winter. Perhaps as many as 200 deer died before the advent of spring. The large fall hunt and the disastrous winter which followed went far to bringing the Manitou deer population under control. Deer hunting continued on the island in subsequent years, with normal bag limits in place. By 1988 Resource Management Specialist Holden could report that the island's vegetation was beginning to make a comeback. At the same time the surviving deer were much healthier. By 1995 the lakeshore superintendent was able to conclude his report on the once grim deer situation by observing that the animals "continue to be large and healthy (the hunters look pretty good too)." [30]

The management of hunting in the lakeshore became an increasingly sensitive issue during the late 1980s. As recreational developments grew outside the park an increasing number of urbanites began to make their homes in northwest Michigan. Many of these newer resident's shared the traditional interest in field sports such as hunting. Others, however, were uneasy with the continued use of high-powered firearms each fall, both in the increasingly densely settled townships of Leelanau and Benzie as well as within the national lakeshore. "I feel like I am living in the suburbs, instead of living in the country," said one resident of Glen Arbor township. Indicative of a rising tension between old traditions and new values was the 1990 clash between a hunter and an animal-rights advocate. On November 14 of that year Larry Hayward was bow-hunting within the lakeshore near Alligator Hill. His opportunity to bag a deer was disrupted, however, by Barbara Anderlik, a retired teacher who was in the area lighting firecrackers to warn deer of the imminent arrival of the firearm-hunting season the next day. Hayward was furious and he "accosted" her in the forest and later brought her up on charges of violating Michigan's hunter harassment statute. Anderlik was found innocent of that charge, but she was found guilty by a district court jury of illegal possession of firecrackers. She fumed as she was slapped with a two-year probation, a week of community service, and a $150 fine. Anderlik responded with a civil suit against Hayward, which despite the involvement of the National Rifle Association, ended in an abject apology from the hunter and a cash payment to the animal-rights activist. [31]

The issue moved closer to a management concern in 1995 when a group was formed called "People For A Safer Park." Founded by Ananda Bricker, who lived near the Dune Climb, the group's goal was to restrict hunting from the lakeshore's busiest public use areas, a total of about 13,000 acres. Bricker was motivated to launch the effort when she found a rifle slug in the tree next to her house. There had been a couple of incidents of people being accidentally shot within the lakeshore during the deer hunting season, but all of the people involved had been hunters, no casual park visitors or residents had been hurt by hunters. Bricker, with the help of Barbara Anderlik, stunned long-time residents of the area when she was able to collect and present to Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) a petition in favor of the ban signed by 7,300 people. Hunters responded with a petition drive of their own. The lakeshore responded to the dueling petition drives by reviewing its hunting management policy, which already restricted hunting from several small areas, such as Pierce Stocking Drive. Although additional closures was a policy that resonated with a portion of the public, the lakeshore determined that there was no indication that visitor safety required further closures. [32]

The management of plant species within the lakeshore attracted less public attention but still made significant strides during the late 1980s. In 1981, the lakeshore contracted with the University of Michigan to inventory the area's plant life. That report, completed after seven years of fieldwork, documented over eight hundred species of vascular plants at Sleeping Bear. It became the baseline for vegetation management. Eight threatened species were identified by the botanists, including the calypso orchid and the walking fern. The report gave the park service greater confidence in restoring the numerous dwelling sites it purchased. Following the removal of all structures, selected exotic plant species would be uprooted and when possible natural tree and vegetation cover would be planted. Budgetary limitations prevented a rigorous restoration of the presettlment landscape. Had all exotic species been removed erosion would have occurred because the lakeshore did not have the funds to replant all sites with native species. A top priority were former gravel pit sites, which required heavy equipment to recontour the landscape and replace lost topsoil. At some sites plantations of non-native Douglas Fir and remnants of fruit orchards were cut down to prepare the land for natural plant succession. Of course, orchards were part of the cultural landscape of the area so there was no wholesale campaign to remove them from park lands. The fruit trees challenged resource managers to look at issue of vegetation restoration and preservation in a new light. Sleeping Bear, like many parks created out of former agricultural lands inherited many trees that were of biological/historical significance. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a wide variety of fruit trees were cultivated, each with their own distinctive characteristics. During the last half of the twentieth century, however, the national market in agricultural products enforced a conformity on growers in favor of varieties such as Macintosh apples that retained freshness longer. The identification, and in some cases the protection, of historic varieties of fruit trees became part of the increasingly complex job of managing a landscape both wild and historic. [33]

Invasive exotic plant species such as purple loosestrife, baby's breath, and garlic mustard were particularly vexing to resource mangers. The purple loosestrife, an attractive flowering plant introduced from Europe, became a problem in the Platte River area in the late 1980s. Favoring wetlands the perennial became established in dense clusters that made it very difficult to eliminate. Park personnel and volunteers initially tried pulling up the plant from areas where it grew in profusion, but this proved impossible because of the thick tangle of roots. Quickly reaching a height of five to six feet, the purple loosestrife would, if left unchecked, eliminate all native plants in its vicinity by overshadowing them and poisoning the ground. Picking the seed heads before they ripened was adopted as a short term control measure. Research contracts sponsored by the Midwest Regional Office were looked to for a long-range solution to what remains a growing problem at Sleeping Bear. Park personnel also removed garlic mustard, spotted knapwood, and baby's breath. The latter, with a root system up to twelve feet in length, was a particular problem on Nature Conservancy lands near the lakeshore. The lakeshore cooperated with the Nature Conservancy's efforts to bring the attractive but fast spreading exotic species under control. [34]

Baby's breath originated in Turkey, but the plant favored the same sand soil as Pitcher's thistle, a native dune plant unique to the sandy shores of the Great Lakes. By the 1980s the Pitcher's thistle was categorized as a threatened species in the United States. To protect pitcher's thistle habitat the lakeshore nixed proposals to place boat-launching facilities on Platte Bay and at Glen Haven. The National Park Service had a special responsibility to protect the native dune cover because Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore had the largest remaining concentration of the Pitcher's thistle. Yet even at the lakeshore exotic species like the spotted knapwood and baby's breath were making deep inroads. At the nearby Point Betsie Preserve baby's breath established itself as eighty percent of the dune cover. With each of the plants capable of producing 14,000 seeds it spread over the landscape at a rapid rate. Baby's breath's dense root system and attractive flower made some people question if it was a threat. As a dune cover it actually did a superior job of holding the sand in place than did the native Pitcher's thistle, which requires shifting sand to thrive. In combating baby's breath, some people speculated that the National Park Service risking the long-term best interest of the sand dunes to protect a native plant. [35]

Preserving the dunes from ever-increasing visitor use was an important resource management concern during the early 1990s. In 1991, the lakeshore was the focus of a high visibility attack on its resource protection program by the Michigan United Conservation Clubs. Richard L. Jameson, executive director of the conservation organization, issued a public letter in which he denounced Sleeping Bear as "the worst managed park I have ever seen." He chastised the National Park Service for not better controlling the visitor access to the fragile dune slopes. At any one time Jameson correctly charged "hundreds of people were hiking helter-skelter all over the dunes." The combined effect of this usage, Jameson maintained, was the destruction of plant communities and the erosion of the dune face. The lakeshore's administration was aware of the erosion problem and already had a study underway to better understand the damage done by hikers striking off on their own. On the other hand the lakeshore was reluctant to be too strict in its enforcement of signs requesting hikers to stay on the marked paths. In the face of the critique the lakeshore prepared a dune protection plan which recommended improved signage to better channel visitors along established walkways and to alert them to the damage that could result from unrestrained pedestrian movement. The plan did not, however, recommend severely restricting visitor mobility. As the superintendent commented "walking in the sand is an integral part of the[dune] appeal." [36]

While the footprints left in the sand by park visitors were the most obvious human impact on the Sleeping Bear environment, atmospheric pollution was the least visible. Beginning in 1981 Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore included the monitoring of acid levels in precipitation as part of the regular resource management program. The results of this program were shared with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Michigan United Conservation Clubs. The shocking findings, after five years of study, indicated that the acidic content of rain in the lakeshore had increased by a factor of twenty-three. The source of this pollution was remote smokestack industries burning high sulfur fuels. Fortunately the glacial soils of the lakeshore counteracted much of the unnatural acidity before it could cause significant damage. Nonetheless, in 1990 the lakeshore initiated an extensive water quality-monitoring program to chart both atmospheric pollution, contamination from run-off, and ground water pollution. While there was nothing save public education lakeshore managers could do to combat airborne pollution, there were other toxic problems at Sleeping Bear that required immediate resource management action.37]

The most extensive toxic clean-ups within the lakeshore both revolved around faulty petroleum storage. In 1989, after a drawn-out ten-year condemnation procedure, the National Park Service completed its purchase of Casey's Corners, a canoe livery and gas station located on the Platte River near M-22. In making the purchase the lakeshore got more than they bargained for when it was discovered that underground fuel tanks had leaked into the surrounding soil and ground water. Although the Casey's property was less than an acre in size, the cleanup required the removal of several tons of contaminated soil and thousands of gallons of toxic water. The soil was excavated and thermally treated, in an effort to burn off the hydrocarbons. The polluted water, however, could not be treated onsite and was trucked across Michigan to Saginaw where the municipal wastewater treatment plant could dispose of the contamination. The clean up cost more than $500,000 and led to a wide-ranging investigation of possible toxic sites within the park. A total of sixty-two possible fuel storage sites were identified, some former gas stations, others farms with fuel storage areas. Dealing with these sites became the major focus of resource management time and dollars during the early 1990s. [38]

As if the lakeshore did not have enough problems with toxic leak sites, an accident occurred in May of 1989 that added to their difficulties. Carelessness by park personnel and the lack of backup safety features caused several hundred gallons of fuel oil to spill from a storage tank on North Manitou Island. The oil had just been brought to the island to fuel the generator at the ranger station. It was an embarrassing and costly error. Historic buildings were immediately and temporarily relocated from the vicinity of the spill. Ironically only a week before Superintendent Peterson had recommended putting a leak containment wall into the storage building although there were no funds to do the job. For the cleanup, however, the Environmental Protection Agency provided funding for an experimental effort to treat the contaminated soil through bioremediation. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of ground water were treated at the site through the use of carbon filters. Even so, the park service had to pay to have 370 barrels of contaminated soil transported from the island. The cleanup and monitoring of the spill site stretched out over four years before the Michigan Department of Natural Resources removed the North Manitou ranger station from its list of contaminated sites. The incident led the lakeshore to the installation in 1995 of a photovoltaic array to generate electricity from solar power, which greatly reduced the need for fuel oil on the island. [39]

Historic Resource Management

Although the impetus to create the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore flowed from its impressive natural wonders, the enabling act, Public Law 91-479, clearly authorized the National Park Service to develop a plan to provide "protection of scenic, scientific, and historic features contributing to public enjoyment[emphasis added]." During the twenty-five years of administration since that act was approved the National Park Service has developed the historic resources of the lakeshore into some of the most highly visibility features of the park. Yet the story of historic resource management in the lakeshore has mirrored the general development pattern at Sleeping Bear with maddeningly slow progress in some areas and public controversy over proposed park actions.

The first resources of any kind managed and interpreted by the National Park Service at Sleeping Bear were those related to maritime history. South Manitou Island lighthouse and the Glen Haven Coast Guard Station were the first properties acquired by the National Park Service in the area and the rehabilitation and maintenance of those structures has been an ongoing challenge. The high water levels of the late 1980s were a particular threat to the South Manitou lighthouse, located only fifty feet from shore. Prior to the creation of the lakeshore the site of the North Manitou lighthouse had been washed away by a high water storm. Emergency measures had to be taken to protect the South Manitou light tower and its outbuildings. Typical of the need to balance competing management goals, recommendations to construct a breakwater to protect the lighthouse had to be carefully balanced by the need to protect pitcher's thistle habitat. Superintendent Martinek's acquisition of the Frederickson maritime collection laid the foundation for the lakeshore to become even more deeply involved in presenting the history of the Great Lakes. Martinek had hoped to display the collection in a park maritime museum at a renovated Glen Haven Coast Guard station. But like so many of the development plans at Sleeping Bear and the other Great Lakes national lakeshores, the maritime museum was put on hold for want of funds. After seven years on the shelf the process of structural rehabilitation, restoration, and exhibit design was set in motion. The complex project, which required a sensitive blending of historic architecture and interpretive design, became a tug-of-war between the Denver Service Center and the Harper's Ferry Design Center. Only the active involvement of lakeshore interpreters Charles Parkinson and William Herd kept the project on-track. Finally, in 1984 the project was completed. The maritime museum interpreted the old lifesaving service through restoration of a portion of the historic station as well as the larger story of shipping in the Manitou Passage through the Frederickson collection artifacts. Popular interpretive programs further brought the site to life during the summer through the reenactment of ship-to-shore life saving techniques. By the early 1990s the site, which only open during the summer tourist season was averaging more than 40,000 annual visitors. [40]

The development of the Glen Haven Maritime Museum took place at a time of rising public interest in the maritime history of the Great Lakes. New maritime museums blossomed throughout the region, leading to the creation of the Association of Great Lakes Maritime Museums. Numerous popular histories of shipwrecks, rescues, and lighthouses were written while folk music about the lakes, in part stimulated by the success of Gordon Lightfoot's 1977 ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," also began to flourish. Lakeshore personal offered professional assistance, on the local level to preservationists attempting to save the historic car ferry at Frankfort, and on the regional level by helping to form in 1983 the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. The popularization of scuba diving as a sport joined with the rise in regional history to create a new interest in the maritime past, the underwater preserve. [41]

The state of Michigan began to promote the idea of underwater shipwreck parks during the mid-1970s. Through the work of Professor Donald Holecek, Michigan State University, and the Michigan Sea Grant program a conscious effort was made to locate and protect sunken ships as a potential recreational asset. It was discovered that many wreck sites were being ruined by professional salvagers interested in the white oak planking of the old schooners or the brass fixtures of sunken steamers, as well as by the less systematic depredations of sport divers collecting souvenirs. In 1980, the state legislature passed a bill that allowed the Department of Natural Resources to create bottomlands preserves in areas of particular significance. Local historian Jed Jaworski, who had founded a maritime museum in Frankfort, led the effort to protect wreck sites within the Manitou Passage. A proposal was drafted to set aside a 282-mile area of bottomlands around the Manitou Islands and the Sleeping Bear mainland. Seventy shipwrecks were located in that area. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore cooperated with the preparation of the preserve plan that culminated in November of 1988 with the creation of the Manitou Passage State Underwater Preserve.42]

The Underwater Preserve provided the protection of state law for the wrecks within its boundaries. Limited state funds were available to help mark wreck sites for divers and to support the development of a management plan for the preserve. The task of evaluating those sites and preparing historical information on each wreck for recreational divers was left to local supporters. The National Park Service had considerable experience with such work. At Isle Royale National Park the service had located, mapped, and buoyed shipwrecks within the boundaries of the park. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore also took an active role in inventorying its underwater resources, even if like Sleeping Bear most of the bottomlands were located outside the lakeshore's boundaries. Sleeping Bear contributed to the Manitou Preserve considerable staff time and the technical support of the National Park Service's Submerged Cultural Resources Unit. The latter, composed of some of the most experienced archeological divers in the nation, undertook an assessment of sites within the preserve. The park service dive team also identified appropriate areas of bottomland for the disposal of spoil from dredging required at the North Manitou dock. In 1990, the local preserve committee was able to place buoys at the sites of seven shipwrecks and several former dock sites.43]

Wrecks were not the only boats that were part of the lakeshore's resource management program. Since early in its history, the lakeshore had accepted small watercraft as part of its maritime collection. The task of caring for these vessels, however, more often than not came down to the dedication of the staff more than an adequate institutional commitment. A case in point was the fish tug Aloha. In 1985, James Dura, one of the last gill net fisherman operating out of Milwaukee, offered the lakeshore his boat and rig. A grant from the Eastern National Parks and Monuments Association made the acquisition possible, but afforded no funds to overhaul the fifty-year-old tug, or even position it at Glen Haven, where it could contribute to the maritime museum. The forty-foot long fishing boat was brought to Frankfort, where it was temporally docked. For better than six months park interpreters did minor repairs on the boat and inventoried its contents of historic fishing gear. Like all old wooden boats the Aloha leaked and every day or so the bilge pumps had to be operated to prevent swamping. One day Chief of Interpretation Charles Parkinson went to check the bilges and found the boat gone. The only sign of the Aloha were the mooring lines extending straight down in the water. The Aloha had split a seam and sunk to the bottom of the harbor. The accident had the happy result of releasing emergency funds to raise the boat and have it transported by truck to Glen Haven. Although the lakeshore still lacked the funds to restore the vessel, it was possible to display the tug, identical to the lost fleets of fishing vessels than once operated out of Leland and the Manitous. The lakeshore eventually was able to house the bulk of the small water craft collection in the historic cannery building in Glen Haven. In 1992, the cannery was opened to the public as an adjunct to the marine museum, although budgetary pressure made it difficult for the lakeshore to staff both facilities.44]

The historic cannery building was only one component in one of Sleeping Bear Dunes's most important if vexing maritime cultural resources: the historic steamship village and mill town of Glen Haven. Founded in the late 1870s, Glen Haven was typical of the numerous small company towns that dotted the shores of the upper Great Lakes during the heyday of the logging industry. Through the energy of D.H. Day, Glen Haven lingered on into the twentieth century, after the big timber was cut, as an agricultural shipping point and as a port for vacationers heading north via regular steamship lines. Although many critical features of the old town complex were lost over the years, most notably the dock, saw mill, and narrow gauge railroad, the National Park Service acquired a remarkably intact 1920s-era village. The 1979 General Management Plan specified that Glen Haven's village atmosphere was to be maintained and that the buildings of the town were to be adapted to provide visitor services and interpretation. In 1983, the village was successfully nominated to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district. [45]

Although the majority of the village was under direct National Park Service control, occupancy permits for three properties were slated to expire between 1993 and 2005. Beginning in 1983 the lakeshore undertook efforts to stabilize some of the village's historic buildings. An interest in developing a concrete plan for the rest of the buildings naturally followed the decision not to build a new harbor facility at Glen Haven. In 1987, a Development Concept Plan for the village was put together with the help of the Denver Service Center. The purpose of the plan was to suggest ways to preserve the town, protect adjacent natural areas, and enhance the cultural experience of visitors to Glen Haven. The methods suggested to achieve these goals were fairly standard heritage tourism tactics; including, the adaptive reuse of village buildings by commercial operations providing sympathetic visitor services; the rerouting of vehicular traffic away from the historic village; and the preparation of a series of trails, wayside exhibits, and overlooks to provide visitors with an opportunity to educate themselves about the local history and to enjoy the splendid lakeside setting. But what was a good plan for maintaining a small historic town might not have been appropriate for a small town largely owned by the National Park Service. Many of the lakeshore staff objected to the plan because they felt it offered too much of the village, with too few park service controls, to private users. Unable to influence the Denver Service Center plan lakeshore employees openly disparaged it in public comments. [46]

The public controversy which followed the release of the plan focused largely on the proposal to use commercial contracts managed as park concessions to fund the maintenance of the village's historic buildings. The park had in mind retailers like a bookstore or an arts and crafts shop, a restaurant, as well as a bed-and-breakfast in the old Sleeping Bear Inn. Former residents who had sold their property in the village complained that they had been forced out of Glen Haven in the 1970s because it was considered a fragile natural area. Now other people were being invited in to make a profit there. "I was born and raised in the village of Glen Haven," commented one women, "and since my home was among those taken by the threat of condemnation I am against the recommercialization of homes and businesses." Owners of businesses operating in the neighboring community of Glen Arbor opposed commercial leases on historic buildings because of the fear of government sponsored competition. "Our tax money would go to subsidize businesses," complained a Leelanau County advisory commission member, "that would not have to pay local taxes and would benefit from all the park promotions." The Citizens' Council of the Sleeping Bear recommended that the park service simply leave Glen Haven as it was. Environmentalists opposed the plan as heavy-handed with Nature, because of the need to develop remote parking sites, and crass due to its commercialization of the historic village. "This is all a Reagan Administration thing, this commercialization that's going on," said Marie Scott, head of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Preservation Committee. "The Park Service are supposed to be caretakers of the land. They're not supposed to be overdeveloping it." [47]

The management of the lakeshore was caught off guard by the strongly negative reaction to the Glen Haven proposal, and the division within its own ranks. "There has been a lot of 'anti' comment," Assistant Superintendent John Abbett admitted to the press. The negative reaction was in part a reflex response by the local community based on decades of mistrust and an ideological reaction by environmentalists to any whiff of commercialization in the parks in the wake of James Watt's tenure in the Department of the Interior. The unfortunate timing of the Glen Haven plan's release, however, was also detrimental to any consideration of its merits. In 1987, Leelanau County was divided over issues of development, commercialization, and the environment. The Homestead golf course proposal[discussed below] sparked a general fear that the Sleeping Bear area needed to be wary of the "Gatlinburg Effect"-referring to the unplanned, tacky Tennessee town outside the boundaries of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Evangeline Stanchik, a Leelanau County member of the Advisory Commission, was widely quoted as saying that Sleeping Bear needed an Opryland-like amusement park to stimulate local job growth. "We could, you know, have rides and maybe bears, and art shows, things like that." There was a strong feeling that out-of-control growth was right around the corner for northwest Michigan. "Once it really gets discovered it won't take long, it's coming," predicted environmentalist Marie Scott. Her group, the Sleeping Bear Preservation Committee, also opposed the North Manitou Island development plan, which called for continuing the island as a wilderness, because park planners envisioned a small hostel near the dock for people who were unprepared or inexperienced in camping. "Is this a hostel or a hotel," complained Scott, who successfully had the hostel concept removed from the North Manitou plan. In such a climate, the Glen Haven plan, with its reliance on commercial leases and the blending of restoration and reconstruction, was sure to be a lightning rod. [48]

The Glen Haven plan was quietly shelved, or as the Assistant Superintendent put it, public comments caused "a lot of review of the preliminary data and recommendations." In May of 1988, a draft of a revised Glen Haven plan was circulated but it was not until November of 1992 that the final development concept plan and interpretive prospectus for the ghost town was finally approved. In the final plan the interpretation program, the trail system, and the revised parking and circulation system all reflected the thinking of the controversial plan of 1987. The major difference was in the role envisioned for adaptive reuse and commercial leasing. The Sleeping Bear Inn was still projected as a site for a commercial concession and the former D.H. Day store continued to be proposed as an outlet for the Eastern National Parks and Monuments Association site. All other historic buildings in the town were projected to remain vacant, with the lakeshore undertaking basic exterior maintenance as needed. Plans to reconstruct a portion of the village dock, an example of the narrow gauge railroad track, an example of one or two train cars, and a Native American house were dropped. Even so, the cost of the plan (including improvements to D.H. Day Campground) was close to $3 million. The plan was to be phased in over ten or fifteen years, because little money was available for the National Park Service to carry the burden all on its own.49]

The rejection of the draft plan for Glen Haven was a disturbing development for cultural resources management at Sleeping Bear. The adaptive reuse of historic structures by appropriate commercial tenants was a standard means of bringing funds from the private sector to protect public assets. While it was perhaps understandable that a concentration of such leases in one location, as the Glen Haven plan called for, was too much commercialization for a natural area, Sleeping Bear was also becoming a historic park and the need to protect those resources required experimentation with new management techniques. The rise of the National Register of Historic Places as a planning tool and the growth of historical programs within the National Park Service had largely taken place since the initial conception of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Far beyond the conception of Philip Hart or Allen Edmunds, park units like the national lakeshores, which were carved out of private land, found themselves managing not just "islands of wilderness" but also time capsules of regional history. That this history was what might be called small "h" history, the story of ordinary people and vernacular buildings, made it less obvious for the public and even park management to appreciate. The unique and the aesthetically pleasing had long dominated historic preservation in the United States. The cultural resources at Sleeping Bear and her sister lakeshores represented instead broad regional development patterns, which made the task of identifying and managing such properties one of large scale and, for many managers, of frightening proportions. "We've got 300 vacant and abandoned buildings in this park," Superintendent Peterson said in frustration over the rejection of commercial leasing. "What do we do with them?" [50]

Peterson's question was particularly relevant regarding the large number of agricultural and recreational structures that composed the rural landscape of Sleeping Bear park. Initially the National Park Service regarded these structures as obstacles inhibiting the return of the land to its natural, forested condition. During the mid-1970s the buildings on numerous farm and old resort properties were sold for salvage or removal from the site at public auction. Such action was in violation of President Richard M. Nixon's Executive Order 11593, which had specifically charged all federal agencies with the evaluating the eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places of all properties under their control. This policy of ignoring the historic potential of vernacular buildings came to a sudden end in 1977. The reason for the change was in part due to the growing awareness of historic preservation issues in the wake of the 1976 bicentennial, yet like so many policy changes at Sleeping Bear considerable impetus also came from critics outside the park service.

The first resolution of the Sleeping Bear Dunes Advisory Commission called for the preservation and interpretation of some of the lakeshore's historic farms. This resolution was promptly forgotten until five years latter when the commission was faced with public complaints regarding park management of South Manitou Island. Sylvia B. Kruger of East Lansing, a summer resident of the island and a local history enthusiast, deserves credit for helping to change the way the lakeshore viewed historic farmsteads. During 1976 and 1977 Kruger questioned the impact of wilderness status on the rural properties on the island. She noticed a gap between the rhetoric of the Midwest Region Director, Merrill D. Beal—who assured her, "there are procedures that we follow that make the destruction of any cultural property quite unlikely"-and the actions of park personnel on South Manitou Island. In July 1976, Superintendent Martinek himself helped to demolish the gates leading to the Anderson house. The Youth Conservation Corps Camp on the island was kept particularly busy that summer removing farm fences all over the island. When Kruger complained about these actions she was told, "we do not believe that the fences of South Manitou Island represent a significant historical resource, and we intend to proceed with their removal." Kruger protested to the advisory commission that these actions, as well as the preparation of several building for demolition, were done without appropriate historic preservation surveys. The commission was impressed with the substance and passion of her arguments. She was invited to be an ex officio member of the commission, to provide special advice on South Manitou Island. She continued in that role until 1980 when she became a regular member of the commission. [51]

Kruger's complaints brought an end to a lakeshore wide policy of removing agricultural structures from farms bought by the park service. At that same time Donald R. Brown replaced Superintendent Martinek. The former had greater sensitivity to the issue of landscape preservation. In August of 1977, he ordered a moratorium on the removal of any agricultural features, both on South Manitou and the mainland. A comprehensive historic site survey of the new park was contracted with Michigan State University. Because of the rapid rate of land acquisition at that time, Brown's order came just in time to save many of the lakeshore's most valuable resources. Scores of Port Oneida buildings were slated for removal. At the Mason farm the lakeshore had actually sold the barn for salvage. "We were going to start tearing the barn down to move it to some property we owned, on Monday," recalled Lorraine Mason, "and on Friday the Park Service called us and said, 'Hold it, we want to buy that back.'" [52]

The inventory of historically significant properties conducted by the Michigan State University Art Department, together with an earlier archeological overview completed by the Michigan State University Museum, provided a baseline for historic resource planning and action. The Michigan State Historic Preservation Office reacted very proactively to the reports and advised the Director of the Midwest Region of the National Park Service that Sleeping Bear Dunes contained several potential National Register of Historic Places districts, including South Manitou island where the "farming complexes" were specifically cited as requiring management attention. The letter emphasized the importance of looking at "vernacular farm structures, orchards, and fields" as all part of the same agricultural story, a resource in which "human and natural history merge." These recommendations, as well as Kruger's involvement with the advisory commission, ensured that the agricultural historic resources of the lakeshore would be considered during the formation of the general management plan.53]

During the public comment phase of the general management plan process, Sylvia Kruger argued for creation of a South Manitou historic district that would include an 1890s-era living history farm site. The official workshop planning books included alternatives that would allow for the continuation of agriculture in the Good Harbor Bay area and the interpretation of agricultural history on park lands in the Empire area. Public reaction to these proposals and others, to preserve Glen Haven as a historic village, was favorable. The final plan incorporated most of these elements along with the general commitment that "Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will be managed primarily for the perpetuation of the natural environment and the preservation of cultural features..." While those were fine general principles, the plan was short on specific strategies for determining what should be preserved and how it would be funded. [54]

From the beginning of the lakeshore's attempt to deal with its rural cultural resources there was an aesthetic dimension at work. As early as 1970 local people had expressed concern over the loss of the familiar sight of farmhouses and barns tucked among the forested glacial hills, framed by a field of hay. In 1980, Superintendent Brown ordered the mowing of selected agricultural fields in order to preserve such roadside viewsheds and prevent the growth of aspen and other second growth trees. Sylvia Kruger urged the same practice on South Manitou Island, where the fields were rapidly disappearing. Some agricultural lands were maintained during the 1970s and 1980s by leasebacks or cooperative farm agreements between the lakeshore and local farmers. During the general management plan process public sentiment had been strong for the lakeshore to keep some of its agricultural lands in crops. "There are people out there starving and you are locking up vital resources," was a frequently voiced sentiment. Some of the agreements yielded a considerable financial return, but it went into the general federal treasury and was not available for use in the park to pay for the upkeep of farm buildings. Maintaining open fields through cooperative agreements with local farmers, however, was problematical. Fruit growing required considerable pesticide use and the mowing of hay took place during the natural nesting time of several bird species. As cooperative agricultural agreements were phased out during the late 1980s the lakeshore had to come up with its own policy. In 1989, the lakeshore developed a plan to plant its fields in the Port Oneida area with native plants such as blackeyed susan and little bluestem and to undertake an annual mowing after nesting season. With limited resources for both planting and mowing the lakeshore only gradually expanded this practice to the bulk of its potential historic agriculture fields. Eventually, considerable work was done restoring long neglected farm fields on South Manitou Island. [55]

The problem faced by Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore was not unique. Other parks such as the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area and Ozark National Scenic Riverways also had a large number of rural historic sites within their boundaries. In 1984, the Southwest Region Office sponsored a special case study of the Boxey Valley in Arkansas to develop guidelines for identifying and preserving rural districts. Nonetheless, Sleeping Bear was thrust into the spotlight on this issue because of the large number of potential agricultural and recreational historic sites under its direct management. At times during the 1980s and 1990s it appeared that the park would respond to this by assuming a leadership role within the agency on how to deal with vernacular historic sites. In 1985, the lakeshore hosted a four-day seminar "Managing Rural Historic Districts within National Parks." Preservationists and park historians from across the region participated in the program. Historians from the regional office had just completed a special history of the Port Oneida area, so that district served as a case study for the workshop. Practical management alternatives that emerged from the program included leasing farm buildings as bed and breakfasts, professional office buildings, or artist's studios. The lakeshore, however, did not feel it knew enough about its several hundred historic structures to move immediately toward a management plan. The decision was made to study the problem further. In 1987, the Historic American Buildings Survey was contracted to supply a summer research team. Their work focused on South Manitou Island, where they photographed, prepared line drawings and histories of vintage buildings. A year later a second team prepared a study of Glen Haven, and in 1989 the Historic American Buildings Survey team conducted its work on North Manitou Island. In 1990, the Historic American Buildings Survey completed its projects at Sleeping Bear with additional work at Port Oneida and Glen Haven. While this was going on the buildings under park control at Port Oneida and on the islands continued to deteriorate, with only minimal attention from the lakeshore's overtaxed maintenance division. The Historic American Buildings Survey work at Sleeping Bear was more of a distraction than a help. Most valuable in situations where structures face imminent destruction, the survey was not in a position help move the lakeshore closer to a management solution, nor did it undertake research in enough depth to make solid recommendations concerning what should be preserved, what should be allowed to deteriorate, and what simply could be removed as surplus.56]

The large number of structures within the lakeshore eligible for the National Register presented management with a difficult problem. To realize fully the historic preservation potential of Sleeping Bear could easily cost the entire budget of the national lakeshore. The steady increase in importance of cultural resources within the lakeshore interpretation, resource management, and maintenance divisions that occurred between 1970 and 1995 would have surprised the National Park Service planners like Allen T. Edmunds who first conceived of the lakeshore. Yet the accelerating commitment to historic properties has been fully in accord with congressional action and changing public values. Perhaps because it is an issue that has evolved out of the lakeshore's post-1970 growth, park leadership has been hesitant to seek decisive action, unsure of its course. In many ways the issue has the appearance of one that has been massaged more than managed. In 1987, the opportunity to preserve and interpret the historic town of Glen Haven was within reach. Objections from the local community and division within the lakeshore management doomed that opportunity. More than a decade later little more than basic stabilization has taken place there. In 1985, appropriate historical information and effective management alternatives were available for Port Oneida. Again no commitment was made and park owned buildings within the district continued to suffer in a limbo of neglect and creeping decay.

During the 1990s popular interest in the historic buildings of the lakeshore began to increase. Across northern Michigan people were concerned with the loss of farms to recreational developments. The Leelanau County and Grand Traverse County's Old Mission Peninsula were particularly effected by this trend. Magazine articles and photographic essays mourned the loss of the region's rural heritage, while activists and planners sought ways to preserve the rural landscape. Efforts to maintain farms through the sale of their development rights on the Old Mission Peninsula drew national media attention. Faced with this changing climate of opinion the National Park Service took steps to develop a Historic Properties Management Plan. To complete the national register nomination for the Port Oneida district and to inform management concerning potential rural districts on the islands the Midwest Regional Office contracted with the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Wisconsin for a series of special studies on the history of the Sleeping Bear area. The first of these studies reviewed the agricultural history of Benzie and Leelanau counties and established a context for understanding how the Sleeping Bear area fit into the history of farming in the Upper Great Lakes region. The following reports focused very specifically on Port Oneida, South Manitou, and North Manitou islands. The studies united comprehensive research with pragmatic alternative management strategies. In the future they will be invaluable to park interpreters dealing with agricultural sites. Although the resulting reports were models of how to describe and assess rural historic districts, the resources continued to deteriorate while they were under additional investigation for six years. At the same time, lakeshore management's ad hoc approach to the more than one hundred potentially historic building under its control drew increasing flak. A group called the Sleeping Bear Dunes Preservation Committee was formed to lobby for a more proactive lakeshore policy toward cultural resources. [57]

In 1995, the lakeshore proposed to raze a shed on North Manitou Island. The problems encountered illustrated both the complexity of resource management at Sleeping Bear and the opportunities for preservation. The Manitou Island Association as part of their orchard operations had built the 2,400 square foot shed in the 1930s. The shed was located next to a historic barn and along with several other features it constituted a fairly intact farming complex. Members of the Sleeping Bear Preservation Committee were quick to label the plan "a clear case of anticipatory demolition," believing the park service wanted the shed gone before it could be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. Actually the lakeshore had been focused on finding a site for its solar electric system that had been designed to reduce the risk of fuel oil spills. Lakeshore management wanted the site to be within the old Manitou village area, as they did not want new construction to intrude on those areas of the island managed as wilderness. Within the village area the location had to be chosen carefully, so as not to mar the historic views of the Coast Guard Station, a potential National Historic Landmark. Initially adaptively reusing the shed for the storage of the solar batteries was deemed as unwise because the old building was said to have deteriorated to the point of being structurally unsound. Lakeshore management worried it simply did not have the funds to bolster the old shed. Preservationists argued that the 1989 management plan for North Manitou needed to be revised to allow greater latitude for historic resource management. In the end that costly and time-consuming prospect was deemed less palatable than trying to adaptively reuse the shed. "I am not sure how we will come up with all the funding for it," Superintendent Ivan Miller told the press. The funding, however, had to be found when the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation ruled that the lakeshore had not followed the procedures required by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The clash between environmental protection, wilderness values, and historic preservation regulations, aggravated by a continuing shortage of construction funds, served to divide the Sleeping Bear staff. On one side was "management," anxious protect wilderness and begin a project before the committed funds were lost and on the other side were resource specialists fighting to establish the importance of historic site values within the park. The resolution was to adaptively reuse the building, although that resulted in the loss of a considerable amount of the building's original exterior.58]

The Art of the Possible: Managing in an Era of Austerity

For lakeshore managers it was the high cost of rehabilitating and maintaining old buildings that made the issue of historic preservation so intimidating. Had park budgets been growing at anything near the pace of park responsibilities Sleeping Bear may have responded more decisively to its emerging historic districts. Instead, between 1980 and 1995 Sleeping Bear Dunes was stymied in the doldrums of flat, if not declining budgets. Nationally the park service was in crisis during these years. Soaring federal budget deficits depressed the growth of the National Park Service's budget at the very time environmental and historic preservation regulations were expanding its mandate and raising its costs. In 1986, Congress passed the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act that instituted across-the-board federal budget cuts. During its first year of operation, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings reduced the entire National Park Service budget by 4.32%. The national director called on all superintendents to "do more with less." [59]

The 1990s brought scant fiscal relief to the lakeshore. Between 1983 and 1993 visitor use of the national park system increased by fifty percent. Federal government shutdowns in 1990 and 1995 were testimony to the partisan contentiousness of the overall budgetary process. The park service budget would have been a problem under the best of circumstances. Stewart Udall's goal of doubling of the national park system during the 1960s, which set off a spurt of expansion that continued well into the 1970s, created a large number of parks like Sleeping Bear Dunes which were all maturing at the same time. That maturation process required ever escalating budgets throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Of course, what happened is that few of these parks met their initial development schedules and a tremendous backlog of projects accumulated throughout the system. Crowded older parks competed with the under-funded new units for insufficient resources. The policies of George B. Hartzog, Jr., one of the most successful of the National Park Service Directors, contributed to the funding crisis. Hartzog believed in the benefit of spreading national park units around the country, in the same way that the military placed bases and defense contracts strategically in key congressional districts around the country, to build a national constituency for the agency within the Congress. By the time Hartzog retired the park service managed an area in every state but Delaware and there was a National Historic Landmark in every congressional district. This was savvy bureaucratic empire-building during the 1960s but it led inevitably to a lessening of standards as to what constituted a national park unit and set the stage for the emergence of "pork parks" during the 1980s. Just as the Department of Defense found itself with redundant bases it could not close or weapon systems it did not need, the National Park Service found its funding crisis exasperated in the 1980s by congressionally initiated new park projects. Through new park units such as Steamtown, U.S.A., the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor, and in Michigan, the Keweenaw National Historical Park the National Park Service found itself thrust into the role of helping aging rust-belt communities adjust to deindustrialization through heritage tourism. Yet while Congress's desire to vote money for new parks increased it became less interested in supporting the units that had been created earlier. In 1993, the National Parks and Conservation Association issued a report aptly titled, "National Parks in Crisis." The report's conclusion was that due to years of chronic budgetary austerity "our national parks are in a race against time for survival." [60]

Since personnel costs are the largest element in most park budgets, cuts to the number of seasonal staff was an inevitable management response to austerity. Yet, seasonal staff were the dedicated, under-paid backbone of the lakeshore. During the short summer season more than fifty backcountry rangers, interpreters, and maintenance staff were brought into the lakeshore on a temporary basis. Reducing their numbers meant shortening visitor center hours, canceling some interpretation programs, and reducing ranger patrols, all of which came at the expense of visitor education and safety. The use of several hundred volunteers donating thousands of hours of service as campground hosts and as tour guides helped to partially make up the shortfall. Some summers virtually all interpretive programs had to be cancelled. Hurt in ways that would be difficult to quantify were resource management programs such as air and water quality monitoring that had to be cutback as well as efforts to control exotic plants such as baby's breath.61]

No area of park operations was hurt more by the budget crunches of the 1980s and 1990s than was maintenance. Retirees might volunteer to work at the Glen Haven maritime museum but only a dedicated few will volunteer to pickup garbage or clean toilets at D.H. Day campground. Yet such mundane tasks were vital responsibilities at Sleeping Bear. To meet such day-to-day needs long-term maintenance was sacrificed to the great cost of the lakeshore overall. Trail crews were nowhere near as active as they needed to be on the lakeshore's fifty-five-mile network of trails, and in many years no trail maintenance was funded at all. Lack of trail maintenance encouraged people to leave designated hiking corridors and strike out on their own, with the result that fragile dune plant communities would be degraded. A vital area such as maintenance was so vulnerable to fiscal cuts because the annual maintenance fund was never adequate to the park's needs. Sleeping Bear annually assembled a list of its under-funded maintenance priorities and then competed with all other national park units for access to the national maintenance budget. [62]

Maintenance shortfalls exacerbated the lakeshore's historic resource management program. If a historic house, as one wag put it, is a hole in the ground where a property-owner throws his money, Sleeping Bear had more than a hundred such holes for its maintenance budget. Even high profile buildings such as the Glen Haven cannery had to wait more than two years for painting and roof replacement because of national competition for maintenance funds. Farmhouses and barns within Port Oneida deteriorated more each year. By 1990 the Gordon Basch home, once one of the finest in the district had its roof collapse and its walls buckle. Most of the buildings endured better than the Basch home, yet Ranger William Herd had to admit, "With limited funds and so much to do...all we're doing is putting plywood on the doors and windows and patches on the roofs." Public appeals to stabilize historic old homes on South Manitou Island were brushed aside by Superintendent Ivan Miller's pragmatic observation, "You have to draw the line somewhere...some buildings are just not going to be salvageable." In 1994, Miller estimated that the lakeshore had fallen behind by $500,000 in its maintenance budget. That shortfall was obvious to anyone who observed the large inventory of old buildings. [63]

Credibility built up through quality interpretation programs was lost when the public witnessed the backlog of buildings suffering from decay. If the old farm buildings had simply been torn down and the area returned to nature, people would have understood. But to keep the old buildings up because they were "historic" and then not maintain them was sure to frustrate old farm families who prided themselves on the care of their homesteads. "To see the shape of the place would have killed Mom and Dad," complained a great granddaughter of a Port Oneida pioneer. "Everything was always kept up so nicely." Another women lamented, after a visit to her lost farm, "What a shame that the original old homestead was not allowed to die in dignity." Enraged she concluded a letter-to-the-editor of a local paper with a curse. "I, Jo-An put a 3,000-year CURSE OF PESTILENCE on the "ERICKSON ACRES" affecting only the un-loyal towards our beloved land onto those un-sensitive to sacred things!" The holders of leases about to expire argued before Congress that since the park service could not care for the property under its control already, what was the logic of giving them more land? "Many of the homes already vacated have not been cared for or removed by the Park Service and have become serious hazards."64]

Under a severe budgetary regime construction projects proceeded at a very slow pace. The most important new construction at Sleeping Bear was the redesign of the Platte River Campground, the lakeshore's busiest visitor facility. The new campground had been at the head of Superintendent Martinek's wish list back in the 1970s. Plans for a new facility had been drawn up and approved since 1980, yet getting the construction funds to begin work took another decade. The delay facilitated the study of a major Indian encampment site impacted by the proposed new construction. Extensive archeological excavations were carried out in order to recover valuable cultural resource data regarding prehistoric Indian life in the Sleeping Bear area. Political high-jinks played a role in delaying the project. While lakeshore visitors had to be content with a site little improved from what had been the Benzie State Park Campground, Congress played havoc with the National Park Service's list of new construction priorities by adding pet projects to the head of the list. Projects that had nothing to do with existing national parks such as major funding for Chicago's Navy Pier and Boston's public library received funding ahead of Sleeping Bear Dunes. The lakeshore lacked aggressive support in the House of Representatives and so its projects were frequently bumped down the funding list. When the project finally was funded in 1990, it substantially improved the camper's experience. Thirty-five new sites were added and the spacing between sites was increased to allow greater privacy. New restrooms were added and all were equipped with flush toilets and showers. [65]

Getting the Platte River Campground project finally underway was a relief to Superintendent Peterson. Advancing the lakeshore programmatically with limited resources was an exercise in frustration. In 1990, the task of directing the lakeshore passed from Richard Peterson to Ivan D. Miller. Peterson went west to become the Assistant Superintendent at Glacier National Park. During his ten-year tenure at Sleeping Bear the size of the lakeshore's full-time staff remained static, while the number of part-time employees actually declined substantially. Visitation to the park increased by forty percent, yet the overall budget remained flat. Peterson's most important contribution was enabling the lakeshore to move out of the highly inconvenient Frankfort bank building and into a new headquarters within the lakeshore boundaries.

Ivan D. Miller came to the lakeshore from Pacific Northwest Regional Office. The Minnesota native had been with the park service since 1963 and had experience working at some of the "crown jewels" of the system, including Yosemite, Glacier, and Denali, where he had been Chief Ranger. Miller had a Master's degree in Forestry and extensive experience in park planning, most notably a four-year tour in Saudi Arabia, where he helped to set up their first national park. Miller first came to Sleeping Bear as a tourist in 1975 and had long thought it would be a nice place to work. He returned to the park fifteen years later, warned about "the complex land issues out there at Sleeping Bear."

After negotiating cultural barriers in the Middle East, Miller was well prepared to handle the sometimes stormy public relations of Sleeping Bear. His first test came only weeks after arriving in Empire when the president of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs blasted Sleeping Bear Dunes as "the worst managed park I ever saw." Rather than responding defensively Miller invited conservation club president Richard L. Jameson to review the lakeshore's draft dune management plan and to participate in a dune management workshop. The program included tours of Sleeping Bear and other locally managed dune sites. While Jameson remained adamant that stronger protection measures were need at Sleeping Bear, he came to realize that public access was more sharply controlled by the National Park Service than at state and county parks. Miller's approach ensured that Jameson's critique was part of a cooperative solution not a public feud. [67]

As Miller began work as superintendent many projects envisioned in the general management plan under Superintendent Brown and planned under Superintendent Peterson were finally being funded. The Platte River Campground was the most important of these in terms of improving the image of the national lakeshore. Less successful at demonstrating park service planning prowess was the installation of a new docking facility at North Manitou Island. Unlike South Manitou the northern island had no natural harbor, which necessitated the building of a large pier, long enough to accommodate fluctuating lake levels and stout enough to withstand the action of ice and gales. A major construction effort was required to build the 200 foot-long facility. The dock was completed in 1987, but within a year a sand bar had formed that made the pier unusable to the Manitou ferry. This was extremely embarrassing since providing a secure docking facility had been one of the reasons behind acquiring the ferry service and making it a park concession. Extensive prework studies had established that the site in front of the Coast Guard Station was prone to sand accumulation. Management, however, went ahead with building at that site in order to keep new construction out of the wilderness areas of the island. It was a bad decision made for a good reason. For more than a year after Miller arrived visitors to North Manitou Island had to be taken to a beach on the southern shore where the ferry could nudge close enough in for the campers to splash ashore. The new superintendent had to order extensive dredging to remove the sand bar. The first dredging was done in November 1992 and has been redone roughly every two years since that time. It is a biannual reminder of a less that successful planning effort.68]

The management plan for the Platte River corridor was another example of a flawed planning process. The planning had been underway for several years before Miller arrived at Sleeping Bear and pushing that through to completion proved to be no easy matter. The 1979 general management plan had proposed in broad-brush strokes design and policy changes to improve the experience of visitors to the naturally diverse area. A specific management plan for the Platte River corridor was deemed desirable as a way to advance the broad goals of the general management plan. John Abbett, lakeshore Assistant Superintendent, spearheaded the task. In 1985, a contract with the consulting firm Environmental Resources Management produced studies of visitor use of the Platte River and the effect of dredging at the mouth of the river. Abbett's small group of lakeshore staff followed this contract with further visitor surveys and consultations with other agencies. The large number of overlapping jurisdictions within the relatively compact, less than 2,000-acre, corridor made planning particularly difficult. The Benzie County Road Commission owned Lake Michigan Road, which provided vehicular access to the area. The Department of Natural Resources owned 161 acres near its fish weir on the river. At the mouth of the river Lake Township owned a 2-acre park and the county controlled the Platte River boat launch ramp area. More than thirty residential properties, some destined to become part of the lakeshore, some not, and the private canoe livery also had to be taken into account in establishing the plan. [69]

Four planning alternatives were completed and available for public comment in the spring of 1991. Among the most controversial options was the proposal favored by fishermen to remove the boat launch from the Platte River and place it at the end of Tiesma Road, where semi-protected direct access to Platte Bay was available. Initially Abbett favored this site until it was discovered that the proposed boat launch would displace a prime pitcher's thistle habitat as well as the Prairie Warble, which had recently been listed as a threatened species. The need to avoid such sensitive areas should have been detected during the initial planning. The Tiesma Road launch was scuttled, but no solution to the annual dredging of the mouth of the Platte was presented. There was strong public support for planning elements which included trail and landing improvements, a pedestrian bridge across the Platte as an alternative to people walking on the M-22 highway bridge, and improved visitor facilities at the busy swimming area at the mouth of the Platte. A plan was approved in 1992 and within two years the lakeshore had completed improvements at several of the downstream public use areas and redesigned the parking lot at the mouth of the river. Also installed were improved comfort stations, changing rooms, and a boat-trailer turn-around. Together with improvements made at the Loon Lake public access and the picnic area along the Platte River, the park service had done much to improve the experience of canoeists on the river while at the same time directing visitor use in such a way as to stabilize the vulnerable river banks. [70]

Planning for the future of the Platte River brought to a head the simmering disagreement between the lakeshore and Kathleen and Thomas Stocklen, the owners of Riverside Canoe Livery. Float and canoe trips on the Platte River were a major visitor activity during the summer months. No commercial activity within the lakeshore had as much impact upon the park as Riverside Canoe. Yet the National Park Service had less control over Riverside than any other piece of private property within the park. The Stocklens refused to sign a National Park Service restrictive use agreement that would give lakeshore management the assurance that the business would not be operated in such a way as to "impair the usefulness and attractiveness of the area." One hundred and fifteen other property owners within the lakeshore signed such agreements, which were specifically called for in the park's enabling legislation. The Stocklens were motivated partially by business considerations. They did not want what they felt was a capricious national park management process to have leverage over their business. Unlike the other 115 property owners who signed agreements the Stocklens insisted on being paid to accept a limitation on their property use. The possibility of negotiating the issue was further complicated because principle also drove owners of Riverside Canoe. Kathleen Stocklen had become very active in the National Inholders Association. For her defeating the National Park Service at Sleeping Bear was part of a larger struggle to protect individual rights from an overly aggressive bureaucracy. The clash between Riverside Canoe and the national lakeshore rested on core values. For the National Park Service the restrictive use agreement was vital to protect the Platte from a major business on the river, as well as to insist that all property owners be treated equally. For the Stocklens it was the National Park Service that was the threat, not to the river but to people's right to use the river. "It would be easy for us to make a deal and take their money," Kathleen Stocklen told the press. "But we want to be sure the public never gets shut off the Platte River." [71]

In October 1990, after attempts to negotiate an agreement broke down, the National Park Service again began condemnation proceedings against Riverside Canoe. The goal was less to take the Stocklens property, which the National Park Service recognized would entail a disruption of vital visitor services, than it was to force the Stocklens to accept a restrictive agreement that would protect the lakeshore from future negative impacts. The Stocklens regarded condemnation as a declaration of war and they launched an immediate counter attack. They turned back federal appraisers' request for access to their property and made an appeal for assistance to Congressman Guy Vander Jagt. Kathleen Stocklen leveled charges of criminal breaches of the public trust against the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and was able to revive the inconclusive, ten-year-old, Inspector General's Office investigation of the park. She insisted that lakeshore officials filed false reports to improve their condemnation case. Backed-up by the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Stocklens also filed a counter-suit against the National Park Service, requesting a declaratory judgement based on their 1971 certificate prohibiting condemnation. The park service won a key victory when the federal court established the validity of condemnation, in spite of the 1971 certificate. Despite the legal setback Kathleen Stocklen's conservative political connections and the good reputation of her business won her assistance at the highest governmental level. The press dubbed the struggle "David vs. Goliath," but when it came to political pull the Stocklens dwarfed the lakeshore. Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming), a national property rights advocate and Vice President Dan Quayle both pressed the Department of the Interior on behalf of Riverside Canoe. In September 1992 the National Inholders Association even planned a demonstration on the steps of the Interior building in support of the Stocklens. It was cancelled, however, when the department bowed to the onslaught of political pressure.72]

On September 14, 1992 Kathleen and Thomas Stocklen met with National Park Service Director James Ridenour. At this level the Stocklens were a problem that Director Ridenour just seemed to want to go away. The park service director had owed his appointment to the influence of Vice President Quayle, which may have disposed him to take a direct personal interest in the case. Ridenour ignored detailed settlement negotiations, which had been underway between the Stocklens and Superintendent Ivan Miller over the content of a restrictive agreement that could resolve the issue out of court. Instead Ridenour drafted with the Stocklens a brief letter of agreement in which the latter promised:

"we will use our property for the purpose of a canoe livery/marina/general store as it has been used for the past 28 years. We have no intention of changing that use in the future. Our use has been and will continue to be consistent with the purpose and intent of the Act that created Sleeping Bear Dunes (Public Law 91-479). Moreover, our use has not and will not impair the usefulness and attractiveness of the Lakeshore.

The National Park Service and the Stocklen's both agreed to drop their suits. Recognizing a complete cave-in when she saw it Kathleen Stocklen further insisted that the legal expenses of Riverside Canoe be fully compensated. "I reminded him eyeball to eyeball that we weren't the ones who started this," Stocklen said. The park service paid the Stocklen's $26,750 to cover their attorney's fees. By going over the heads of the park service's local and regional officials, and going to the top of the bureaucratic food chain, Kathleen Stocklen won a complete victory. "We are pleased to have reached a settlement on this longstanding issue," Director Ridenour told the press. "God bless America," a relieved Kathy Stocklen wrote to Director Ridenour. "It is a 'Country Worth Saving' and we must all have the courage to do the saving." [73]

The Homestead Golf Course Saga

A decisive factor in the defeat of the National Park Service's attempt to "save" the Platte River was the power of the national property rights movement. That same political force manifested itself in one of the most long lasting land use disputes in northwest Michigan, the Homestead golf course proposal. The case, which severely fractured the communities of Leelanau County, pitted the desire to develop a modern tourist infrastructure against the need to preserve the environmental amenities that made the Leland Peninsula attractive to tourists in the first place. Like the Riverside Canoe embroilment the Homestead case was a battle about controlling successful, high-quality private businesses from growing in such a way as to do permanent harm to a beautiful and popular public resource.

In retrospect one of the major mistakes made when drawing the boundaries of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore during the 1960s had been the decision to omit the lands around the Leelanau School from the national lakeshore. The private school was seen as a compatible institution as was the small guest inn located near by known as the Homestead. Several hundred acres of land owned by Arthur S. Huey, who was owner and operator of both the school and the resort were included in the lakeshore and were purchased by Kuras in 1979 at the cost of $1.3 million. The land exempted from condemnation did not long remain a "compatible use." In 1974, Robert A. Kuras, a savvy Harvard business school graduate and a veteran developer bought into the Huey family's interest in the Homestead property. Initially Kuras was their partner but the Huey's soon found themselves on the losing side of a power struggle for control of the resort. With control over the Homestead Kuras began an aggressive expansion program. In 1979, while the people of Glen Lake were railing against the proposed scenic road, the "National Park land grab," and the Leelanau Enterprise-Tribune headlined "Survey shows summer visitors want Glen Lake area as is," local officials approved Kuras's plan to transform the Homestead into a huge, multipurpose resort complex. Few people thought the expansion a more serious threat than the scenic parkway, but the new Homestead was a major departure from the small scale, "local atmosphere" type of accommodations summer visitors had come to expect in Leelanau. When they approved the new Homestead, Glen Lake residents were fooling themselves that they could have both a large-scale resort development and restrained commercialism. [74]

The new Homestead was an impressive facility with five restaurants, two conference centers, retail shops, five swimming pools, eleven downhill ski runs, and seven tennis courts set along the Lake Michigan beach and at the mouth of the Crystal River. Scores of condominium residential buildings containing 400 individual units sprouted throughout the manicured grounds. The resort also included a dozen single-family homes and a hotel. From the beach at Glen Haven the condominium units, which grew steadily throughout the 1980s, looked like a small city carved out of the forested lakeshore. When it first opened visitors to the Homestead enjoyed accommodations and dining superior to that found anywhere else in the county. Kuras's imagination and dynamic personality made him popular with local politicians. Naturally, the author of nearly 700 local jobs was valued, as someone who was bringing needed economic development to Leelanau County.

Throughout northwest Michigan resort-conference center complexes like the Homestead became popular. Orchards and pastures throughout the region were acquired to build combination golf and ski resorts. Golf courses designed by premier links authorities such as Jack Nicholas and Pete Dye became very popular with vacationing downstate businessmen. By the late 1980s the region had joined the Carolinas and California as one of the leading golf destinations in the United States. The Homestead boasted an asset unlike its rivals-it was located adjacent to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Guests at the Homestead had sandy beaches and dramatic dunes at their fingertips. What they did not have was a golf course. Kuras felt that the ability to offer a championship caliber golf course was essential to the continued success of the Homestead. Unfortunately, his principal asset became his principal obstacle to expansion; Homestead was surrounded by the national lakeshore. During the mid-1980s Kuras quietly acquired several non-contiguous parcels of land for potential expansion. In the fall of 1986, Kuras announced that Homestead intended to build a golf course and condominium complex on a 254-acre site along the scenic Crystal River.75]

From the beginning the plan ran into community opposition. The first salvos were fired at an unexpectedly hostile Leelanau County Planning Commission meeting in November 1986. More than sixty people crammed the township hall, most of them in opposition to the golf course. Within four days the Friends of the Crystal River was formed to stop the golf course. Scott Jones, a retired Chicago public relations specialist became its highly effective president. Kuras went to great expense to put together a good development team to plan the golf and condominium complex. He immediately organized several workshops with the community to explain his plan and receive community input. The plan was modified in light of publicly expressed objections. What Kuras gradually discovered, however, was something that the National Park Service had learned long ago: once people in Leelanau made up their minds about something which effected them public presentations would likely generate more heat than light. Every time Kuras modified his plan, Scott Jones and the Friends of the Crystal River countered with the simple observation, why not put the golf course somewhere else? [76]

What many Leelanau County citizens objected to was the location of the golf and residential development along the banks of the Crystal River. The proposed project site currently was a wetland that would have to be filled in to allow Kuras's golf course. It did not take much imagination for people to worry about the effect of replacing the natural water filter of the wetland with a heavily fertilized fairway. Visions of the clear river waters replaced by algae blooms and breeding salmon and trout lost to septic system runoff mobilized opposition. "We cannot take chances with this precious river system," pleaded a local teacher in a Traverse City newspaper article.77]

Kuras was further hurt by a negative public perception of his career as a developer. The Hawk's Nest condominiums that he placed on a bulldozed hill top above Lake Michigan were not only a stunning visual intrusion on the national lakeshore, but a carelessly planned source of erosion. During periods of heavy rain mud, small trees, and rocks were washed down the slope to private homes and park land below. The elaborate plan of environmental monitoring Kuras proposed for the Crystal River in order to allay environmentalists sounded hollow in the light of such past results. Kuras further alienated people by the way he seemingly tried to win covertly rezoning of the proposed site. He had kept his golf course plan to himself while he sat on the Glen Arbor township zoning board and participated in drawing up the long-range land-use plan. In fact, he first publicly announced the project at a special meeting of the zoning board. This was later denounced in a public petition as a "clear breach of the public trust." As the controversy heated up, accusations surfaced that support of the golf course proposal was being used as a litmus test for filling job vacancies at the resort. By 1988, Robert A. Kuras was the most controversial figure in Leelanau County. Neighbors quarreled over the issue, friends fell out; the Homestead expansion joined religion and politics on the forbidden subject list of homes desiring peace and quiet. [78]

Those who favored the project pointed out that Kuras's development accounted for more than $22 million in local property tax valuation. If Homestead needed a golf course to remain viable, then approval of that plan was vital to the county's economic survival. The golf course proposal revealed fault lines running throughout a community anxious about its future. Like the residents of most resort areas the people of Leelanau County had very ambivalent feelings toward tourists. People from downstate or out of state were the heart of the regional economy, but they were also disparaged as "fudgies," a swarming breed that descended on beaches, shops, and galleries during warm weather and disappeared at the first sign of frost. A stronger hostility was reserved for "fudgies" who sought to stay in the area. "It's not the fudgies who bother us so much, it's the permafudge," Cris Telgard, owner of the Bluebird Restaurant told a Chicago Tribune reporter in 1992. "They come in, build their condos and start taking over." A Glen Arbor resident complained about that new type of visitor to the area, "the lazy rich shopper show off tooling around in the BMW." Such visitors, it was believed, did not really care for the beach combing and hiking offered by the area. "The dilemma is, do we build golf courses to accommodate them or do we send them somewhere else." A former "fudgie" even noticed the difference and complained to the Leelanau Enterprise-Tribune, "It is too bad that it looks like you are being turned into a rich man's playground." The rich brought in their wake jobs for the local people, but also a clash of lifestyles, as was seen in the controversy over hunting restrictions. For many embracing the golf course was consciously a devil's bargain in which they surrendered a part of their community to save the rest.79]

In the end the local people came down in favor of the project. In September 1987, a referendum of Glen Arbor Township voters approved of rezoning the land in favor of the golf course by a margin of 285-209 in an election that saw nearly ninety percent of electorate participate. But local approval merely set Kuras up for a new round of frustration when he sought a necessary wetlands permit from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR). After going to great lengths to win the approval of the DNR, Kuras was stunned by the aggressive intervention of the Chicago office of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Protection Agency effectively stymied the Homestead project for four years. Kuras fought back with political connections. In 1990, State Senator Connie Binsfeld of Glen Arbor was elected Lieutenant Governor. A long-time supporter of Kuras, Binsfeld had previously tried legislative means to speed the environmental review process. Through Binsfeld's liaison Michigan Governor John Engler nudged his political weight behind the golf course plan. Engler met with William Reilly, President George Bush's Environmental Protection Agency administrator. Senator Donald Riegle (D-Michigan), Kuras' friend and former college roommate, was helpful behind the scenes, but after being burned in a notorious savings-and-loan scandal Riegle had to keep a low profile on Homestead. Nonetheless, such high level involvements made the Homestead case a national news story, even earning a spot on NBC's "Today Show." Eventually the Washington, D.C. office of the Environmental Protection Agency pushed aside the Chicago field office and took direct charge of the case. It was to the surprise of no one then, when the agency withdrew its objections to the project, clearing the way for Kuras to at last receive his wetlands permit. [80]

Outflanked on the political front the Friends of the Crystal River fought back in the courts. With five other environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, Scott Jones's group sued the Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan DNR in federal district court. A restraining order and later a permanent injunction prevented the Environmental Protection Agency and the DNR from issuing the long-sought wetlands permit. Instead, the court argued the review process needed to begin anew with the United States Army Corps of Engineers as the lead agency. By this time the reputations and egos of many powerful people and more than $1 million of Kuras's money were invested in the Homestead golf course. In August of 1992, the Environmental Protection Agency refused to accept the district court ruling and the case was sent to the federal appeals court. Suddenly, however, in November of that year the political wind temporarily went out of Kuras's sails with the election of William J. Clinton as the first Democratic president in more than a decade. A new administration at the Environmental Protection Agency doomed the Homestead appeal in the federal court. [81]

Up to this point the National Park Service had been pretty much on the sidelines in the bitter golf course controversy. In 1988, the Midwest Regional Office provided comment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which expressed minor reservations about the golf course's potential impact on ground water pollution. Superintendent Richard Peterson consciously dodged efforts to draw the lakeshore into a discussion of Kuras's sensitivity to the environment. "We have a working relationship with the Homestead," he declared. "It's pretty good, actually." In February 1990, Congressman Dale Kildee (D-Flint) drafted a bill to add fourteen Michigan rivers to the Wild and Scenic Rivers System. Many environmental groups lobbied for the Crystal River to be added to the list. Scott Jones and the locally based Friends of the Crystal River worked to defeat this idea out of a clearly expressed desire to keep opposition to the golf course free from the inevitable backlash that would follow National Park Service administration of the river. In 1992, however, the national lakeshore was thrown directly into the furor. [82]

On December 12, 1992, at a news conference in Traverse City, representatives of an "independent" citizens group shook hands with attorneys for the Homestead. Together they announced what they promised would be the solution to the long divisive golf course conflict: Kuras would exchange his 267 acres of Crystal River wetlands for 302 acres of forested uplands within the national lakeshore. For several months people in Leelanau County tried to arrange a compromise settlement. Although the Friends of the Crystal River were clearly winning their fight they wanted to end the dispute in a way that would unite, not divide the community. For Kuras who had sunk several million dollars into the project the compromise was a rope thrown to a drowning man. The swap promised to net him more land, which could be more cheaply developed than the Crystal River wetland, with dramatic Lake Michigan vitas as a bonus. The initial reaction to the news was a collective sigh of relief. Local business organizations and the press all endorsed the proposal. [83]

Unconsulted in the spasm of community goodwill was the National Park Service, either in Empire or Washington, D.C. Superintendent Ivan Miller gamely greeted the news noncommittally: "We're evaluating the proposal and giving it close scrutiny." He tried to dampen enthusiasm for the swap by reminding the press that Congress would have to approve the action, something that was rarely done.84]

Within a few months, however, the bloom began to fade from the rose of compromise. While the local township boards approved of the swap, a solid phalanx of environmental groups were arrayed against it. They feared a precedent unleashing a rash of future park exchanges with private citizens and regretted the loss of a scenic park upland, including a large chunk of the Bay View Trail. Eventually even the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council and the Friends of the Crystal River, who originally were open to the swap plan, reversed field and joined the opposition. "You don't resolve a problem with another problem," Scott Jones reflected. Nor did the political situation favor the swap. Senator Donald Riegle was too closely associated with Kuras personally and too wounded politically to push the exchange legislation on Capital Hill. Michigan's other Senator, Carl Levin, had a strong environmental record and was loath to move against his allies for so private a cause and so public an issue. After holding his peace for several months Superintendent Miller blasted the swap proposal. "Its like taking a piece out of the Grand Canyon to put in a waterslide," he told the lakeshore advisory commission. [85]

Proponents of the swap, like the Traverse City Record-Eagle, called on the National Park Service to support the compromise and "demonstrate a willingness to be good neighbors to the Homestead." But Kuras hurt his own cause with environmentalists by failing to resolve a faulty septic system at the resort. For more than ten years Kuras boasted of a "state of the art" septic system yet failed to complete his application for a wastewater discharge permit. In 1992, the Department of Natural Resources determined that the sewer system at Homestead was inadequate to serve the resort's 500 condominiums and that leaks from the system were polluting the local ground water supply. "He'd rather spend money on lawyers fighting the DNR," an environmentalist complained, "than on upgrading the system." The park service was already "good neighbor" enough to Kuras who held an easement for a sewage spray field on lakeshore land. In return for that the public received polluted ground water. [86]

By 1995 the land swap deal was hopelessly stalled. Yet like a recurring bad dream the golf course proposal could not be put to rest. In December of that year a second compromise land swap proposal was brokered between the Friends of the Crystal River and the Homestead. In this deal the Homestead would deed to the National Park Service 168 acres of land along the Crystal River for 204 acres of national lakeshore land north of the Homestead. Those involved in the negotiation congratulated themselves on having devised a "local solution" to the controversy. Scott Jones who had led the opposition to the golf course said he was "very happy" with the plan. Every other environmental organization involved, however, were as opposed to this swap as they were the original compromise plan. Superintendent Miller wasted no time in also rejecting the proposal. "We applaud the efforts that these two groups went through," Miller observed. "But there were not enough people at the table. The American public was not there."87]

It was perhaps inevitable that the river of community divisiveness flowing from the Homestead golf course case would end up being funneled into the familiar channel of negativity toward the National Park Service. Ill-advised comments by environmentalists contributed to the flow of misdirected anger. In rejecting the idea of a swap, the Sierra Club's local director insisted congressional action should clear the way for the National Park Service to condemn and purchase the Crystal River tract outright. The idea of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore being expanded inflamed Leelanau residents on both sides of the issue. This unlikely prospect appeared even more ominous when local property rights advocates dusted off a 1988 report from the National Parks and Conservation Association. The private environmental advocacy group had drafted a "dream" plan for national park expansion, which included adding an additional 94,000 acres to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Included in the plan were North and South Fox Island, Beaver, Hog, Garden and High islands, and various mainland tracts scattered between Wilderness State Park on the north and Nordhouse Dunes near Ludington on the south. The plan was never given serious consideration when it was new, six years latter it was forgotten by everyone but those paranoid about "communist environmental groups." "Connect the dots," Kathleen Stocklen urged the press. The whole fanciful debate about park expansion, excited further by a well timed visit by Charles Cushman to Glen Arbor, was, in the words of one journalist, "akin to ripping the bandage off a wound that has just begun to heal." Twenty-five years after the creation of the lakeshore emotion rather than reason dictated Leelanau County's response to any issue touching on the National Park Service. [88]

At the time this report was being written the Homestead expansion plan and the proposed swap were still unresolved issues. The controversy illustrated in a telling fashion the difference in outlook between the managers of the national lakeshore and the people of northwest Michigan. A large number of people, both those for and against Robert A. Kuras' drive to expand his resort, saw the issue in terms that were pragmatic and parochial. The bitter controversy was a challenge to the local community and in the best traditions of a democratic society they sought to resolve the issue through compromise. Yet the solution proposed by the land swap proposal could at best be characterized as "passing the buck." In 1995, Scott Jones admitted, "both sides as well as the community are tired of the controversy and would like to see it settled." The park service's response to the swap proposal was bureaucratic and national. The plan was taken by the superintendent to the regional director in Omaha, Nebraska, and discussed in light of their combined experience with the policies of the National Park Service. Their perspective was not what was good for the frustrated residents of Glen Arbor Township, but how did the proposal advance the long-term interests of the broad American public. "The trade does not provide a positive return to the park," observed Assistant Superintendent Duane Pearson. "The National Park Service is not a land holder or owner of lands for the purpose of improving the position of a private entrepreneur." [89]

In the end the swap floundered on the same criteria that led to the creation of the national lakeshore twenty-five years before: national interest. In 1970, saving the Sleeping Bear Dunes area for public use was deemed a national priority by representatives of Americans who lived far away from Michigan's beautiful sandy shores. In 1995, there was no "compelling national reason" to change the boundaries of the lakeshore to allow a developer to build a golf course. The fact is, the constraints that national interest placed on the land use options of the self-reliant people of Benzie and Leelanau counties has always been and likely always will be the source of dissatisfaction with the National Park Service.