Over on Absolute Michigan there’s a nice feature on visiting the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It features some thoughts about fun things to do in the park along with a ton of links & photos. Check out Dig Michigan: Sleeping Bear Dunes.

While there’s a tendency to think of the park as a Glen Arbor or Leelanau park, much of the acreage is in Benzie County and Benzie played a significant role in the early days of the park as you can read in the online book A Nationalized Lakeshore: The Creation and Administration of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore:

The first lakeshore headquarters was in Frankfort, Michigan, at the site of the former State Savings Bank, a terra cotta trimmed commercial building located on Main Street. Martinek, a former Traverse City resident, would have preferred that location as a temporary headquarters. But the park service had already committed itself to Frankfort, besides, Benzie County had a number of long-time supporters of the project and Martinek was informed they were offering space in the bank for free. The space had to be thoroughly renovated, teller cages removed and carpets put in, and ended up costing the agency $700 dollars a month in rent. Of greater assistance to the lakeshore was Ted Carland’s offer to the superintendent to publish in the Benzie County Patriot a series of columns (eventually titled “Bear Facts”) to explain park service policy and give readers an update on the development of the lakeshore.

…Although all owners of property within the lakeshore boundaries were notified of the existence of the park project immediately after the passage of Public Law 91-479, they were generally at sea concerning how it would affect them. Property owners had to come down to Frankfort and discover what classification their tracts had been assigned. If their land was projected for public use it was rated “Category I” and it was doomed to be lost to the government.

We’ve also added a ton of trails and other items of interest to the betsiebay.net map!

The photo is At the Mouth of Otter Creek, Autumn, 2007 by John Clement Howe, part of his amazing Benzie County set (slideshow).