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Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore35-এর মধ্যে 14 নম্বর পাতা

Glen Haven: a Lake Michigan steamboat village built on cordwood

Glen Haven, in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, began as a place where steamships stopped to buy firewood. The Glen Haven Village Historic District covers 13 acres beside Sleeping Bear Bay in Northern Michigan, and its significant period runs from 1864 to 1931. The National Park Service treats it as a cultural landscape: not only the buildings, but the road, the trees and the setting.

A metal signal tower rising over a small building and bare trees

The Glen Haven Signal Tower, seen from the south in 2014. NPS photo.

A village shaped by its site

Glen Haven Road sets the layout, with homes, commercial buildings and black locust trees lined up along it. The place exists because of what the site offered. Pine and hemlock stood close to the bay, and an early settler, Charles C. McCarty, built a sawmill and dock there around 1865. In 1867 the Northern Transportation Company bought the property to support its operations. Its steamships needed a steady supply of cordwood for fuel on the run between Chicago and New York, and the bay's deep water and sheltered position made Glen Haven an ideal landing. The original dock is gone, but several buildings from the lumber and shipping years remain.

What still stands

  • The signal tower. A U.S. Weather Bureau storm signal tower, 50 feet tall, stands between the D.H. Day Store and the Day house. It is estimated to date to 1914 and once helped the U.S. Lifesaving Service warn passing ships of the weather. Such towers typically stood anchored to the dock.
  • Sleeping Bear Inn. A two-story, L-shaped wood-frame building put up by McCarty around 1864 for business and leisure travelers. In its restoration in 1928 workers enlarged it and added concrete sidewalks. The Park Service calls it the best surviving example of a frontier hotel in the Sleeping Bear Dunes and Leelanau County areas: a home for local workers, a stop for settlers on their way, and a resort hotel in summer and winter.
  • The D.H. Day Store. The two-story general store was built at roughly the same time as the inn. It took its later name from David Henry Day, the company's agent and later the owner of the village. It is now a ranger station.
  • The cannery. When demand for cordwood fell, the community opened the Glen Haven Canning Company in the mid-1920s to keep the village economy going. Its building is now the Cannery Boat Museum.
  • Other structures. A blacksmith shop of hand-hewn timbers, a generator building and several houses. Most houses have one or two stories, clapboard siding and gable roofs, a uniform and simple vernacular style.

Bare locust trees in a row along Glen Haven Road

Locust trees along Glen Haven Road in 2014. NPS photo.

Trees and surroundings

Vegetation is part of the story. Scrub, grassland and forest around the district look much as they did in its period of significance. A Dutchman's pipe vine grows on the southwest corner of the D.H. Day Store, and 34 black locust trees on the two sides of Glen Haven Road reinforce the district's layout.

The single-story Glen Haven Canning Company building with many windows and doors

The Glen Haven Canning Company building in 2014. NPS photo.

Why it is listed

The surviving features let the district convey its history in maritime history, transportation, commerce and outdoor recreation. The Park Service's quick facts date the first three from 1864 to 1931 and outdoor recreation from 1920 to 1931. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, with supplementary documentation added in 1990. Visitors can see the Cannery Boat Museum and the fully restored general store and blacksmith shop.

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