Boekelodge: A Wilderness Cabin Retreat in Sleeping Bear Dunes

In Michigan, on the northeastern shore of Lake Michigan, a small log cabin with BOEKELODGE painted on its gable in red marks what the National Park Service calls one of the last existing wilderness retreats in the state, a type that was popular in the mid-20th century. The Boekelodge cultural landscape covers 365.48 acres of beach, dunes, woodland, trails, buildings and small features in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Boekelodge cabin (NPS, 2019).

Who used the land

• 1929 to the mid-1930s. Joseph Cooper bought 161 acres in 1929 as a family homestead. He built the original one-room cabin, in 1932, along with outbuildings and hand-dug drainage canals meant for a cranberry bog, a plan that was never carried out. The family hunted, trapped, fished and gardened there until they left in the mid-1930s, and the place sat unused for about ten years.
• 1945 on. Miles Boekeloo and his wife Glea bought the 161 acres in 1945 and used them as a rustic getaway for family and friends. He hired men to dig a pond in front of the cabin, where Cooper had hoped for the bog, and added two privies and a front deck. In 1963 he added a bunk room on the back of the cabin.
• 1962. Development proposals threatened the nearly untouched shoreline from the south and west, and Boekeloo bought another 204.48 acres, which included about 1.25 miles of lakefront beach. A few trees were cut to make a trail from the beach to the cabin.
• 1970s to 1980. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was established in 1970, and the park began inquiring about buying the land in the mid-1970s. In 1980 Boekeloo sold the 365.48 acres to the NPS. The deal included a 25-year agreement, a Reservation of Use and Occupancy, for the 5 acres with the pond and cabin. The family kept using those 5 acres until it ended.

Boekelodge cabin and landscape in the 1970s (NPS).

The landscape

The cabin measures 716 square feet, including Boekeloo's rear addition. Boekeloo Road runs west-northwest from Highway 22, about 15 minutes south of Empire, to a dead end at a gate and a path to the cabin. The only other building is a privy northwest of the cabin. The cabin faces the hand-dug pond, which adds to the primitive feeling and gives a view east. A trail leads through woodland, wetland and dunes to Boekeloo Beach on Lake Michigan.

Boekeloo Pond and the cabin (NPS, 2019).

The land is a pattern of ridges and swales, which offers exceptionally complex and diverse habitats for wetland, upland and Great Lakes shoreline plants and animals.

A pool in a depression among the dunes (NPS, 2019).

What Cooper and Boekeloo built still stands: the cabin and its addition, the trails to the beach and to Boekeloo Road, the drainage canals and the pond. For about 15 years the park has worked with a local group, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear, to restore and maintain the cabin and the one remaining privy. The natural, primitive setting is crucial to the landscape's historic integrity, the NPS says, because it is why Boekeloo bought the land and enjoyed time there with family and friends.

Record

Sources

• National Park Service, Boekelodge Log Cabin Cultural Landscape District, Cultural Landscapes of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The page's picture of a gate sign is left out.