Before 1900

A legend attributed to the Ojibwe explains the origin of the Manitou Islands and the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Long ago, the bear Mishe Mokwa and her two cubs sought to cross Lake Michigan from the Wisconsin shore to escape a great forest fire. The mother bear made it across, but her twin cubs, although they swam hard behind her, drowned in Lake Michigan. The great spirit covered them with sand to form the two Manitou islands. The mother bear lies and waits forever for her cubs to reach the shore - the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Most archeologists believe early habitation by Native Americans was only temporary due to the island's scarcity of natural resources and the abundance of resources on the mainland. Despite this, there are signs of activity by Native Americans and some of the earliest archeological sites ever found in Michigan are located there. This includes seven sites, mostly on the east side.^[2] These sites date back to between 8,000 and 600 BC. Items found include: stone and flint tools, a copper awl, pottery and the remains of a canoe.^[3]

The initial European settlements were built by wood cutters supplying the fleet of the Great Lakes' wood-burning steamers with cord wood. Nicholas Pickard was probably the first (between 1842 and 1846). There is no record that Mr. Pickard owned any land on North Manitou when he began cutting wood there. While the record is clear that a wood-cutting station was established first on South Manitou, many travelers who have left written accounts did not make it clear which island they visited. Over 150 years later it can be difficult, if not impossible, to tell whether some stories of visiting "the Manitous" refer to North or South. Margaret Fuller's Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, for example, very probably recounts a visit to South Manitou. Piers were constructed on the eastern and western sides of the island for the steamers to load wood while traveling up and down Lake Michigan.

20th century

After the passing of the wood-burning steamers, there were several more woodcutting eras on the island - for sawn boards and raw logs. Among others there was the Smith & Hull operation on the west side (1906 to 1917), Peter Stormer's east side and north end, a World War II era sawmill (near the site of the old dock in the Settlement), and The Lake Michigan Hardwood Company sawmill and later raw log cutting. Smith & Hull also operated a standard gauge logging railroad, the "Manitou Limited", running northeast 8 miles out of Crescent using two Shay locomotives from July 12, 1909 until 1915 when the timber ran out.

Some island settlers turned to farming, growing apples and cherries; remnants of these orchards can still be seen. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the William R. Angell Foundation, which owned most of the island, used the imported deer population as an economic resource, hosting hunters. The Foundation artificially supported an abundant deer population with commercial salt blocks and custom feed manufactured by Kellogg Company. The deer pruned the island's forests, giving an open, park-like feeling to even the deepest woods. A 4,000-foot (1,200 m) lighted runway, now a field in "The Settlement" on the eastern side of the island, next to the designated camping grounds and firepits, was used to bring in the hunters.

A summer colony grew on the east side of the island starting in the late 19th century. A group of successful Chicago businessmen built cottages (some of which remain on "Cottage Row"). The National Park Service occupies the old US Life-Saving Station (later the US Coast Guard) grounds near where the Leland boat lands campers. At the south end of the island was a lighthouse, built in 1896, automated in 1932, discontinued in 1938 and destroyed in 1942.

After the foundation sold most of the island to the United States government, the deer population declined due to the lack of artificial feed. The woods have grown up, many clearings are being obliterated; previously open space is rapidly being taken over by the woods. Now, after decades of regrowth, it is hard to spot any deer at all. All buildings built after the 1950s have been slated for demolition or have already been torn down.

Though at various times it was the less populated of the Manitou islands, apple and cherry orchards were planted during its settlement period. Now uninhabited except by the rotating National Park ranger and maintenance crews assigned there, the homesteads and most of the buildings of the island's former settlers lie in varying states of ruin. Various buildings are shored up during the summer months. There is a cemetery in the southeast of the island where some of the island’s former inhabitants are buried.

Sources

• North Manitou Island: Block 1101, Census 9703, Leelanau County, Michigan United States Census Bureau
• Wakefield, Laurence and Lucille, "Sail & Rail, A Narrative History of Transportation in the Traverse City Region", 1980, L.M. Wakefield
• Tending a 'Comfortable Wilderness,' A History of Agricultural Landscapes on North Manitou Island, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan by Eric MacDonald and Arnold R. Alanen [U.S. Department of the Interior, Omaha, Nebraska: 2000]