Qualla: North Manitou Island

North Manitou Island: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ab5602, CC BY-SA 3.0. Long ago, the Ojibwe say, a mother bear named Mishe Mokwa and her two cubs fled a great forest fire by swimming across Lake Michigan from the Wisconsin shore. The mother made it to the far side, but her cubs drowned in the crossing. The great spirit covered them with sand, forming the two Manitou Islands. The mother bear still waits on the shore -- the Sleeping Bear Dunes -- for cubs who will never arrive. That origin story gives North Manitou Island something more than geography. Nearly eight miles long and four miles wide, with no permanent residents and no wheeled vehicles, the island sits in Lake Michigan about fifteen miles west of Leland, Michigan, a place where human ambition has repeatedly taken root and then retreated, leaving the land to heal itself each time.

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Image: Ab5602 | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Manitou Island: Flint Tools and Cord Wood

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phizzy (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. People have been coming to North Manitou for a very long time. Archaeological sites on the island's east side date back to between 8,000 and 600 BC -- some of the earliest ever found in Michigan. Excavations have turned up stone and flint tools, a copper awl, pottery fragments, a...

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Image: Phizzy (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

North Manitou Island: The Manitou Limited

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George Grosvenor, Public domain. After the wood-burning steamers faded from the lakes, timber cutting continued in new forms. The Smith & Hull Company operated a major logging camp on the island's west side from 1906 to 1917, and they did it with ambition: they laid eight miles of standard-gauge railroad track r...

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Image: George Grosvenor | Public domain

North Manitou Island: The Deer Kingdom

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wade9801, Public domain. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, the William R. Angell Foundation owned most of North Manitou Island and ran it as an exclusive hunting preserve. The Foundation maintained an artificially large deer population by distributing commercial salt blocks and custom feed manufactu...

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Image: Wade9801 | Public domain

North Manitou Island: A Cemetery and a Vanishing Village

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wade9801, Public domain. The National Park Service manages North Manitou Island as part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. A ferry from Leland delivers hikers and campers to the dock on the central eastern shore. From there, the island's trails -- remnants of its old unpaved roads -- branch i...

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Image: Wade9801 | Public domain

North Manitou Island: Wild Shores

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Browermd, CC BY-SA 3.0. North Manitou's wildlife has changed with its human story. Coyotes, beavers, white-tailed deer, and eastern chipmunks roam the forest. The raccoon population died out from disease shortly before 2002. Bald eagles nest here in spring and early summer. Garter snakes are abundant. T...

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Image: Browermd | CC BY-SA 3.0