North Manitou Island Story Published

Want to know more about what is happening on North Manitou Island? Stacie has an article in the current issue of Michigan History Magazine, telling the story of the restoration of the Katie Shepard Hotel Project on North Manitou Island. We met on the project back in 2014, and have enjoyed volunteering with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  The island is our favorite spot for hammock camping, where we always do one of our longer annual two week trips.

Stacie has been spending a lot of time this year learning more about the history of North Manitou Island and sharing stories, especially about the Katie Shepard Hotel Project.  The work is done annually 10 days at a time. Every August a group of volunteers goes to the remote location to continue the project and bring history back to life. She has enjoyed getting to speak with decendants of Katie Shepard and Shirley Foote-Alford about their memories of summertime on the island.

Learning the history of the island has been a passion of Stacie’s since she first read Rita Hadra Rusco’s book North Manitou Island, From Sunrise to Sunset. The book is part memior and part island history, recounting the author’s time spent living on the remote island during the Manitou Island Association years, after many of the European settlers and summer cottage families had moved on. Rusco also recounts the history of the island, explaining many of the old locations that can be found on maps and by hiking and exploring. Since Stacie read this book before visiting the island for the first time, “it was like stepping into a book I read, a magical experience!” The magic had never faded, and Stacie continues to learn, research, and bushwhack old trails on the island exploring the past.