5 YEARS AGO May 30, 2019
A fence limiting public access at a popular road end in Leland has been erected and removed in mysterious fashion, causing uproar among residents with an emotional attachment to the area. “To be able to put your seat there and watch the waves and the kids play,” said Maude Babington, who lives with Heidi Weckwert in a home near the Reynolds St. access. “We’ve already gone down there twice and had picnic dinners.” *** The bears of Leelanau County are sleeping no more. They have awakened, and are busy as bees in Leelanau hives, clamoring up their namesake dune and making paths across the county. Zoe Moseler, a graduating senior at Suttons Bay, happened upon one two weeks ago while mushroom picking near her home on South Lake Shore Drive, her father recalls. “She was looking for mushrooms and saw some deer, who started running. She looked up and there was a bear across the field. She quickly (pause, then chuckle) made her way back to the house — breathlessly,” Moseler said.
10 YEARS AGO May 29, 2014
The view from the top of the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb can give you goose bumps. But it was snow buried beneath a blanket of sand that chilled Liz Vogel on Sunday while exploring. Vogel, who lives at Grosse Pointe Farms, was up north helping her parents, Glen Arbor summer residents Bill and Sue Vogel, open the family cottage for the season. She and friend Greg Jacobs, a Park Service employee, went to the dune to explore, but discovered much more than she expected. After digging down six to eight inches, the couple hit paydirt. Or, more accurately, snow. *** A paid-parking trial for Empire Beach will go ahead as planned after council members this week revisited what has turned out to be a hot potato. Village and township residents have lined up on both sides of the issue since council members voted in April to install a meter to charge $1 an hour to those who snag one of 87 spots available at the beach. It will be the first beach in the county to charge a parking fee. *** A rectangular section of property in Kasson Township that was once part of a grand compromise which eventually brought Wilderness designation to about 30,000 acres of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore will soon have its own trail. And a vault toilet. And a very small pricetag for a trail project.
25 YEARS AGO June 3, 1999
Jeremy Thelen, 22, of Cheboygan, and Corey Matthews, 22, of Buckley, escaped Thursday night from the Leelanau County Jail. Thelen was apprehended before noon on Friday while Matthews is thought to have fled the state. The escape is believed to be the first of its kind in Leelanau County. *** The Leelanau Community Resource Center in Lake Leelanau may be named for former county commissioner and Lt. Gov. Connie Binsfeld. The two-county Health Department anchors the building, which also houses the Leelanau Peninsula School, Bay Area Transportation Authority and Leelanau County Family Coordinating Council. *** Lifelong county residents John A. and Dorothy R. Popa were killed last Wednesday in Kent County when a semi-tractor trailer struck their car from behind in a construction zone.
50 YEARS AGO May 30, 1974
Mrs. Terry Buckler of County Road 651, four and a half miles north of Cedar awoke from a nap Monday afternoon to find her house afire. She quickly rescued her two children, who were also napping, and fled the house. Cedar Volunteer Fire Department assisted by two units from Leland Fire Department, put out the fire which did an estimated $4,000 damage to the upstairs bedrooms and hallway, including furniture and clothing. *** Orville Jack Foreman, 71, of Glen Arbor was after a porcupine. The porcupine went underneath an automobile and Foreman bent town, stuck his shotgun under the frame of the car and fired. Leelanau County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t know whether or not the porcupine got away but Foreman himself ended up with some of the pellets from the shotgun blast in his legs and left hand. Deputies reported that the pellets ricocheted off the frame of the car and hit Foreman. He was treated and released at Munson Medical Center.
75 YEARS AGO May 27, 1948
Forest Elmer of Glen Arbor will appear before Justice Wilfred Weiler of Suttons Bay on a charge that Elmer was drunk Monday night when his truck careened across M22 at Port Oneida, and struck a car driven by Howard Oleson of Maple City, wrecking both vehicles. Elmer’s car is said to have veered back to the right side after the collision and came to a stop against a tree. *** Charles Sedlacek, 15-year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Wencel Sedlacek of East Leland is alive after having been dragged 1,000 feet under the tines of a 1,500 pound harrow Monday evening on his father’s farm. He is at Munson hospital in Traverse City with multiple fractures of the kneecap and serious damage to the tissues under the cap.
100 YEARS AGO May 29, 1924
Let but the public mind once become thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off canker-worms. *** What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of a clock, the running of the sand; pay and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of time, but not time itself. Time is the life of the soul; if not this, then tell me what is time.
