Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear will host a Volunteer Open House on Sunday, June 8 from noon to 3 p.m. The event is being held at the organization’s headquarters in the Port Oneida Heritage Center at the Charles and Hattie Olsen farmstead, 3164 W. Harbor Hwy (M-22), four miles north of Glen Arbor.
Come out and learn about volunteer opportunities and speak with staff and current volunteers about the organization and its many programs and projects across Sleeping Bear. There are opportunities in positions such as volunteer Heritage Center greeters, horse and wagon tour guides, preservation crew, gardeners and event help.
An important piece of historic building preservation is in the proper restoration and glazing of windows. Currently, windows are being restored for the historic Faust Log Cabin. Volunteers gather weekly on Tuesdays at the Olsen farm to be trained and work on window restoration.
Visitors to the Open House can learn more about this process, and see restored windows installed at Olsen farm.
Greg Smith began volunteering with the group eight years ago, bringing knowledge from his hobby woodworking days, and a lifetime of experiences from his career at Ford Motor Company. Greg explained that part of the reason he continues the work is because of the people. “I enjoy working with the people that are involved in Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear and learned many techniques in the restoration process.” As Greg sees it, there are many benefits to the preservation work that he is involved in. “The most rewarding is that I love working outdoors and seeing the results of our efforts we put into restoring these beautiful old farms. When I’m at the farm, I try to imagine how life was many years ago.”
Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear relies on volunteers to preserve and interpret the more than 350 historic buildings and landscapes of the park. So, the organization also has unique opportunities to Adopt-a-Building and Adopt-a-Landscape. In partnership with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, volunteers become a steward of these historic resources through this adoption program.
Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear is a proud partner of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore celebrating more than 25 years of preserving and interpreting the rich heritage of historic structures and cultural landscapes.
For more information about Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear go to https://phsb.org.
