Cover Page MENU Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One, "National Parks Are Where You Find Them:" The Origins of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Chapter Two, "We're Going For The Right Thing:" The Legislative Struggle to Create Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 1971- 1977 Chapter Three, Changes on the Land: The Early Management of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 1977-1983 Chapter Four Plans, Programs and Controversy: The Reassessment of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 1977-1983 Chapter Five, "A Local and National Treasure:" Managing the Sleeping Bear Dunes Park, 1984- 1995 Conclusion, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore At Twenty-Five Appendix One, Budgetary Progress of Sleeping Bear Dunes N.L. Appendix Two, Selected Past and Present Employees of Sleeping Bear N.L. Appendix Three, Selected Visitation Statistics Appendix Four, Public Law 91-479 Chapter 1 Notes Chapter 2 Notes Chapter 3 Notes Chapter 4 Notes Chapter 5 Notes Conclusion Notes Figures Images Bibliography		A Nationalized Lakeshore: The Creation and Administration of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Chapter Four Plans, Programs, and Controversy: The Reassessment of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 1977 to 1983 “Many of our lakes are already overly-developed,” complained a Michigan DNR spokesman in 1973. “There are just too many people now threatening this beautiful resource of our state, and we can no longer ignore it.”  It was fear of just such a scenario that triggered the long and bitter fight to create Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  Even before the dedication of the lakeshore in 1977 the need for the lakeshore was becoming increasingly clear to all but the staunchest opponents of federal management.  At hundreds of resort communities in the Upper Great Lakes region increasingly intensive development and the eutrophication of lake waters threatened treasured scenic areas. While the national lakeshore helped to spare Sleeping Bear Dunes from those concerns, those same development forces helped to ensure that the park continued to be the focus of a conflict over how to make federal environmental management work. [1]      The period of the late 1970s and early 1980s was one in which the National Park Service, the Congress, and the people of northwestern Michigan reassessed the lakeshore.  The preparation of a general management plan for Sleeping Bear was the occasion for old battles to be fought anew between property owners and the lakeshore.  But it was also an opportunity for the residents and summer users of the dune country to finally accept the presence of the National Park Service as an established part of the regional landscape. “The park is here,” commented Arthur Huey, a prominent Leelanau County landowner, “Now I want to see this become the best national park in the country.”  While not all of the opponents shared Huey’s sense of good will, the late 1970s and early 1980s was a period when the promise of cooperation began to emerge from the clatter of land acquisition conflict.  It was also a time when the growing size of the lakeshore’s budget and staff allowed it to begin to meet the promise of the 1970 congressional act which established the lakeshore. NEXT> The New Superintendent: Part Ranger, Part Academic
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