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Contact: Tom Ulrich, 231-326-5134 Rehabilitation of the historic village of Glen Haven in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is continuing this week with repairs to the foundation of the Cannery Boat Museum, and restoration of native dune grasses in the area. The project is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Over the next several weeks, visitors to Glen Haven will see the entire historic fruit cannery building lifted and repairs carried out on the crumbling concrete foundation. In addition, visitors can expect to see the removal of non-native dune grasses in preparation for restoration with plants native to the area. Portions of Glen Haven, including the parking around the Cannery, will be closed for safety reasons during the project, but visitors will still be able to travel on M-209 to the village, and on Sleeping Bear Dunes Road to the beach and Maritime Museum. The Cannery was first built as a warehouse and converted to a state-of-the-art cannery for cherries in the early 1920s. In recent years, the Cannery has housed a museum of historic boats that once operated on the Great Lakes. The original concrete foundation is beginning to fail, and will be removed and replaced with a new foundation. The dunegrasses in the area are an aggressive non-native marram grass that was planted in the 1980s. These grasses have spread across the foredune creating a dense root mass that is artificially stabilizing the dune and crowding out native species, such as the endangered Pitcher’s thistle. Following removal of the non-native grasses, the dune will be contoured, and native marram grass plugs will be planted. The native grass plugs were propagated by a local nursery from stock collected within the Lakeshore. The ARRA project for Glen Haven has already funded work on other historic structures in the village. The Lakeshore hopes to implement plans to further rehabilitate the historic landscape and improve beach and village access later in the summer as a part of the overall rehabilitation project. For more information, contact the Lakeshore headquarters at 231-326-5134. |
Last updated: April 10, 2015