History

Our History

The Homestead is situated on some 350 acres of land with about a mile of frontage on Lake Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Bay and several more on the Crystal River. To its west are the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the South and North Manitou Islands.

The beautiful but beguiling waters between the mainland and islands, which are known as the Manitou Passage, have a long history of being the most dangerous shipping lane on Lake Michigan. Some 150 shipwrecks in an underwater preserve attest to that as does the rusted hull of a Liberian freighter, the Francisco Morazan, which you can see protruding from the water at the south end of South Manitou Island. Read more of the resort’s history »