A Half Century Ago, When Sleeping Bear Became Official And More

Things were quite different 50 years ago. It’s The Ticker's second of three Sunday looks back at Traverse City’s history during several milestone periods. Around 1971, protests against the Vietnam War were common, a man called DB Cooper hijacked a plane and bailed out somewhere over Washington state, and the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act was passed and cigarette advertising was banned on TV and radio.

On the sunnier side of the street, Walt Disney World opened in Florida. John Lennon released Imagine and Carole King released Tapestry, which remained on the Billboard 200 chart for 318 weeks, until 2011. All in the Family debuted, as did Soul Train.

Closer to home, the new Cherry County Airport had opened a couple years earlier, replacing Ransom Field. Northwestern Michigan College celebrated its 20th birthday and the City Opera House was designated a Michigan State Historic Site. Gordie Howe played his last game as a member of the Detroit Red Wings (though he subsequently suited up for the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association). He was later to become a resident of Traverse City and was the namesake for Gordie Howe’s Tavern & Eatery on Garfield (now Agave Mexican Grill) and Howe Ice Arena at the Civic Center.

It was in 1971 that the Northwestern Michigan Fair purchased the site where the event now takes place on Blair Townhall Road. The Fair Association had approved the purchase two years earlier, and it finally moved there in 1975.

A few prominent TC businesses started some 50 years ago, including Scuba North. Current owner Bob Thorpe has been part of the staff for 20-plus years, offering equipment, lessons, training and more.

What there aren’t that many shipwrecks to explore nearby, Thorpe says the Lake Michigan waters offer old dock sites, marine life, underwater cliffs and rocky reefs, and great visibility. “It makes a very good site for training. We draw people worldwide to train.”

It was just a couple years after the start of Scuba North that Stewart-Zacks opened, the brainchild of Mary Stewart “Stewie” Zacks and her husband Ken Zacks. The two moved from Birmingham to start their fabric shop in downtown Traverse City after having been introduced to the area by friends Carol and Don Worsley in 1971. “My parents had a store in Birmingham, and we decided we could do that up north,” says Stewie.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was established in October 1970. At the time, the National Lakeshore was opposed by a large number of landowners whose property would eventually be ceded to the government.

Many of its intended 2020 anniversary events were scuttled by the pandemic, so in keeping with its theme “51 is the new 50,” it has been celebrating its 50th anniversary all year.

Mother Nature also had a surprise in mind for that first year. In March 1971, a storm brought down a huge portion of the dunes. In all, 21 acres at the northern end of a bluff tumbled without warning into Lake Michigan. 

By summer 1971, visitors started thronging to the area, though Congress had not yet provided funding for acquisition of property. Sleeping Bear’s notoriety increased dramatically when it was named “Most Beautiful Place in America” in 2012 by viewers of ABC’s Good Morning America. Today the dunes and the endless vistas are visited by more than one million people every year.

Third Level Services has served the community since 1971, offering a variety of services aimed at youth and young adults. It began as North Country Salt in 1971, when several young people proposed a crisis center that would meet the emotional and physical needs of their peers experimenting with drugs. Over the years it morphed into the Northwest Michigan Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse before becoming Third Level Crisis Center.

On January 1, 2014, it formally merged with Child and Family Services of Northwest Michigan.

One of Traverse City’s arts organizations dates its beginnings to a half century ago. A group of arts enthusiasts met at the Petoskey Public Library in January 1971 and founded Crooked Tree Arts Council to sponsor and encourage arts activities among residents of Charlevoix and Emmet Counties. Seven years later, the organization purchased the old United Methodist Church in downtown Petoskey as its headquarters. Thirty seven years later, in 2015, the renamed Crooked Tree Arts Center merged with ArtCenter Traverse City and took up residence in the old Carnegie building on Sixth Street, formerly home to the Traverse Area District Library.