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Photo credits:

Sleeping Bear Dunes
National Lakeshore
Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear
Bill Wilson
Bob Kruch
Dana Goodwin

Interpretive Model

What is a Cultural Landscape?
"...a geographic area, including both cultural and natural resources and the wildlife or
domestic animals therein, associated with a historic event, activity, or person..."
Charles Birnbaum

One of the crown jewels in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is arguably the Port Oneida Rural Historic District. A large collection of historic structures in their original locations, they offer tangible connections to our past. This unique collection of farmsteads is ripe for interpretation to the visitors of Sleeping Bear. However, to date, the stories of this community’s heritage have largely gone untold.

What is it?
To remedy this, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear has just completed a Cultural Landscape Interpretive Model for the cultural landscape of Port Oneida, funded by the Americana Foundation. The 200 plus page document by Mark Livengood, Ph.D. is the culmination of extensive review of, and adding to, existing research and publications that recommends ways to tell the story of this significant historic community.

What does it do?
The report suggests interpretive themes that will eventually lead to developing products, locations, ways and means to tell the stories of Port Oneida – things like exhibits, kiosks, wayside signs and field guides, as examples.

Three emerging themes are stories of:

Stories of human migrations

Stories of communities

Stories of the land.

The next step will focus on how to implement ideas from the model. The timing couldn’t be better. Preserve has provided through this model, a foundational document for the Park as they begin plans (with input from the public, Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear and others) to determine additional ways in which Port Oneida’s historic structures and landscapes could be restored and used for educational and recreational purposes. This model will also help facilitate their future Comprehensive Interpretive Plan for the entire park.

“Tell me your landscape and I will tell you who you are”
Jose Ortega Y Gasset