Saving a Log School in Sleeping Bear

Sitting off the Heritage Trail overlooking Narada Lake, it’s a sweet spot for the historic North Unity Schoolhouse. The one-room hewn log school taught grades 1-8 serving as many as 60 children at one time. Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear has been repairing the interior that started with removing and cleaning interior vertical boards that had been added perhaps 20 years after the church was built. Covering the notched corner log interior, workshops this summer include re- installing the cleaned, salvaged and numbered boards outlining the silhouette of where a large blackboard had once hung. As pictured here, additional work sessions in August taught the art of daubing, replacing the cement mixture that had crumbled between the logs. Volunteers also continue to work on restoration of the structure’s six windows and sills. The Park had already removed clapboard siding on the exterior years ago which first revealed the original log fabric underneath. The little schoolhouse was important to Port Oneida historically, and when Preserve builds and installs school benches, it may again be a place of learning – even if it’s simply to teach what took place inside the four walls of this 1800s school.