D.H. Day — The Farm, the Orchards, and the Park Gift
Near Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan
David Henry Day was a late nineteenth-century businessman who arrived in the Glen Haven area in the eighteen seventies and proceeded to acquire land on an impressive scale. He eventually held thousands of acres of orchard land planted with apple and cherry trees, plus a cannery, a general store, a steamship dock, and a large dairy farm he called Oswegatchie. At his peak, Day was one of the largest employers in Leelanau County.
What distinguishes Day from other Gilded Age rural monopolists is what he did with some of that land at the end of his life. He donated a stretch of Lake Michigan shore to the state of Michigan as a park. That donation became D.H. Day State Park, which was later absorbed into the National Lakeshore when the federal park was established in nineteen seventy.
Day also served on Michigan's State Park Commission, a role that put him in a position to advocate for public preservation of lakeshore land at a moment when the Great Lakes shoreline was mostly unprotected. The farmstead Day built, with its barns and farmhouse and outbuildings, is preserved by the National Park Service and is open to visitors. The orchards he planted have been replaced by forest, but the landscape he shaped still carries his name.
