Glen Haven Cannery and Boat Museum

Glen Haven Cannery and Boat Museum is a small maritime museum in the village’s historic fruit cannery, a short walk from the pebbly shore of Sleeping Bear Bay. The boats are the draw. It’s a compact indoor stop, so pair it with a walk through the rest of Glen Haven if you want to spend longer.

The collection spans a long stretch of Great Lakes history, from an Anishinaabek dugout canoe to a U.S. Coast Guard TRS motorized surfboat. The Aloha fish tug represents the boats once used for gill-net fishing on the Great Lakes.

Glen Haven began as a cordwood station, where steamships loaded wood cut from northern Michigan forests for fuel. By 1900, lumberman D.H. Day owned about 5,000 acres around Glen Haven and had about 5,000 cherry and apple trees. As lumber demand fell, the Glen Haven Canning Company processed cherries, raspberries, and peaches and shipped them to Great Lakes cities.

The Cannery is one stop in a historic village with a general store, blacksmith shop, and a separate maritime museum. Its outdoor buildings can be explored year-round, while the Cannery’s indoor exhibits are typically open from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The shore deck is a good place to pause: it looks across Sleeping Bear Bay toward the Manitou Islands.

The museum is a short walk from the adjacent sandy parking area. A park entrance pass is required, but Glen Haven has no separate admission fee. The museum is accessible, and a hard-surfaced beach deck offers an accessible shore-side view. Nearby seasonal restrooms and a bottle-filling station, plus picnic tables and raised grills, are useful if you’re making a longer village stop.