Ken-Tuck-U-Inn

Ken-Tuck-U-Inn is a preserved two-story house on M-22 just north of Long Lake Road, near the southern edge of Sleeping Bear Dunes. It marks Aral, a former settlement at the mouth of Otter Creek. Make this a brief history stop: the inn no longer offers lodging or meals, and the visit centers on the house and an interpretive wayside. Current interior access isn’t clearly established, so don’t count on a house tour.

Around 1882, Dr. Arthur O’Leary built a sawmill on Otter Creek. Aral grew into a mill town of about 200 people, many of them lumber workers. The mill closed in 1911 when the local supply of logs ran out. The old inn ties that vanished settlement to a later chapter of life along this stretch of the lakeshore.

As farms in the area began taking tourists in the 1920s, Bertie and Donna Bancroft built the inn in 1925. It was a mail-order kit house from Aladdin Builders, and the Bancrofts were the last people to leave Aral. Donna’s Sunday chicken dinners became a draw in peak season; she sometimes served more than 100 guests, cooking with farm-raised chickens and garden produce on a wood stove. The inn operated until Bertie’s death in 1963, and Donna died the following year.

The house is larger than a typical farmhouse, with two stories and a broad screened porch. A nearby interpretive panel pairs historic photographs with an advertisement for the inn. Take in the whole front so the porch reads against the house’s scale; its pale-yellow siding and wooded setting are part of the story, too.