Kropp Farm

Kropp Farm is a small historic farmstead at the north edge of Sleeping Bear Dunes, behind St. Paul's Lutheran Church. The surviving wooden granary and stone smokehouse are the main sights; the farmhouse sits separately on M-22. I'd make this a brief stop if local farm and logging history interests you. It is a modest group of buildings, not a headline attraction.

Use Townline Road to reach the granary and smokehouse. The farmhouse is on M-22, with the church grounds and cemetery between the two parts of the farm. You can walk over or drive to the house, so plan on looking at two small clusters rather than one compact yard.

The wooden building that can look like an old barn is actually the granary; the original large barn that held hay and housed horses is gone. The granary stored feed for the teams of horses the Kropp family used in its lumber business. Teamsters hauled logs from forests as far south as Cedar and Maple City to the Good Harbor dock. It took a day to reach the woods and another to get a load to the dock, with overnight stops at a lumber camp and later at the Kropp house.

The small fieldstone smokehouse dates to about 1890 and was used to smoke fish and meat for preservation. Look for the vents near the tops of its walls, which let smoke out. The grapevines and sumac behind it, and the homemade circular clothes-drying rack behind the farmhouse, give you a few more glimpses of everyday life on the farm.