Sleeping Bear Inn

Sleeping Bear Inn is a two-story clapboard inn in historic Glen Haven, now a bed-and-breakfast across from Glen Haven Beach. Choose it for an overnight in the village's lakeshore history, not as a quick indoor museum stop. The inn looks across Sleeping Bear Bay and Manitou Passage toward North and South Manitou Islands. Guest rooms have private bathrooms, with views either toward Lake Michigan or toward the back dune and woods. Guest parking is private, and a Sleeping Bear Dunes pass is required.

The inn serves a plated, home-cooked breakfast for its guests. The menu varies, with examples including blueberry pancakes, quiche, and baked French toast; guests often single out the meal as a highlight. This is lodging with breakfast, not a public café stop. One first-floor room is listed with an accessible bathroom; check the entrance and route details directly when booking if mobility access matters.

The inn was first known as Sleeping Bear House. Its history reflects Glen Haven's mix of summer visitors and working crews: vacationers had the better rooms at the front, while lumbermen and other workers stayed in crowded upstairs and rear rooms. Meals were staggered so the two groups did not eat together. D.H. Day, later a major figure in the village, married the innkeeper's daughter and lived upstairs for a time.

A major 1928 renovation enclosed the porch, added a rear wooden stairway, two red-brick fireplaces, and indoor bathrooms. A roughly 20-by-40-foot rear addition gave the building its L-shaped plan. The long enclosed porch and brick chimneys make the remodel easy to pick out in an exterior photo. A plaque reads “Erected 1857,” but the inn's construction date is disputed; that date may refer to the first proprietor's wider business ventures rather than the building itself.

Glen Haven was a working lakeshore village as well as a summer destination. Timber moved from inland Glen Lake to the Lake Michigan dock, first by tug and wagon and later along a tramway. After D.H. Day acquired the inn and other local property in 1881, he expanded the sawmill and used the steamer Champlain for weekly runs along the coast. A railroad ran behind the inn to the dock by 1907. The building is a good anchor for understanding why Glen Haven grew where it did.