Village Campground — North Manitou Island

Village Campground is a primitive tent campground at North Manitou Island’s historic village, with eight first-come sites. It’s a useful choice if you want to explore on foot from the village rather than carry your camp farther inland. Each site allows up to four people and two tents. There’s no vehicle or wheeled-gear access, so you’ll pack everything in yourself.

One outhouse and two communal fire rings serve all eight campsites; fires are allowed only in those rings. Potable water is available in the village, while water elsewhere must be boiled or treated. There are no stores or food services on the island, so bring your supplies. Pets aren’t allowed.

You need a backcountry-use permit before camping, plus the park entrance pass, and a ranger registers campers when they arrive. Reach the island by private boat or passenger ferry from Leland. Lake weather can interrupt ferry service, so the park advises carrying two extra days of food. Mosquitoes, flies and ticks are common in summer and fall, and the island is often cooler than the mainland.

North Manitou’s village began in the mid-1850s as a cordwood station and grew through logging and fishing. The 1854 Volunteer Rescue Station is the only surviving structure of its kind from that year’s federal rescue-station program on the Atlantic and Great Lakes. A 1927 sawmill reused an 1875 steam engine; the National Park Service describes it as the only known original steam-powered sawmill remaining in Michigan.