White sands tower over the deep blue water of Lake Michigan at Sleeping Bear Dunes, or Ininwewi-gichigami to the Anishinaabe people who have always called this place home./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n

The Anishinaabe story of how this place came to be starts with a great wildfire. As flames engulfed the western shores of the lake, a mama bear fled, swimming across the lake with two cubs in tow. She reached the eastern shore, where the park now lies, and climbed onto a high bluff overlooking the lake to wait for her babies. Neither ever arrived. Exhausted, the cubs had drowned in the lake. But high on her perch, the mother never stopped watching for them. Impressed with her watch, Creator made two islands in the cubs/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/u2019 memory. The mother waits to this day, looking to the lake from the sand dunes that carry her name and form./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n

The U.S. federal government authorized the area as a national park in 1970, part of the more than 85 million acres of parkland now scattered across the country. The National Park Service controls these lands in order to protect what it considers special places, so that, as described on its homepage, /wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/u201call may experience our heritage./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/u201d The model is a point of pride for the country and has been exported around the world. /wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/107254/n

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