Traverse Bay

Grand Traverse Bay cuts into the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, its two long arms divided by a narrow peninsula. The Leelanau Peninsula shelters it from the open lake to the west. Odawa people lived around the bay by the eighteenth century, alongside Ojibwe communities in the region. By 1836 several communities occupied its shores and peninsulas, each maintaining its own place in this country of bays, forests and freshwater routes.