From Sugar Loaf To Local Sports, Here's Leelanau County's 2025 By-The-Numbers Breakdown

A federal government shutdown that affected operations at Leelanau County’s most famous tourist attraction. A Suttons Bay-set commercial from a major brand that racked up millions of views on YouTube. A big fundraising campaign aimed at finally bringing the long-dormant Sugar Loaf property back to life. With just six days left in 2025, the Leelanau Ticker is looking back at these stories and others for our annual by-the-numbers recap.

Sleeping Bear Dunes

43: Days the federal government was shut down this fall, from October 1 to November 12, breaking the record for the longest federal shutdown in American history. Among countless disruptions nationwide, the lapse in government services hit Leelanau County in the form of closures at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which closed its visitor center and museums, suspended ranger-led activities and educational programs, and stopped staffing fee booths at the Dune Climb and Pierce Stocking Drive.

$13,000: Money raised by the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes, a nonprofit that assists the National Park Service (NPS) in caring for the park, during its “entrance fee support campaign.” That fundraiser sought to replace some of the lost revenues from when the park wasn’t collecting admissions fees during the shutdown. Per Laura Ann Johnson, executive director for Friends of Sleeping Bear, the organization has “already used some of those funds to buy Sleeping Bear Dunes a salt spreader for one of their plow trucks.”

?: Total lost revenues at Sleeping Bear Dunes during the shutdown – a number Johnson says the NPS “has not and will not be releasing” to the public.

1,587,355: Recreation visitor total at Sleeping Bear for the first 11 months of the year, based on preliminary NPS data. (Despite the shutdown, the NPS continued tracking numbers through October and November.) The number falls significantly below last year, which saw 1,658,096 visitors between January 1 and November 30. The jury is out on whether the shutdown impacted visitor totals, though: October was busier than usual, with 128,597 visitors (compared to 123,598 for the same month last year), while November was considerably slower (just 8,525 visitors, versus 21,033 in 2024).

297,220: June visitors at Sleeping Bear – the biggest June in the park’s history. That’s nearly 20,000 more visitors than last June (278,009), which itself was just below the previous all-time June record (278,256 in 2021). 2021, notably, went on to be a record year for traffic at the park, with 1,722,955 visitors.

Sugar Loaf

71: Days elapsed between July 17, when the Leelanau Conservancy went public with its campaign to turn the long-dormant Sugar Loaf ski resort property into a public park; and September 26, when the Conservancy announced it had met its $8 million fundraising goal. SPV 45, the anonymous group that owns Sugar Loaf, is gifting the property to the Conservancy, but made the offer contingent upon the nonprofit’s ability to raise $8 million for a site plan.

$1.6 million: Money raised by the Conservancy in that 71-day period, on top of the $6.4 million it had already accumulated for the Sugar Loaf project when it announced the news in July – good for an average of $22,535 raised per day.

25: Years since Sugar Loaf closed its doors as a ski resort.

5: Years since SPV 45 acquired the Sugar Loaf property in 2020.

285: Acres at Sugar Loaf now donated to the Leelanau Conservancy and protected forever

Sports

16: Steals made by 2025 Suttons Bay High School graduate Austin Vang in a February basketball game against Boyne Falls. That epic performance came on senior night for the Norsemen, and not only netted Suttons Bay a huge 81-7 victory, but also made Vang the all-time Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) record holder for most steals in a single game.

4: Games lost by the Glen Lake varsity football team across the entire last two seasons. The Lakers went 9-2 both years. This year marked the team’s third season in a row making the playoffs. They fell to Bark River Harris in a 21-22 regional heartbreaker on November 14.

63: Goals scored by the Leland High School boys soccer team, en route to a state championship title this fall. The team ended the season with a nine-game winning streak to finish the year with a 16-8-2 record.

Other miscellaneous county numbers

40 million: Number of views, on YouTube, for a new Carhartt commercial filmed in Suttons Bay. Carhartt, a 136-year-old clothing company headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan and known for its workwear and outdoor apparel, released the 30-second spot on Black Friday, meaning all those views came in the space of only a month. Titled “For Those Who Make the Holidays Possible,” the commercial focuses on Suttons Bay resident Jesse Fox and the work he does in the winter to prepare and maintain the Suttons Bay community ice rink.

4,300+: The current production capacity, in bottles per month, at Red Truck Orchards, the new cherry vinegar brand spun out of Hallstedt Homestead Cherries in Northport. Per owner Phil Hallstedt, Red Truck Orchards is up to six team members and has so far engaged 38 retail stores to carry its product.

88: Pairs of piping plovers counted in the Great Lakes region in 2025, up from the 81 pairs counted in both 2024 and 2023. 34 of those pairs were identified within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Conservation experts are aiming to hit a “recovery goal” of 150 plover pairs in the Great Lakes region, which would constitute a relatively stable population – especially compared to the endangerment levels of 40 years ago, when there were just 17 plover pairs along the Great Lakes shoreline.

835: Volunteer hours clocked by the Lake Leelanau Lake Association (LLLA) in 2025, across the organization’s 135 active volunteers – which is “record-breaking volunteer engagement,” according to the nonprofit. Those volunteers helped staff boat wash stations, worked on efforts to contain and kill Eurasian watermilfoil (EWM), collected samples for water quality testing, performed shoreline consultations, and more. The extra work had substantial impacts on the lake: At its boat wash stations, for instance, LLLA recorded a 121 percent increase “in the number of boats washed compared to 2024.”

70: Families reached through the “Thanksgiving Meal Box Program,” which Cedar bookstore The Folded Leaf organized in November to provide Thanksgiving dinners to Leelanau families in need.