It’s late December again, and you know what that means: another installment of the Leelanau Ticker’s popular “fireside trivia” series! Check back at our previous installments from 2020, 2021, and 2022 if you need more Leelanau puzzlers to stump your friends and family.

1. There are three spots in Leelanau County that specialize in hard cider as their main product: Suttons Bay Ciders, Tandem Ciders, and Two K Farms Cidery & Winery. Which one is the oldest?

Answer: Tandem! Suttons Bay Ciders dates back to 2015, and Two K opened its tasting room in 2018 (though, the first harvest of Two K apples and grapes came in 2016). Tandem, meanwhile, opened all the way back in 2008, with husband-and-wife owners Dan Young and Nikki Rothwell drawing inspiration for the business, branding, and iconography from a tandem bicycle tour they took of England.

2. The Munnecke Room at the Leland Township Public Library has become one of Leelanau County’s key meeting and gathering places in recent years, with the township government even utilizing the space for many of its public meetings. But where did the name “Munnecke” actually come from?

Answer: The room is named after Will Munnecke, a Chicago-to-Leelanau transplant who once upon a time served as the business manager for the Chicago Sun Times. Munnecke retired to Leland in 1966, and was a noted philanthropist in the area until his passing in 1984.

3. Which legend of organized crime is (incorrectly) believed to have had ties to Leelanau County?

Answer: Al Capone. That’s right: There’s an oft-repeated myth that the Prohibition-era gangster maintained a rustic getaway home right here in Leelanau County, somewhere around the Leland area. Some tellings even maintain that Capone’s Leelanau home had a crow’s nest where a machine-gun-toting sentry kept watch for the crime lord’s enemies. Sadly (for fans of mobster trivia, anyway), those tales and others linking Capone to northern Michigan have been debunked.

4. The National Register of Historic Places lists more than 96,000 historically-significant properties across the United States, including nearly 2,000 in Michigan. 25 of those spots are in Leelanau County. Which one was listed on the Register of Historic Places first?

Answer: Grove Hill New Mission Church in Omena, added to the register in June 1972. That church was the second one started in northern Michigan by Reverend Peter Dougherty, who the Presbyterian Board of Missions dispatched to the Grand Traverse area in 1839. Dougherty’s first mission was – you guessed it – the “Old Mission” that gave the region’s other peninsula its name. In 1852, Dougherty established the “new mission” in Omena, building a school and a church. The building still operates to this day as Omena Presbyterian Church.

Bonus: Other early Leelanau entries on the National Register of Historic Places? The Leland Historic District, also known as Fishtown (added in 1975), Hutzler’s Barn on South Manitou Island (1978), and both the Sleeping Bear Point Life Saving Station and the Sleeping Bear Inn (both added in 1979).

5. The state legislature officially recognized Leelanau as a county on February 27, 1863 – 160 years ago this year. Previously, Leelanau Peninsula had simply been part of Grand Traverse County. While Leelanau County now houses 11 townships, there were initially only three. Which three townships were part of Leelanau’s inaugural class?

Answer: Centerville, Glen Arbor, and Leelanau townships are the county’s oldest.

6. Which Leelanau County landmark was allegedly a favorite target of Great Lakes pirates?

Answer: The Grand Traverse Lighthouse. According to the lighthouse’s website, the structure caught the eye of Mormon pirates after it was built in 1852, with followers of James Jesse Strang raiding the building numerous times in the early years. On one occasion, lighthouse keeper Philo Barns supposedly drove off a band of pirates trying to make off with the lighthouse’s Fresnel lens. At that point, Strang had proclaimed himself to be not only the king of Beaver Island, but also the true Mormon prophet, following the death of Joseph Smith, who founded the religion. Strang was ultimately excommunicated from the Mormon church after his main competitor for the church’s leadership – Brigham Young – beat him out for the leadership role.

Beyond the keepers of Grand Traverse Lighthouse, Strang clashed with the militias of many coastal Michigan towns, as well as with non-Mormons on Beaver Island – and, eventually, with his own followers. Two of those followers betrayed Strang and assassinated him in 1856. Like another similarly-named outlaw – Jesse James himself – Strang died after being shot in the back.

7. When did Sleeping Bear Dunes officially become a national park?

Answer: October 21, 1970. Philip Hart, a Democrat and United States Senator from Michigan, introduced the bill to make the Dunes a national park all the way back in 1962, but it took eight years for that idea to come to fruition. Hart, of course, is memorialized at the park, with his name on the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center.

Bonus: The Sleeping Bear visitor center isn’t Philip Hart’s only namesake honor in Michigan. A few others? A scholarship at Lake Superior State University, the federal center in Battle Creek, a city plaza in downtown Detroit, a middle school in Rochester Hills, and the Hart-Kennedy House in Lansing, the main hub of the Michigan Democratic Party.

8. In 2016, MLive compiled an ambitious list: “The most famous person from each of Michigan’s 83 counties.” Former TV personality Carter Oosterhouse was the selection for Grand Traverse County, professional baseball players Emil Frisk and Roger Mason got the nods for Kalkaska County and Antrim County, respectively, and Michigan Sports Hall of Fame inductee and pro footballer Bob Carey won the honors for Charlevoix County. Who did MLive pick for Leelanau?

Answer: Emelia Schaub, a lawyer with the distinction of being both the first female attorney in the entire United States to successfully defend a murder suspect (in 1926) and the first woman elected as a county prosecutor in Michigan (in 1936). Schaub was born in a log cabin in Centerville Township in 1891 and became the first woman from Leelanau County to practice law after earning her law degree from the Detroit College of Law in 1924. She was also a co-founder of the Leelanau Historical Society.

Bonus: Another claim to fame? In 1943, Schaub was made an honorary member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB) for her role in negotiating the return of native lands that had been seized by the state for non-payment of taxes. Schaub successfully petitioned the state for title to 77 acres around Peshawbestown, which the county then held in trust for the tribe.