Last updated: September 11, 2024
Place
Boekeloo Lodge
NPS credit
Quick Facts
Location:
5800 Boekeloo, Honor, MI 49640
Amenities
3 listed
Audio Description, Picnic Table, Scenic View/Photo Spot
The Boekeloo Lodge is located on Boekeloo Road about 8.5 miles south of Esch Road on M-22. The road is a narrow 2-track that goes west about 1.2 miles from M-22.
The Boekeloo lodge has been a landmark in Benzie County for over 70 years. Sitting along a cranberry bog dug out by Boekeloo in the late 1940s. They dug a canal to the Platte River to fill the bog. There are no cranberries any more, but there is still evidence of the canal. There is a quiet beauty of the pond and surrounding forest, and the reflection of the cabin on the still water invites visitors to sit right down and enjoy the setting.
The lodge was built as a homestead cabin by the Cooper family, who hunted, trapped, fished, and tended a garden to survive on the sandy soil of Platte Plains from 1932 to 1935. The cranberry bog was dug out by Boekeloo in the late 1940s. They dug a canal to the Platte River to fill the bog. There are no cranberries any more, but there is still evidence of the canal.
When the Boekeloo family acquired the cabin in 1945, it had been abandoned for ten years. They repaired and modernized the cabin and used it as a wilderness vacation spot until the property was acquired by the National Park Service.
Walk around the lodge and peak in the windows to get a glimpse of vacation life in this little cabin in the woods.