On August 7 and 8, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore held the Port Oneida Fair for the last time. The event had run since 2002, spreading across four historic farmsteads and a one-room schoolhouse in the Port Oneida Rural Historic District, four miles northeast of Glen Arbor. Costumed demonstrators baled hay with horse teams, spun wool, and made butter the way settlers did a century ago. This year it closed for good, and the reason matters more than the sentiment around it.
Superintendent Scott Tucker told the Glen Arbor Sun that visitor numbers had been dwindling for five straight years, the volunteer actors and craft demonstrators were aging out, and the National Lakeshore was struggling to fund the interpretive staffing the fair required. Those challenges help explain why the event ended. It is not that people stopped caring about Port Oneida's history. Port Oneida is, according to Sleeping Bear Forever's executive director, the largest agricultural community in public ownership in the country, and plenty of buildings there are listed on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The fair depended on park-service funding and substantial interpretive staffing, while sharing an August weekend with other events on the Leelanau calendar.
Here is another part of Leelanau's late summer worth noting. As the fair held its final season, local businesses and markets continued their own activities. Together, the fair's ending and these ongoing local ventures are part of Leelanau's late-summer story in 2026.
Look at how long the county's farmers markets are staying open this year, and a pattern shows up that has nothing to do with nostalgia.
| Village | Market Day | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Empire | Saturdays | June 6 to August 29 |
| Leland | Thursdays | June 4 to September 3 |
| Glen Arbor | Tuesdays | June 9 to September 15 |
| Northport | Fridays | June 5 to September 18 |
| Suttons Bay | Saturdays | May 23 to October 17 |
Suttons Bay's market runs nine weeks longer than Empire's and roughly a month past Glen Arbor's. That is not an accident of scheduling. Suttons Bay has the densest concentration of restaurants, tasting rooms, and retail on the peninsula, which means vendors have a longer runway of foot traffic to sell into. A market's closing date is really a proxy for how much year-round commercial activity a village can sustain around it, and right now Suttons Bay is outlasting every other village on the peninsula by weeks, not days.
That same village just absorbed a piece of local history and turned it into something new.
As Leelanau Ticker reported, the building on the Suttons Bay waterfront that most longtime residents still call "the old North Country" spent fifteen years as North Country Grill and Pub, opened in 2008 by restaurateur Barry Boone, the same owner behind Boone's Prime Time Pub, Boone's Long Lake Inn, and Boonedocks. Boone passed away in 2011, and his wife Karen kept the restaurant running until she sold it to Matthew Branton in early 2023.
This summer, under Branton's ownership, the space reopened as Cantina TwentyTwo, a Mexican-inspired restaurant with a patio-driven layout that keeps the same waterfront views the old pub traded on. The menu leans on handcrafted margaritas, house-smoked meats, and shareable plates, a real departure from the pub format the building held for a decade and a half. It is open Sundays through Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays until 10 p.m., with $2 beers, shots, and tacos at the bar from 2 to 5 p.m. and again from 8 p.m. to close.
The detail that matters here is not the tacos. It is that the waterfront space has reopened under Branton's ownership with a new restaurant concept.
U-pick season is in full swing across the county, and one Northport operation is doing something worth noticing. Hallstedt-Homestead Cherries, owned by Phil Hallstedt, is open for u-pick with what Hallstedt describes as a decent fruit set despite a difficult growing season. The farm's side venture, Red Truck Orchards cherry vinegar, recently won a bronze medal at the 2026 USI International Vinegar Competition and landed distribution at the Meijer on US-31 in Traverse City.
A cherry orchard picking up an international award for a bottled product is a small data point, but it fits the same pattern as the Suttons Bay farmers market and the North Country building turnover. Agricultural operations here are not standing still waiting for tourists to show up for a weekend. They're building products that sell twelve months a year on a grocery shelf, whether or not anyone drives up for a u-pick weekend.
The Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail runs an event called Harvest Days every September. Rather than a single festival weekend, it opens up wine club membership benefits at every winery on the trail for the full month: complimentary flights, tastings, case discounts, each winery setting its own terms. It is a low-overhead, business-association-run structure organized around participating wineries. The trail follows Harvest Days with Hunt for the Reds of October, built around the same self-guided model, timed to the fall color that draws people up the peninsula anyway.
Neither of these events tries to replicate what Port Oneida Fair did. Nobody is reenacting 1900s butter-churning at a winery tasting room. Instead, both offer a different way to take part in the peninsula's fall season, with participating wineries shaping the experience around their own offerings.
Port Oneida Fair ended after twenty-four years because of funding and staffing challenges. In the same stretch of weeks, a Suttons Bay restaurant introduced a new concept under Branton's ownership, a Northport orchard's bottled vinegar won an international award, farmers markets kept running into October in the county's busiest village, and the wine trail rolled out a monthlong event. Leelanau's late-summer calendar is changing, with the loss of a longtime fair alongside new developments at local businesses.
If you're weighing what these changes in Leelanau's late-summer calendar mean for property values or timing a move, that's a conversation worth having directly. Molly Buttleman works with buyers and sellers across Leelanau County and the rest of Northern Michigan every week. Inquire Now to talk through what's actually happening in your corner of the peninsula.
Molly is Michigan native and has called the Grand Traverse and Leelanau County region home for more than 30 years. Understanding the demands of today's buyers and sellers has allowed her to be a top producing agent when it comes to Antrim, Grand Traverse, and Leelanau County real estate year after year. As a relationship building person, she enjoys developing loyal friends and customers. As a Real Estate Professional, she builds those same lasting relationships with both Buyers and Sellers. Service is Molly's top priority.
Molly is known for listening and problem-solving, often putting her own real-life buying, selling, and renovating experience to use for her clients. Her construction industry connections also give her clients an extra sense of trust, especially if they are looking to add value to a property with a remodel.
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