(Mostly) Sweet Memories

Inside “Sugar Loaf: A Retrospective” at the Leelanau Historical Society

By Art Bukowski | Feb. 15, 2025

Assembling historical exhibits often involves piecing together items from the distant past. A few grainy photographs, perhaps. Records gathered from old, dusty cabinets or dresser drawers. Artifacts that seem too fragile to touch. The lens through which history is viewed seems to get more fragile and opaque the farther back in time we look.

That’s a big reason why folks at the Leelanau Historical Society are particularly excited about “Sugar Loaf: A Retrospective,” which is open now through the end of 2025 at the society’s museum in Leland. The exhibit focuses on the history of the cherished ski hill that was at one point the largest employer in Leelanau County and that remains a topic of local conversation nearly a quarter century after it closed.

Dozens of firsthand accounts from those who worked and played at Sugar Loaf bring the relatively recent history of this special place to life. Combine that with community-sourced artifacts that are continuing to pour in from local residents, and you get an action-packed exhibit that has become the society’s most popular in years.

“We’re very proud of the exhibit,” says historical society Executive Director Kim Kelderhouse. “We get the most satisfaction now from hearing from all of the former Sugar Loafers. Hearing from them that they think we’ve done a great job is the highest praise.”

Mountain of Impact

One would be hard pressed to find a business more influential in the modern history of Leelanau County than Sugar Loaf, which opened as a community hill in 1947 and later operated as a full-fledged resort before closing for good in 2000. Everyone in the county skied there, it seemed like at least half the county worked there, and tens of thousands of people from across the Midwest came to its slopes year after year. It was truly beloved; a place where people gathered, grew up, celebrated and made heaps of lifetime memories.

“It really was a community hub,” says J. Carl Ganter, whose parents, Jim and Pat Ganter, founded the modern resort in 1963. “It meant a lot of things to a lot of people.”

Sugar Loaf’s impact on the community was so significant that even 25 years later, its closure (and multiple failed reopening attempts over the years) remain sore topics in the community and leave certain key elements of the Sugar Loaf story up for considerable debate.

“The nostalgia is amazing, and there were people who wanted to talk about it, but there were people who were too emotional and weren’t ready to talk about it, because it was so hard to see that beloved place close,” Kelderhouse says. “It’s both sides of the coin there.”

Ultimately, the society’s exhibit doesn’t attempt to explain why the resort closed, though it touches on factors that likely contributed.

“[When you ask] ‘Why do you think the resort failed?’ That’s where you get a lot more complicated answers that run a huge spectrum,” Kelderhouse says. “We had to balance that in this exhibit—staying grounded in the facts and not the speculation. Something that everyone wants to know when they come to the exhibit is what actually happened. We tried to present the facts, and people can draw their own conclusions.”

What do we know for sure about the end days? In February 2017, John Clary Davis wrote a profile on Sugar Loaf for POWDER ski magazine, noting, “After a couple of bad winters, it defaulted on loans and the bank took over, eventually selling to John Sills in 1981. In 1997, the bank reacquired Sugar Loaf and sold it to hotelier Remo Polselli. Polselli ran Sugar Loaf until it closed.”

The property remained in a state of limbo—“leaving beds still made, banquet mugs still in dishwasher trays, phones still on desks” (Bridge Michigan)—until the 2021 demolition.

The Ties That Bind

Although there are still tough emotions surrounding Sugar Loaf, it’s safe to say that the majority of people who think back to time spent there are awash in good memories, and the exhibit “hooks on to that nostalgia,” Kelderhouse says.

“We have noticed a really big uptick in our visitation since we launched the exhibit [last summer], so it definitely resonates with people,” Kelderhouse says. “People want to relive happy memories.”

Ganter, who grew up at the resort, says visiting the exhibit was an “emotional journey” that he’s glad others like him can partake in. In a society in which people tend to be much more isolated from their peers than in years past, it’s vitally important to hold onto those “threads that tie us together,” he says.

“What the historical society has been able to do is curate a journey we can all join in—take ourselves back there, hear the voices, smell the smells, hear the sounds that were such a big part of our lives and the history of the county,” he says. “Those were real, visceral experiences, and it’s so much fun to see and hear how many ways Sugar Loaf touched people’s lives.”

It’s a living exhibit in more ways than one. The exhibit itself is growing as people bring in various trinkets and artifacts, something organizers planned on happening and left space for.

“We keep changing things and adding as people bring us all of these wonderful treasures,” says Elizabeth Adams, the society’s engagement and collections manager.

Ganter, one of dozens of people interviewed by a historical society committee over four years of work on the exhibit, is delighted to see all of the artifacts and stories that have come out of the woodwork.

“The historical society really sparked a community movement for people to dig deep into their closets and their treasure boxes, to find ski pins or old skis or boots,” he says. “And they’re not only just curating hard pieces of history, but the stories [people have to tell].”

Preserved for the Future

Those stories, carefully recorded and collected, will be preserved in perpetuity long after the historical society moves on from the Sugar Loaf exhibit.

Adams says some people approached for interviews as part of the exhibit were surprised the historical society was doing anything at all. It still felt too fresh, too new, not yet the realm of history. But those voices allowed the society to compile an incredibly detailed, firsthand account of one of the county’s most impactful businesses—a time capsule of sorts—that will be a resource for future generations.

“When it’s all said and done, it’s all going to be part of a digital collection with correct dates, names, stories, and actual recordings of all of these memories, and that’s something that’s kind of hard to do in the history field,” Adams says.

Exhibit committee member and historical society board member Laura Paine is among the many folks who are glad that all of this history has been carefully documented and preserved.

“Living up here, there’s a lot of people still around that worked there or skied there, and it was so important to the community for so long,” she says. “Without doing something like this, all of this would have just gotten lost.”

As for the hill itself, no one knows exactly who owns it. Demolition work began in 2021 about a year after an entity by the name of SPV 45 LLC bought the site. This came after two decades of revolving ownership and a grab bag of proposed plans for the site. Local residents and county officials are largely in the dark about future plans there.

“I just don’t know why it’s been kept secret for so long,” Paine says.

Sugarloaf Timeline

1942: Leelanau County Chamber of Commerce announces purchase of 100 acres for ski hill
1947: Hill opens to the public
1964: Jim and Pat Ganter open Sugar Loaf Mountain Resort at the site
1967: Sugar Loaf golf course opens (remains open today as Sugar Loaf: The Old Course)
1969: Iconic bell tower added outside of lodge
1980: Bavarian Village ski shop opens
2000: Resort closes
2021-22: Buildings demolished and lifts removed