Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore - Coasts

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore by National Parks Service

The coastline itself is a very dynamic component of the park environment. The steep bluff faces are forever slumping into Lake Michigan providing enormous quantities of sand and gravel to the shore. Certain individual landslides have dumped a million cubic yards of sand into the lake in single events. A landslide at Sleeping Bear Point in 1995 is one example. The changing shoreline process is continuous even without such spectacular episodes, especially in years of high Lake Michigan water levels. The prevailing current along the Lake Michigan shore moves sand northward at very impressive volumes. The headlands are constantly eroding and the bays are filling in. Harbors and breakwaters from Frankfort to Leland need continual dredging to compensate for accumulation of sand deposited by this littoral drift.