the cranberries by combing the vines with narrow-tined forks and floating the ripe, buoyant cranberries that were gathered with wide bottomed scoops. The cranberries were transported by flat bottomed boat to a large water wheel on Sand Creek that scooped them up from a trough and dumped them on a conveyor belt to a mill. After the cranberries were sorted and created for shipping or processed into cats-up or jelly, they were loaded onto small trolley cars, and hauled down a tramway to Lake Superior where they were loaded onto small boats and then transferred to a steamer waiting offshore. The cranberries were shipped to Chicago, Duluth, and other places on the waterways. The cranberry operation at Vermilion Point lasted from 1887 to 1932 with the greatest production years occurring between 1888 and 1910. Vermilion Point produced 1,600 bushels of cranberries in 1897. Today the earthen walls still exist but the marshes are flooded by beaver dams on the channels. Cranberries can still be found along the edges of the marshes and wet beach areas. Hard times When the Coast Guard closed the station, local residents vandalized the original equipment that dated back to 1876 that the Coast Guard left behind. The station was sold to private owners in 1947 for the sum of $17,000. It was reported that motorcycle gangs frequented the station in the 1950s and “hippies” took up summer residence in the 1960s. Four-wheel drive vehicles and snowmobiles destroyed much of the beach grass surrounding the old station in the 1970s. Vermilion today In early 1970s the Vermilion Life Saving Station and the surrounding undeveloped shoreline was privately purchased for preservation and restoration. Vermilion Point is one of the few Great Lakes sites where the piping plover has successfully nested. By 2004 it was transferred to the Little Traverse Conservancy as the Vermilion Point Nature Preserve that is used by the Lake Superior State University, the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory, and the Michigan Audubon Society for research of the federally endangered piping plover and beach plant community succession as well as student hands-on experience in avian ecology. The property is open to the public for quiet recreation. No motorized vehicles are allowed on the preserve and the areas around piping plover nests and bird-trapping nets are restricted. Today in 2023, efforts are underway from a non-profit group called S.O.S. Vermillion, to restore the original boat house and