Leelanau Township ( ) is a civil township of Leelanau County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the northern tip of the Leelanau Peninsula, Leelanau Township is part of Northern Michigan, and is home to the village of Northport. Leelanau Township also includes the Fox Islands, as well as mainland shorelines on both Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay. The township population was 1,552 at the 2020 census.

Communities

  • Cherry Home, in the center of the township's cherry orchards, had a post office from 1919 until 1931.
  • Gill's Pier, or Gills Pier was a settlement at along Lake Michigan in the southwest of the township. The community took its name from the William Gill and Son lumber mill. A post office operated from January 22, 1883, until January 15, 1908. At its peak, in the 1890s, Gill's Pier had 12 houses, a post office, and a general store. The community, now mostly a memory, has been replaced by more vacation and year-round houses overlooking the lake. However, the name still appears on maps and lives on in the Gill's Pier Vineyard and Winery.
  • Northport is a village on the Grand Traverse Bay side of the township. The Northport post office with ZIP Code 49670 also serves most of Leelanau Township.
  • Northport Point is an unincorporated community within the township.
  • Omena is an unincorporated community in the southeast part of township on the Grand Traverse Bay.
  • Onominese is a ghost town, originally an Odawa settlement.
  • St. Wenceslaus Church, named for Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia, a Roman Catholic Church founded nearby by immigrants from Bohemia who worked at the Leland Lake Superior Iron Foundry and at the Gills Pier sawmill also remains. After the Holy Trinity Church in Leland burned down in 1880, the first wood-frame church was built in 1890 and the cemetery was established. Church membership had doubled by 1908 and a brick structure replaced it in 1914. The two church buildings stood side by side until the autumn of 1963 when the frame structure was razed.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of , of which is land and (78.37%) is water.

Leelanau Township forms the very tip of the Leelanau Peninsula, a roughly-triangular peninsula extending off of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan into Lake Michigan. This forms Grand Traverse Bay, which is to the east of the township.

The uninhabited Fox Islands are administered as part of Leelanau Township.

At the northernmost point of Leelanau Township is Leelanau State Park, which includes the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

Major highways

  • has two legs within the township, with one running north–south paralleling Grand Traverse Bay, and another running southwest–northeast paralleling Lake Michigan. M-22 continues south along both shorelines until reaching Traverse City or Manistee.
  • is a short spur of M-22 that runs into the village of Northport. It continues north as a county road toward Leelanau State Park.

Demographics

As of the census