Interlochen

Interlochen, in Green Lake Township southwest of Traverse City, is a small place with a big name in the arts world. It’s home to Interlochen Center for the Arts — founded in 1928 as a national music camp and now a renowned boarding arts academy and summer camp that draws talented young musicians, dancers, writers, and artists from around the world. Its campus, tucked between Green Lake and Duck Lake, hosts concerts and performances all summer that the public can attend.

Right next door is Interlochen State Park, set aside in 1917 as the first state park created by the state of Michigan, to protect a stand of towering old-growth pines. Today it offers camping, swimming, and boating on the two lakes. The name “Interlochen” itself means “between the lakes.”

For buyers, the Green Lake Township area mixes lakefront homes on Green and Duck Lakes, wooded lots, and modest in-town housing near the arts campus, generally at gentler prices than the bay shore. It’s a quiet, woodsy spot with an outsized cultural life. Homes here are on wells and septic (see the well-and-septic note).