Grand Traverse County opens Camp Greilick as newest park near Traverse City

Camp Greilick is now Grand Traverse County’s newest park, turning a former Boy Scout camp near Traverse City into a public site with trails, a free rustic 18-hole disc golf course and overnight cabins already open to visitors. The county bought the northern 196 acres in August 2024, and the park now operates year-round from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. at 4754 Scout Camp Road.

The property has been closed for nearly 10 years. Grand Traverse County has already completed waterfront cleanup, trail building, fence installation at the Bowl and demolition of old campsite areas, work that helped convert the site from a closed camp into a functioning county park.

The land still carries the marks of its past. The Traverse City Rotary Club first acquired it in 1923, and the original use included camping for 4-H, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. The Boy Scouts of America operated the property until 2015, and Rotary Camps and Services rebranded it in 2016 as the Greilick Outdoor Recreation and Education Center before the county stepped in and took over the northern portion of the property.

The park includes hiking trails, a story walk, a pavilion, group day use, overnight cabins and the disc golf course. The property has frontage on Spider Lake, Bass Lake and Rennie Lake, although Rennie Lake is the only one with true access from within the trail system. Parking is limited to about 100 spaces.

Grand Traverse County’s plan puts trails, disc golf, pavilion rentals, swimming beach access, fishing and equipment rental first. Later phases add cabins, educational programming, amphitheater and chapel rentals, supervised team-course access, climbing and zip-line tower access, supervised archery, rifle and shotgun access by permit, and eventually rustic camping. The county is also pursuing a site license for day camps with a total capacity of 100 campers across the property.

The park’s next layer of public use could include a proposed raptor education center and rehabilitation facility through a partnership with North Sky Raptor Sanctuary. The site sits in the Forest Lakes area in the southeastern quadrant of Grand Traverse County, where the county manages more than 1,600 acres of parkland and 20 miles of trails.