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Welcome to Charlevoix, the Beautiful, Michigan, population circa 3000. For well over a century Charlevoix has been one of the most important resort and commercial towns of the northwest portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. It is located about 50 miles southwest of the Straits of Mackinac, just over 300 miles from Chicago, and about 280 miles from Detroit.
Charlevoix from approximately 25,000 feet. The town straddles an isthmus less than a mile wide, divided by a man-made waterway called Pine River. This consists of the lower channel that leads to Lake Michigan (left) and the upper channel to Lake Charlevoix (right), the two connected by what is known as Round Lake. The settlement was originally called, like its waterway, Pine River, named so by the itinerant fisherman who first settled here for part of each year. A major landmark for them was thought to be a tall pine tree on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.
The town and its county were later named after French Jesuit priest/explorer/historian Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761). A brilliant scholar, Father Charlevoix was chosen by the Regency government of King Louis XV to go to the New World in 1720 to try to determine how far the British had penetrated into the continent. The pretext was an inspection of French missions from the St. Lawrence River, around the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River to Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. Father Charlevoix was, in essence, a spy.
From descriptions in his letters and journals, it is known that Father Charlevoix passed this way and found shelter from a windstorm on Fisherman’s Island a few miles south of here on July 31, 1721. It is not known why, in 1843, Charlevoix County was named after him. Travelers by water said they were “going to Charlevoix,” meaning the county, but the port to which they sailed was Pine River. For several years the settlement was known by both names with little confusion. “Charlevoix” became the town’s official name in 1879.
Pine River was first inhabited by nomadic fishermen who did not put down roots. The first permanent settlers were Medad and Phoebe Thompson, Mormons lured in 1854 by the call of King James Strang who had settled large Beaver Island northwest of Pine River in the mid 1840s. But the Thompsons were disillusioned by Strang’s dictatorial, often violent ways and left soon after they arrived. They crossed over to Pine River where they found land to their liking and established a farmstead on the Pine Lake shore south of the future upper channel.
The first industry to sustain Pine River was the bounty of fish to be found in Lake Michigan. Dave Eckinger, left, and Dan Swartz hold frozen “finny gold” at Booth Fisheries on the north shore of Round Lake. When the Booth Fisheries Corporation of Chicago moved their Petoskey branch 16 miles west to Charlevoix in December, 1903, bringing with them freezing lockers that would hold one million pounds of fish, Willard A. Smith, editor of the Charlevoix Sentinel newspaper, asserted that this “makes Charlevoix the largest fishing point on the Great Lakes.”
The open spaces and docks on the south shore of Round Lake were once blanketed by fish net reels wrapped in layers of gossamer netting. Miles of it were made by the hundreds of pounds every winter. In the winter of 1902, fisherman John O’Neill employed fifteen people to repair old and weave additional nets. They produced 544 new ones weighing 1600 pounds that would stretch 85 miles in the water. That spring, using fifteen men in three tugs, he set out a combined 125 miles of new and old netting throughout northern Lake Michigan.
In the mid-1860s, pioneers Hiram Rose and Amos Fox built a 900-foot dock into Lake Michigan. It was intended to be a “wooding” station to fuel steamboats that ran between Chicago and Buffalo. Narrow gauge rails along which the wood was transported can be seen the length of the dock, with wood stacks to their left ready for loading. Soon other commercial vessels used it. The Fox & Rose dock began to plug the region’s economy into that of the country and the world. Pine River/Charlevoix was now on the map. But more was needed.
With more and more commerce appearing on the town’s west side, its leaders realized that unimpeded connection to the interior had to be made or Pine River would never flourish and the region never grow. In 1869 the Charlevoix Harbor and Improvement Company was formed to take advantage of the settlement’s natural blessings. Beginning in late July, it gathered about 100 men from the area who, working in two teams toward each other, cut this 350-foot upper channel through the sandy peninsula that separated Round Lake from Pine Lake.
The following September the company turned its attention to the west and began to cut through to Lake Michigan. By October, 1869 both channels had been created—for less than $1,500. This 1880 lithograph shows the positions of the channel piers, erected in the 1870s, relative to the Fox & Rose dock. After the channel achieved its present width in 1882, the largest lake vessels could reach Round Lake. The Fox & Rose dock was no longer needed. It was not taken out but allowed to quickly perish under the fury of Lake Michigan.
Aided by the cutting and enlargement of the channels accomplished over thirteen years, along with impressive improvements within the harbor begun around 1873, little Pine River was opened at the head of a major waterway that penetrated deep into the land to terminate at and serve Boyne City on the north and East Jordan on the south. It was as if a key had been turned to open a lock. This was the beginning of the making of Charlevoix County. From now on, the world began to beat a pathway to Pine River’s door and beyond as never before.
Even before this breakthrough, a lumber mill went into operation in 1868 at the northwest corner of Round Lake next to the channel. Three years after it opened, the mill supplied lumber for the rebuilding of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. In 1876, the mill’s third owner, John Nicholls, gave the business its final name, the Charlevoix Lumber Company. To the right are two three-masted schooners ready to take on lumber. They were called “three-stickers.” Today this is the site of the Edgewater Inn hotel and condominiums.
In winter, logs were brought to the mill from the lumber camps of southern Charlevoix County by horse-drawn sledges. They entered town on State Street, seen here between Mason and Clinton Streets, turned right onto Main Street (later Park Avenue), traveled one block to Bridge Street, turned left, crossed the bridge, went up the north hill, turned right onto East Dixon Avenue and reached the lumber company’s property. If necessary, streets were watered down to freeze for the gliding transport of these gigantic loads.
The site chosen for a bridge was only two feet deep where small boats, scows, and rafts took pedestrians across. Those more intrepid hitched up their trousers and waded. The first bridge, built for foot traffic, was in place by the mid 1860s. Boaters who couldn’t glide under reached up and shoved aside the central connecting planks, inched through, then replaced the planks. Or someone ashore, as seen here, might do the job for them. The roadway, now U. S. 31/Bridge Street, doesn’t include the bridge. The oxen approaching at left passed through the water alongside it.
The channel dredging and widening of late summer 1873 necessitated removal of the first bridge. Nine months passed before another appeared. Its roadbed stood at approximately the height of today’s bridge. On the south bank stood a tripod of logs that held a fourth, upright log capped by a pulley. The roadbed’s hinged central portion was tied to a rope that led over the pulley and down to a winch manned by six people, often recruited off their barstools from Pine River’s one saloon. Bridge number two fell apart in 1877. Digging for a new one started in March of 1878.
Several months later a brilliant red swing bridge was in place, mounted on a turntable. A giant “key” lowered into a hole in the roadbed activated the turntable’s worm-gear mechanism. By 1885, traffic going through the channel had reached astonishing proportions. In May alone that year it was reported the bridge had swung a total of 717 times. By 1900 the foundation had deteriorated from rust and rot. In February of 1901 wreckers came in and the bridge was taken apart. A few months later bridge number four was in operation.
In contrast to the delicate tracery of its predecessor, this bridge was a bold, compact network of steel girders on a concrete base. Like the third bridge it also rode on a turntable. Bridge tender Elmer Johnson, who began his thirty-three year career in 1899, was instrumental in the conversion to steam power after an exhaustive Sunday in 1901 when he worked a twenty-one hour shift turning the bridge ninety-two times with the key. The key was retired and is on display in Hoffmann Park on Park Avenue just off Bridge Street.
This bridge had not been in place very long when it was discovered that a slight oversight or miscalculation caused a serious problem. On blistering hot days the metal expanded to freeze the bridge shut. The fire department had to dip its pumps into the channel and spray each end to shrink the steel so the bridge could open. Once, the passenger liner Missouri was kept waiting for over an hour in the channel. Her furious captain lay on his horn every few minutes, as if the blast would shake the bridge loose. In the middle appear the twin peaks of Wilbur’s Dock.
Bridge number four was aging by the 1930s, but the Depression, then World War II delayed new construction. Another bridge finally began to go up in 1947. Charlevoix endured a temporary bridge across the Round Lake entry point (center distance). It floated on a pontoon out of which water was pumped so the bridge could rise, be turned by cables and winches, and resettle when water was pumped back in. This often took half an hour, causing long traffic backups. Bridge number five came out in 1949. Never has Charlevoix been so glad to see anything go.
Charlevoix’s present bascule bridge, number six, cost $986,404. After the channel was excavated and widened, followed by the erection of cofferdams for the pouring of gigantic foundations, the first steel went into place in July of 1948. Materials included 95,000 cubic yards of reinforced concrete, over 396 tons of structural steel and counterweights, and fifty more tons of machinery and fixtures. In July of 1949, the “Memorial Bridge” was “Dedicated To Those Heroes of Charlevoix Who Made the Supreme Sacrifice in World War II.”
To many, residents and visitors alike, the bridge has been the bane of Charlevoix’s existence since day one. A scene like this has been repeated thousands of times as people, oxen, horses, and vehicles of all description have stood in line on Bridge Street to wait for the bridge to close. It has been a constant round of resigned patience, fidgety frustration, profane anger, and primal scream therapy for the past 145 years. The object in the pavement at lower right is a traffic directional “button” at the Clinton Street intersection.
State Street, looking north toward Lake Michigan in the distance, was intended to be Charlevoix’s main thoroughfare. It was wider than any other street, the site of the first churches and the town hall, and was the conduit to Brookside cemetery a mile to the south. Even Park Avenue was called Main Street until the early 1900s. But State Street lost out to Bridge Street. (At bottom left, the lean-to attached to the rear of the town hall is part of the jail.)
This photo of Bridge Street could have been taken as early as 1878. The upright rectangular outline of the first swing bridge, built that year, is barely visible at the far end. Early Bridge Street, which the Charlevoix Sentinel newspaper called “a horrid spectacle of mud, ruts, and gulches,” does not yet ascend the south hill. It stops where the camera was positioned. To leave Charlevoix in this direction, traffic turned right onto Antrim Street, where the curving wheel tracks are visible, went one block to State Street, turned left up its hill, and left town from there.
Bridge Street began as a side street. But because of its proximity to the water, commercial considerations prevailed. It soon formed its own connection to the south and became the only artery through town. This view north from Mason Street shows the downtown in late spring of 1897, a rutted mess from melting snow. Bridge Street would not be paved until 1904 after years of debate. Upon completion, Willard Smith said in the Sentinel, “ . . . the clack of horses feet upon the clean, smooth surface is music. . . .
Bridge Street circa 1890, looking south from Park Avenue. The Bartholomew block, as this structure was known, held an auditorium spread across the top floor that seated six hundred. Two men stand in the doorway of the Frank Wood Barber Shop that provided bathing facilities upstairs. Men could have “Whisker Dyeing Done in Artistic Style” here. The Charlevoix Cigar Company shared the upstairs premises. Its horizontal sign caps the barber pole. The entire building block was destroyed by fire in the winter of 1923. The auditorium was not rebuilt.
Bridge Street, 1922, looking south at the height of the summer season, also from Park Avenue. The hardware store has become Fessenden’s Drugstore. The Drugs/Books sign in the middle is on the tall wooden Clinton Street wall of the Central Drug Store. Parking then, as now, was a headache as the latest models swarmed into town, many of them brought aboard passenger liners rather than risk damage on terrible roads. Another traffic directional “button” appears in the pavement at bottom.
Bridge Street in 1929, the east side of the 300 block where East Park is today. A winter parade featured the latest snow removal equipment of the county road commission. The destruction by fire of the Hotel Charlevoix, top left, in 1935 was the impetus for creating a downtown park. All of these buildings came out by 1936, except for two holdouts on either end, when East Park began to be developed into the crown jewel of Charlevoix’s park system. The photo was taken from the second floor of the Masonic Temple building at the Mason Street corner.
The Bridge Street/Park Avenue corner in the 1930s, looking north. The tall building to the left of the bridge is the Alhambra Hotel. Adams’ Lunch Room and magazine stand occupies the north Park Avenue corner. At far left appears the popular and stylish Polly Kay store for women’s and children’s clothing. The Oddfellows Hall is above it. At the south Park Avenue corner is Dahlquist’s Five & Dime Store before it moved south to the Mason Street corner.
A quick trip up one side of Bridge Street, followed by the other side, beginning east of the channel bridge. This is the first wooden building constructed in downtown Charlevoix, in 1868. It was Amos Fox & Hiram Rose’s mercantile building, here occupied by the L. S. See & Co. grocery around 1896. The man at left holds a sign advertising the fact that the store is also an American Express agency. Below the neck of the horse at right appears the road that leads down to the main dock.
McHugh’s Bazaar at 206 Bridge Street, once Shawley’s. It was typical of a small general merchandise store of the early 20th century—Panama Coaster wagons, postcards, tin washtubs, and baseball bats. In the window at left, on top, is The Charlie Chaplin Walk sheet music. After a 1924 New Year’s Eve fire, Mr. McHugh accused the firemen of pilfering half his stock, but the police chief could discover no wrongdoing.
Martin Block’s grocery store occupied the Chaloupka building near McHugh’s. Coffee was 29 cents a pound, tuna fish 18 cents a can. This is now the Woolly Bugger coffee shop
In the early 1870s Dr. George W. Crouter came to Charlevoix from Grand Rapids. Within two years he built his drugstore and dental office (left) at 214 Bridge Street. The first telephone exchange went into its second story. The building is still in use today, the last of the downtown wooden structures of the early days. In 1882 pioneer and banker Archibald Buttars built a brick structure (right) occupied for many years by George W. Miller, clothier.
Later, George Glados operated the Sugar Bowl Café and soda fountain in the Buttars building. George, second from right, came to America from Greece in 1907 and started a candy-making business, calling his establishment the Sugar Bowl. He added a soda fountain and restaurant. George and the Sugar Bowl were known all over the country because he treated the resorters so well, ready with a greeting and a quip in his highly accented English. The Depression killed the candy end of the business, but he maintained the popular soda fountain and restaurant well into the 1950s.
The Clinton Street intersection. At far left stands the residence, then the small law and real estate office building of Charlevoix’s first lawyer, Major E. H. Green, a severely wounded Civil War veteran. In 1869 Major Green was named the first editor of the region’s first newspaper, the Charlevoix Sentinel, a post he held for two years. Major Green constructed the tall brick building in 1885, today occupied by the Maison & Jardin gift store. The corner Bank of Charlevoix building has been for many years now Murdick’s Famous Fudge.
Around 1902, Fred Cartier and friends enjoy a new cement sidewalk near Clinton Street where East Park is today. Fred, in shirtsleeves and vest, was a master tailor and proprietor of a fine haberdashery. To the right is Jimmy Conner, in white shirtsleeves and apron, the short-tempered owner of the shoe repair shop. At far right, holding a boot in each hand, stands three-hundred-pound Charlie Jeffries who owned a butcher shop up the street and served a few terms as Charlevoix’s monumental chief of police.
Next door to Conner’s shoe shop stood Bert (sometimes spelled Burt) Mason’s grocery and household goods store at 310 Bridge Street. A delivery wagon was part and parcel of the business, for any grocery without delivery service was of short duration. Dobbin never ran out of gas and was always easy to start in winter. Fuel consumption data was never recorded. Emissions, however, were difficult to control. The building was torn down in 1934. From left, in 1909: Bert Mason, Arthur Alcox, Morris Ackert, and Jimmy Conner.
Bert Mason’s interior. From the ceiling hang brass-banded oak buckets, coffee pots, washboards, brooms, lanterns, hoes, and frying pans. Does any big box store today show as much character?
Martha Ayers was an eccentric but shrewd businesswoman who arrived in Charlevoix in the early 1890s. She erected the largest building downtown, called after herself, that housed a saloon, billiards parlor, and dance hall. In the 1920s a restaurant occupied the south half of the street floor, where its window proclaimed a delicacy of the local cuisine.
Bert and Amy Beaudoin’s ice cream parlor at 330 Bridge Street. Bert stands by his popcorn machine. As a striped pole identified a barbershop, bananas hung on a doorway signified groceries for sale, just as they appeared on Bert Mason’s entryway
Egbert Carpenter gambled on Charlevoix’s future growth in early 1872 when he built an isolated store near the southwest corner of Round Lake. From Clinton Street south, woods still covered the land. It was easier to reach the back end of Carpenter’s store via Round Lake than over a rough path cut through the trees for access to the post office. But within a few months this structure became one of many, for throughout the rest of 1872 Charlevoix experienced a boom when 50% of the buildings in town went up. East Park’s new band shell now occupies this site.
After the Carpenter building was torn down in the early 1920s, an open platform was erected for band concerts, which evolved into an enclosed visitor information center, which in turn became the pagoda-like home of the Chamber of Commerce from the 1930s to the early 1960s.
On the west side of Bridge Street, the 800-seat Lewis Grand Opera House, built in 1881, occupied a prominent location next to the bridge. The opera house was the creation of Dr. Levi Lewis, the town’s first physician, at the insistence of his culturally-minded and strong-willed wife Edith. She felt that Pine River, so isolated when they arrived in 1869, was at best a cultural backwater. With the main floor chairs removed, the auditorium turned into a dance hall or a basketball court. High school graduation ceremonies were often held here.
J. H. Mullen’s Gents Furnishings occupied the south half of the street floor of the opera house. The stairs to Dr. Lewis’ office, the box office and the auditorium are at right
The beginning of the 200 block on Bridge Street’s west side. Civil War veterans line up before the parade to the cemetery on Decoration Day, 1884. Pioneer settler Morris J. Stockman, who arrived in 1857, is the tall bearded man to the left of the lamppost. Behind him appears Frank Wood’s barbershop and bathhouse, then the Sherwood store (business unknown) and Cochran’s drugstore. A bank occupied the Park Avenue corner.
The interior of Jacobs’ grocery at 205 Bridge Street around 1932, where the Sherwood store once was. From left: Henry Jacobs, unidentified, Flossie Fox, and Earl Johnson. For many years this was the site of the Polly Kay Shop for women’s and children’s clothing, then the Shop of the Gulls fine gift store.
Horace S. Harsha’s building in the middle of the 200 block next to the alley, completed in the summer of 1898. This became the van Pelt building in 1910 after Mr. van Pelt of Norwood bought it and remodeled the façade. On the left is Mrs. Levinson’s dry goods store, soon to occupy the whole first floor after her son Meyer took over. On the right is one of the many sites of the Post Office, with rural delivery wagons in front. The Charlevoix Courier, the town’s second newspaper, occupied the basement when this photo was taken.
The Charlevoix State Savings Bank, built in 1912, the only neo-Roman commercial building erected in town. During the Depression the bank was about to go under when summer resident Ransom E. Olds, founder of Oldsmobile, asked how much it would take to keep it solvent. He wrote out a check for the amount and the bank survived. The building has housed a variety of businesses since the bank moved and rebuilt on State Street.
The Charlevoix County Bank, built in 1903 at the Clinton Street corner. Offices and assembly rooms occupied the top two stories. Crane’s dry goods store wrapped around the bank, its two entrances marked by the upright awnings on both sides. The entire building burned to a shell on the bitterly cold morning of February 8, 1924. A faulty flue was thought to be the cause. No records were lost. The bank reopened the next day in a spare room down the street. A new bank, reduced by one story, was erected immediately.
Typical of the age, ornate glass, brass and wood tellers’ cages dominated the Charlevoix County Bank.
Crane’s dry goods store occupied most of the ground floor of the bank building. A dog sits on the counter at left. Light from the Clinton Street entrance appears at rear left. The Cranes did not reopen after the fire.
In the west 300 block, Mont Withers’ café and dining room provided slot machines reputed to have been brought from Chicago by Al Capone’s Purple Gang in the Roaring Twenties when gambling was wide open.
Benjamin Brown came to Charlevoix in 1898 from Petoskey where he had learned to make harnesses and other leather goods. In 1908 he established this harness and tackle, luggage and bicycle shop on Bridge Street near Mason Street in the 400 block. In 1912 Ben added a Harley-Davidson dealership. He appears at right with his mother in the sidecar. Second behind him, under the “N” on the awning, is Dan McSauba, one of the few Native Americans to wear a U. S. Postal Service uniform, and thought to be the only chief ever to deliver the U. S. mail.
Ben Yettaw’s barbershop on Bridge Street, location unknown.
A summer Sunday on the north bank of the lower channel. A family plus its dog poses near the wooden sidewalk that led to the bluff edge where it met the north pier trestle that led to the lighthouse. At left is the Fountain City House hotel, Charlevoix’s first. The schooner Rosa Belle is tied to the revetment, ready to be towed into Lake Michigan. From the billowing of the skirt of the woman in front of the roller mill, it appears that high winds may be preventing the schooner from attempting to enter Lake Michigan until they subside. Schooners often waited like this in the channel.
The first lighthouse was erected in 1885 at the end of the north pier. The trestle allowed access by the light keeper. Construction expenses totaled $4,000 for both the structure and trestle. The lantern’s fifth-order Fresnel lens cost an additional $1,500. On a clear night, the light it produced could be seen about thirteen miles into Lake Michigan. At first the trestle was made of wood, seen here, but metal replaced this vulnerable material soon after the turn of the century. The oil storage building at right was constructed in 1890.
The wood lighthouse, known to the townspeople as “Old Reliable,” was moved to the south pier around, it is believed, 1911. The precise moving date and reason have never been discovered, nor the method of transfer. Before the move, in 1909 this fog signal bell had been suspended on a timber frame placed against the west side of the light. Its striking arm passed through a hole in the wall to a clock mechanism inside the “watch” room. The bell was struck twice, then twenty seconds of silence, one strike, another twenty seconds of silence, then the pattern repeated.
Every winter, it was expected that the lighthouse would receive a massive coating of ice, like it has here in the mid 1930s. Extremely high winds might lift the crest of a wave that broke on the pier end all the way over the top of the light, a distance of about forty feet
Longtime Charlevoix photographer Bob Miles took this, his signature work, in February of 1935. The temperature stood at minus two. A huge storm had passed, but the wind was still howling. The water was very low that year, which caused the waves to hit the pier with great force. He waited in the bone-chilling cold until the perfect wave was ready to break. In an instant before he clicked the shutter, the sun broke through the clouds to bathe the scene in a brilliant light. To many people, this photo alone expresses the essence of Charlevoix.
The unstable lighthouse was taken out in 1948 and this steel structure took its place. But the original 1885 black lantern that housed the lens at the top was found to be in excellent condition. It was removed and reinstalled by helicopter on the top of the new lighthouse. The lantern was entirely restored in 2008. The lighthouse was painted white from 1968 to 2009. On the north pier, the tall openwork white structure was erected not long after the switch of 1911. Its white light stood sixty-one feet above the pier. This tower was removed in the 1980s and replaced by a stubby short one.
“Gloriously the dawn greets Charlevoix, the Beautiful and when, at close of day, the summer sun with its golden smile sinks slowly to his western home, leaving a path of light across the waters of Lake Michigan, and crimson and purple clouds float softly overhead, sweetly and gently the Northern Twilight reaches down and wraps the town in a mantle of rest.” -Rosa Nettleton, 1926
Once vessels passed the lights and entered the harbor, they tied up mainly along the western edge of Round Lake down a gentle slope from Bridge Street. This is the Mason Street dock in the 1880s. As water traffic increased with continued improvement of the channel, Round Lake’s wharf and dock space, while extensive in the mid 1870s, began to come at a premium. Vessels often had to tie up one against the other until more docks went in, as did the schooner at right.
But because the wharfs were rarely maintained, the waterfront began to deteriorate until it became a stinking, dangerous mess. This is the Mason Street area not many years after the previous image. Beginning in the 1890s, commercial craft began to decline in numbers after the arrival of the railroad in 1892. Lumbering would die out by 1915, so the vessels needed to sustain it died away also. Repairs to any wharf were made only when absolutely needed. Visitors saw and smelled much of this area first. “Charlevoix, the Beautiful” was turning into anything but.
Seen from the deck of the passenger liner Missouri as she swung into Wilbur’s Dock, the deplorable state of the waterfront contrasts with the elegance of the resorters gathered at summer’s end to board for their journeys home. It was ironic that a town with a reputation as a resort paradise presented such an ugly introductory façade. Areas had to be cordoned off to prevent people from falling through the rotted planks. Once the city woke up to what was happening and only getting worse, the clean-up began here in the 1930s.
Improvements were made all the way to the Antrim Street dock. Finally Round Lake became the favored destination for pleasure craft it remains today, attracting yachts and sailboats from around the country and foreign registrations.
Uncounted thousands of vessels have made their entrance into Round Lake. The early lifelines between the ports of the Great Lakes, magnificent schooners arrived daily. Here an audacious captain shows off his skills by bringing his ship full sail into the channel when the lighthouse was on the north pier.
The schooner Porter dries her sails at the Clinton Street dock. At right, the billboard for Wizard Oil proclaims a popular cure-all of the era. The Charlevoix Sentinel of July 13, 1892 reported: “The famous Wizard Oil people are occupying the Lewis Grand Opera House every evening this week with a free entertainment embracing stereopticon views, songs, athletics, etc. While the entertainment is good and costs nothing, Wizard Oil is the ‘burden of their song.’
Schooners line up at the Antrim Street dock. From left: Fearless, Black Hawk, Linerla, Peoria, and the Chippewa.
Schooners often came into Round Lake not on business but to seek refuge from the sudden squalls that could roar out of nowhere on the big lake. They raced for shelter, tied up wherever they could find space, often next to a sister ship, and spent a day or two drying their sails before they ventured forth to continue their journeys. This was a common sight on Round Lake for decades.
Some schooners even wintered here. The Sea Gem, whose home port was Charlevoix, rests next to the channel revetment beside the grist mill. She was built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in 1863, and was often used for the transportation of grain to, and processed flour from, the mill. Above her bow appears the Fountain City House hotel. The Sea Gem was wrecked in a 1902 storm.
Mackinac boats were the lifelines within the Great Lakes ports and a little way beyond them. When many were out under full sail, they looked like a flock of moths flittering over the water. Local boat builder Roy Ranger, could produce one in three to four weeks for $350-$400. With the advent of the gasoline motor, however, the Mackinac became outmoded and he stopped building around 1910. The Shoodle shown here was commissioned from Ranger by J. P. Wilson of the Chicago Club resort and is still in use today as a club workboat, without its rigging.
The City of Boyne ferried passengers and freight mainly between Charlevoix and Boyne City with stops along Lake Charlevoix. She was badly damaged by fire in September of 1912.
The Hum was a popular little passenger steamer that ran three to four times a day between Charlevoix and East Jordan. George Jepson of East Jordan converted the yacht Pilgrim to the Hum in 1905, naming her for Florence “Hum” Smith, daughter of Charlevoix Sentinel publisher/editor Willard Smith. The two families were longtime friends. Little Florence had acquired the nickname as she played with her dolls, humming to them, and the sound made by his boat reminded Jepson of the child.
The Thomas Friant, which ran between Harbor Springs, Petoskey, Charlevoix, and East Jordan, was one of the busiest boats of the area. Barely visible above her bow awning, just under the topmost trestle railing, appear the remains of the once great Fox & Rose dock, now much broken apart and disintegrating.
On the night of June 16, 1887 the passenger steamer Champlain burned and ran aground off Fisherman’s Island with a known loss of twenty-two lives. Thought to be the result of a fallen lantern in a cabin, the fire broke out shortly before midnight. The wooden boat went up in a flash. Her captain raced for land so fast there was no way to lower the lifeboats. Passengers and crew went overboard, clinging to each other and anything they could find. The smoldering hull was towed to the south pier the next day. It was the worst maritime disaster in Charlevoix’s history. The vessel was rebuilt as the City of Charlevoix.
The Missouri, launched in 1904, rests at Wilbur’s Dock beside the channel. In the foreground is Beauvais’ canoe livery, all the boats numbered except for Thelma. In the distance sits the Pine Lake, the Charlevoix Lumber Company’s lumber hooker beside mountains of wood on the company dock. This was the vessel that laid the first telephone cable to Beaver Island on September 14, 1905.
When the Missouri and her sister ship the Illinois, launched in 1899, were in port together, there was no room to accommodate both of them at Wilbur’s Dock. One had to tie up against the other. Its passengers walked through the innermost vessel to disembark. This view is from the Clinton Street dock. Both vessels cruised the lakes for just over forty years.
The “Greyhound of the Great Lakes,” the mighty Manitou was an opulent gliding luxury hotel that carried nearly 400 passengers. The Manitou made the Chicago-direct-to-Charlevoix-Harbor Springs-Mackinac Island and back route three times a week, calling at Charlevoix three times on the way up and three on the way down. The first leg up took twenty hours non-stop, a record at the time. On her first visit to Charlevoix on June 21, 1896, three years after she was launched, the whole town turned out to welcome her into Round Lake.
The North American, launched in 1913, was one of the most frequent visitors to Charlevoix. She and her sister ship the South American, launched a year later, each had a crew of 155 and could carry up to 450 passengers. Charlevoix became a regular port of call, their entries into Round Lake special events. People lined the harbor to watch her circle the lake to the city dock where eager local kids waited to scramble for coins tossed overboard by the passengers. This view was taken from the water tower that stood above Park Avenue.
The South American leaves the channel. How can one tell the North American from the South American? The North displayed a long row of rectangular portholes. The South’s were circular. The North retired in 1964. The South’s last appearance in Charlevoix was in 1967. Taken off the lakes because of her flammable wooden superstructure, she rotted away at a shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. At the same time, the North American was being towed to Maryland to be used as a training ship when, on September 4, 1967, she sank in 400 feet of Atlantic waters off Nantucket.
On June 24, 1943 the 346-foot Milwaukee Clipper made her only entrance into Round Lake. Charlevoix had tried many times for her to make an appearance, but the owners and captain were leery of the lengthy vessel’s chances with the channel bend. Finally they were convinced they could do it. But there was limited space to tie up. In order to position the gangway, the bow had to almost touch the old pilings of the Charlevoix Lumber Company. This blocked the channel for several hours. Once was enough for all parties. The Clipper steamed out and never returned.
The lumber hooker Three Brothers, at 162 feet the pride of the fleet of the White Brothers of Boyne City, on July 10, 1911, loaded with 935,000 feet of hardwood and hemlock. She passed through Charlevoix many times on her way to her route between Buffalo and Chicago. Two months after this photo was taken, the 23-year-old boat hit a gale south of Charlevoix and her hull planking began to separate. She headed for South Manitou Island where she hit the beach so hard she split in two. Her load of lumber littered the island’s beaches. Lake Michigan ripped her remains to pieces.
U. S. Government tug General Williams passes through the upper channel past the Charlevoix Resort Association, later the Belvedere Club, around 1890.
Charlevoix has been the principal port of embarkation for Beaver Island for generations. The Beaver Island Boat Dock and the city dock at the channel neck are one and the same. Many vessels have served the route, including Emerald Isle I, Mary Margaret, North Shore, Beaver, Bainbridge, Rambler, Oval Agitator, Bruce, Columbia, Erie L. Hackley, James E. Sanford, Ossian Bedell, Marold II and others.
Their destination was the port of St. James thirty-two miles away. This was the principal settlement of Mormon King James Strang, and named after him. It was on a harbor dock, on a day in June, 1856 that Strang was shot by two disaffected followers. He died on July 9 at his parents’ home in Wisconsin. Had Strang not been killed, increasingly strengthening Mormon influence might well have radiated from this spot to convert all of northern Michigan and far beyond into a Mormon territory comparable to Brigham Young’s achievement in Utah.
In late July, 1908 and again in early August, the Straits of Mackinac railcar ferry Manistique brought boatloads of excursionists to the Mason Street dock, accompanied by a brass band on the top deck. She was the largest ship to negotiate the channel bend after the Manitou.
Charlevoix has been a magnet for some of the most palatial yachts that ever plied the inland seas. The Venetia rests against the channel revetment by the Coast Guard station and fish hatchery.
Queen of them all, Logan Thompson’s 191-foot Sylvia enters the upper channel for her farewell trip down Lake Charlevoix on May 3, 1942 prior to service in World War II. Many considered the Sylvia to be the most beautiful craft ever to grace the waters of Charlevoix. When she glided across Round Lake to and from her berth near the Belvedere Club, traffic on Bridge Street often came to a halt. After the war, the Sylvia was purchased from the government for relief work in Greece and became a freighter in the Aegean. Charlevoix never saw her again.
In the middle background, the Sylvia rests at her berth near the Belvedere Club. To her right is the Reomar IV. This had been the Sylvia IV until Logan Thompson sold the 135-foot yacht to auto magnate Ransom E. Olds once he bought the larger unnumbered Sylvia. Olds named his boats after the initials of his name and the first three letters of his wife’s name. Like most of her kind, she was confiscated by the government for war duty in 1942. Thompson had built the long boathouse for the Sylvia IV. The building is now the Harbour Club Condominiums.
Roy Brady, renowned racing boat builder shown here with his wife, built this boat in Charlevoix. On August 7, 1927 he entered Miss Charlevoix in a five-mile event on Lake Charlevoix. The first 2.5 miles were covered in just under 2 minutes, 20 seconds for an average 64.5 miles per hour, a world record. On September 2, Brady went from a standing start to the mile mark in 68 seconds, a state record. The Charlevoix Courier said, “ . . . very few boats in the entire world . . . can show her a clean pair of heels.”
Manitou, the North Manitou Shoal Light Vessel #56 that protected boats on the Lake Michigan shipping lane off North Manitou Island near the Leelanau Peninsula south of Charlevoix, often wintered here until the island’s offshore lighthouse was constructed in 1935 and a lightship was no longer needed.
In the late 1950s a rural electric plant was constructed near Boyne City at the end of Lake Charlevoix. It required thousands of tons of coal. Lake freighters began to pass through Charlevoix on a regular basis eight to thirteen times a year. Traffic on Bridge Street could freeze for half an hour or more. On busy summer days the lines of cars might stretch half a mile or more on both sides of town. The Hennepin was named after the French priest who accompanied LaSalle on his explorations of New France in the late 1600s. Father Charlevoix gave him prominent mention in his journals
The narrow entrance to the channel from Lake Michigan has sometimes been a tricky target for vessels that aimed at the slot and missed, ending up stranded on the beach. Roaring seas, strong and changeable winds, pilot error, alcohol, and vanity have all been factors. Here the schooner Jenny Mullen lists to starboard on the Lake Michigan Beach. She was not considered seaworthy after she was righted and moved off the sand, and was towed to the ships’ graveyard at Lake Charlevoix’s Oyster Bay about three miles east of town where she was scuttled and sunk.
The passenger liner Illinois ran aground on a stormy August 26, 1906 with about 500 passengers and crew. She sped for the piers just as a schooner was heading in also. The captain of the Illinois saw he was on a collision course, swerved, and overshot the piers to crunch onto the sand. The Life-Saving Service rigged a breeches buoy from the south pier and managed to take off about 135. But this was not fast enough, so rescue boats were launched. In terrible conditions, the Life-Savers took off the other 365 throughout the night, with no injuries or loss of life
The freighter Welcome was stranded on the South Point rocks southwest of the piers around 1904-05. A few years of battering began to take her apart. One particularly severe winter saw her lifted and listing to port as if on a frozen wave.
The Fountain City House hotel, currently the site of the Weathervane Terrace Inn & Suites. In the mid 1860s Amos Fox & Hiram Rose built a boarding house on River Street (Pine River Lane) for the men they hired to build their Lake Michigan dock a block away. Richard Cooper from Little Traverse (Harbor Springs) managed it. He bought the building in 1867 and named it the Fountain City House after the steamer whose passengers gave him so much of his business. By 1873 our first hotel had grown into the largest hotel in northern lower Michigan.
The Fountain City House was often the first stop for the region’s settlers. Newspaperman Willard Smith lived there after he arrived in 1869 to get the Sentinel up and running next door. He remembered that “ . . . in the center (of the hotel office) was a large box stove. On the winter evenings as we played euchre and sometimes ‘penny ante,’ a line of socks surrounded the big stove from which arose a perfume that today would drive every guest from the house. We had but one ‘Resorter’ and he was a delirium tremens subject from Chicago.” The hotel closed in 1953.
The Charlevoix Resort Association, later the Belvedere Club, was established in 1878. A year later the founders built this 16-room club/boarding house where members could lodge while they supervised the construction of their cottages. It also housed overflow guests. The structure became a de facto hotel, at least for the resort. An attached dining/meeting hall was later added on the other side as demand increased. The original building burned in 1886; the addition was only singed.
By the next summer the “New Belvedere Hotel” stood in its place, this one open to the public. The arrival of the railroad in 1892 called for two expansions from the New Belvedere’s forty rooms.
It reached its full size of eighty-seven rooms in 1902. The 1892 modernization included two bathrooms, utilized by appointment only. Otherwise, bathing was suggested in the usually chilly waters of Pine Lake across the railroad tracks. The solarium seen here was added in the early 1920s. Visitors to the Belvedere have included Eliot Ness, the “Untouchable” who put away Al Capone in the 1930s, Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs, Barry Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson, author Booth Tarkington, auto magnate Ransom E. Olds, popular 1930s film actress Constance Bennett, and other notable names.
For all its vaunted reputation, the Belvedere Hotel was plain, almost dowdy on the interior. It began to age seriously during the Depression and the 1940s. After World War II the hotel did not regain the business it once enjoyed due to changing travel patterns. Old resort hotels fell out of popularity in a time of mass and cheap travel. All during the 1950s the resort association debated what to do. By 1960 it was estimated that $100,000 was needed to upgrade the building for an uncertain future, so a decision was made to tear it down later that year.
The Noble started as the Ingleside in 1878, and changed names before a major fire in the mid 1890s. Traveling salesmen came to prefer it to the Fountain City House because it was in the middle of downtown at the Clinton Street corner. They wouldn’t have to wait for the bridge to close. F. W. Chapel bought the damaged building in 1897 for a drugstore below with offices and rooms to let above. Chapel sold to B. A. Herman who called it the Central Drug Store. He sold to Harley Ochs whose descendants have maintained the business to this day. The building was replaced by a low brick structure in 1958.
Five years after the railroad arrived in June, 1892 the Chicago & West Michigan Railway made plans for a grand hotel to serve its passengers. Well into construction in October of 1897, a rushed job ended in tragedy. Stabilization and plastering of the lower floors was not completed when more lumber was installed and plastering commenced on the upper levels, adding tremendous weight. A sixty-mile-an-hour wind roared out of the northwest, causing the top-heavy north end to collapse into the central portion, which pulled the south end over. Two men were thrown from the roof and killed.
The rebuilt Inn, the pride of Charlevoix, opened in time for the 1898 season. The 250-room four-story hotel was over 500 feet long, and at full capacity could sleep 800 guests. Its porches stretched 1300 lineal feet, almost a quarter of a mile. The Inn was second in size in Michigan only to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. It even had a finely appointed indoor heated pool down on the Pine Lake shore, open also to townspeople for a nominal fee. A postcard written in 1908 stated: “ . . . stopping here a while, it is the grandest place you most ever saw.”
The Inn catered to railroad passengers who disembarked three times a day at the height of the season, arranged for baggage delivery, then walked up the grand staircase behind the station, across the terrace past a tall rustic stone fountain, and up more stairs into the hotel where they could spend their entire vacation and, if they chose, never see the town.
The main lobby was filled with custom-made chairs, no two of which were alike. In the far background, the dining room that filled the entire north end of the main floor could accommodate five hundred. But all this opulence and grandeur did not last. Increasing reliance on the automobile cut into railroad business. One of The Inn’s drawbacks was that, reliant as it was on the railroad, it provided too little space for parking and had no room to expand. The Depression only hastened the end. Its contents were auctioned off in late 1941, and the wonder of the age came down.
The third of the town’s grand hotels began life in 1899 when a small hotel went up at the end of West Dixon Avenue, the only hotel constructed in Charlevoix to take advantage of the Lake Michigan panorama. The Beach Hotel had only fifteen rooms sharing one bathroom; its office was nothing more than a desk in a corner of the dining room. But Martha Elston Baker, wife of the builder, had gained experience at her father’s hotel, The Elston, downtown. She was a born hotelier and terrific manager.
Martha Baker was so successful that five years after opening she doubled the Beach’s capacity.
Eleven years after that, a Chicago architect drew plans that, over the winter of 1914-1915, extended the Beach west and took it down seven stories to the water level, now holding 216 rooms and 86 baths. The dining room could seat 350-400 comfortably.
The Beach Hotel was the tallest building ever constructed in Charlevoix.
Mrs. Baker bought fourteen large neighborhood residences called “cottages” to hold overflow and cater to families. A large white “annex,” middle left, went up on the bluff edge. At its height the Beach Hotel complex could house about 1,000 people per night. Mrs. Baker died in 1922, leaving everything to her daughter, a playgirl who lost it all by 1939. Kept going by several subsequent owners, the Beach burned to the ground in a spectacular all-night fire during demolition on October 17, 1967
Martha Elston Baker’s father Robert built this hotel in the mid 1890s, called The Elston Hotel. He realized the need for a large downtown hotel after the railroad arrived in 1892. In March of 1915 the Elston suffered a 3:00 a. m. fire that nearly destroyed the building. Rebuilt and increased from seventy-five to ninety-two rooms in three wings, it became the Michigan Hotel, then Hallett’s Inn, then the Hoover, finally the Lakeview Inn. The building was torn down in the early 1960s to make way for Oleson’s grocery store plaza.
The Bartlett Hotel was built on Park Avenue by a local doctor in 1908. Dr. L. D. Bartlett had owned a hotel on Bridge Street since 1898. He decided to start fresh here, near the Congregational Church, and opened in 1909. The Detroit Lions football team of 1942 stayed at the Bartlett when they came to town for a summer training session. They went on to have the worst year in their history until the debacle of 2008. The Bartlett was torn down over the winter of 1966-67. The Captain’s Watch condominiums stand in its place.
In 1927 Mr. A. Salem Mussallem, an Armenian with a Lebanese passport who always wore a fez, turned the top floor of the Lewis Grand Opera House into the Hotel Alhambra and the theater area into an oriental rug emporium. He added a red brick façade and loggias on the north and west sides for fire safety. The Alhambra suffered ups and downs in its later years and was barely inhabited at the end. Its street floor commercial spaces finished life as a bowling alley and an oriental bazaar full of cheap gewgaws. The Alhambra was razed in 1947 to make way for the construction of Memorial Bridge.
This hotel began as the Oldham Club, an exclusive dining club with eleven guest rooms built in the 1920s by Harry Oldham on the Park Avenue bluff a few yards from the water tower. The Coast Guard signal flag tower is to the building’s right. The Club discreetly catered to high rollers with a little unpublicized gambling on the side. Its balcony and porch provided a spectacular northwest view of Lake Michigan. In the 1930s, new owners changed the name to the Tower Hotel. Most of it came down in the 1970s, after which the rest was incorporated into the Sandcastle Condominiums in the early 1970s.
The Hotel Charlevoix began life as the Bridge Street House in 1881. Dr. L. D. Bartlett purchased it in 1898 when it became the Hotel Bartlett. After he moved to his new place on Park Avenue it became Baker’s Inn, then the Hotel Charlevoix. The building stretched from the sidewalk almost to Round Lake. To its right were Ed Goldstick’s shoe hospital, then Bill the Hatter and his shoe shine stand, in summertime business since 1902. Bill could shine your shoes with “Gay Dyes of All Colors.” The hotel burned to a crisp on June 7, 1935.
The fire sparked the construction of East Park. Even in mid-Depression a visionary group of professional and business men, who realized the potential of the view that opened up, was able to make sure the city obtained almost all the rest of the 300 block and razed it. The newly exposed land was then tranformed into what Charlevoix and untold thousands of visitors have for so long enjoyed, thanks to the burning of a hotel. East Park was given a total makeover, including a major expansion of the marina facilities, from 2007 to 2009.
The fire sparked the construction of East Park. Even in mid-Depression a visionary group of professional and business men, who realized the potential of the view that opened up, was able to make sure the city obtained almost all the rest of the 300 block and razed it. The newly exposed land was then tranformed into what Charlevoix and untold thousands of visitors have for so long enjoyed, thanks to the burning of a hotel. East Park was given a total makeover, including a major expansion of the marina facilities, from 2007 to 2009.
The Charlevoix Honor Roll used to stand in East Park, a listing of all the Charlevoix area people who served their country in World War II.
The first Waterfront Art Fair was held in East Park in 1959. Only a handful of artists participated. They displayed their creations on tables, upright pegboard, easels, or propped against sticks. There were no booths or other enclosures to protect the works from direct sunlight. Since then, the Charlevoix Waterfront Art Fair has grown into one of the most respected anywhere. It was named one of the top two outdoor art fairs in Michigan along with the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, and ranked as one of the 100 best art fairs in the country by the Art Fair Source Book.
The depot overlooks Lake Charlevoix at the far end of East Dixon Avenue. The first train puffed into Charlevoix in 1892, nineteen years after Petoskey, only 15.5 miles away, received its railroad. The reason that Charlevoix lagged for so long was that the port was so close to the Lake Michigan maritime lanes a railroad was long thought to be unnecessary. But finally the train arrived at an almost finished station, shown here, on June 26. It was one of the major events of Charlevoix’s history. The Charlevoix Historical Society owns the depot.
The railroad responsible for opening Charlevoix to the world was the Chicago & West Michigan Railway. The C. & W. M. was absorbed by the Pere Marquette Railroad in 1899. The Pere Marquette began a summertime “Resort Special” out of Chicago and Detroit in June of 1904. In 1911, it was reported that the Resort Special that arrived one day was so long—thirteen passenger cars plus baggage cars, coal car, and caboose—the engine had to pull up well past the depot so the front half could unload, then chugged ahead to pull the rear half up to the lengthy platform.
The railroad bridge watched over the entry to Lake Charlevoix for just over nine decades. The final passenger train left town on September 1, 1962, while the freight business lasted almost two decades longer until the last train departed on February 18, 1982. With all rail traffic now halted, much heated debate followed over whether the bridge could or even should be saved. It was decided that economic factors prevented renovation and maintenance. The bridge was removed in autumn of 1983, and the last of the tracks were torn out in 1990.
Two workers turn the railroad bridge with two “keys,” unlike their counterparts at the lower channel bridge who used only one. The Inn hotel’s swimming pool building, the “natatorium,” appears in the right distance.
In late May of 1891, the Charlevoix Resort Association (Belvedere Club) lobbied to have the station built near them because the tracks passed over their property. By June 10 the matter was settled. “The North Side Gets the Plum” declared the Sentinel. The association was appeased because it was promised it would be getting its own small station. This shows the stairs and platform that were used temporarily between the end of June and late summer, 1892 before the building was completed.
Without the Belvedere station, association members would have been inconvenienced by the nearly two-mile trip around Round Lake. Association husbands and fathers could board in Chicago in late afternoon and get off at the Belvedere around seven in the morning to enjoy a weekend, reboard late Sunday, and arrive back in time for work on Monday. The Belvedere station remained in service until 1931 when it burned. The origin of the fire was thought to be sparks from a passing train, but was never satisfactorily determined. The structure was not rebuilt.
The Belvedere Club, founded in 1878 by Baptists from Kalamazoo, Michigan as the Charlevoix Resort Association, occupies land on the southeast corner of Round Lake, the south side of the upper channel, and around on Lake Charlevoix. Above the railroad trestle is the land called Breezy Point. The indentation in the shoreline above this, the Belvedere Bayou, holds the resort’s boathouses. Across Ferry Avenue from the hotel, next to the trestle, is the Belvedere Casino, the resort’s clubhouse and social center, built in 1923.
This was the first structure erected on the Belvedere. It housed building tools and bunks for workmen or visiting member overseers during the construction of the first six cottages in 1878 and the club/boarding house in 1879. Originally it was called The Midget, then The Morgue amongst other names. In later days it became a tool shed and children’s playhouse. The men look like they’re enjoying a brew, but the alcohol ostensibly being imbibed here may only be grape juice, for the Baptist-oriented resort was dry for many years after its founding.
By the end of 1878, five resort cottages were complete on the upper terrace, and one on the lower. Many more followed in swift order over the next few years. In 1892, the members reorganized into the Charlevoix Summer Home Association, known by that name until 1923 when the whole resort became “Belvedere.”
Soon after the founding of the resort, O. E. Allen of Kalamazoo constructed what came to be known as Blue Belle cottage at a slight distance from the others, west around the corner on what would become Belvedere Avenue. An ardent Mason, Allen designed the house on a variant of the Maltese Cross, a Masonic symbol. The quadrilateral plan allowed plenty of balconies and porches to almost surround the structure. Here, resort members celebrate the 4th of July.
Tennis, anyone? Belvedere members enjoy a match or two on a warm summer day
In the earliest days, the easiest way for Belvedere resorters to reach downtown was by boat. Both the Belvedere and the Chicago Club across the upper channel petitioned the city for their own dock space, since the existing wharves and docks were too high. So the city designated the Clinton Street dock for the exclusive use of the resorters and built lower facilities for them. Every summer Sunday morning, a flotilla of boats left from the clubs to cross Round Lake, everyone dressed in their Sunday best as they headed for church. Here, a party prepares to shove off from the Belvedere Bayou.
Members of the 1200-strong First Congregational Church of Chicago learned of the Kalamazoo Baptists’ find in Charlevoix. In 1880, a church committee investigated resorts all over northern Michigan for a similar purpose. They liked what they saw here. That summer, the committee bought forty acres on the north side of the upper channel directly opposite the Resort Association. The Chicago Club received its Articles of Incorporation from the state of Illinois in 1881. The spacious clubhouse went up that year, and is still in use.
The twin Blatchford and Wilson cottages on the Chicago Club, in 1885, are mirror images on one another, prime examples of “stick style” architecture.
Old River below the Chicago Club used to be the outlet from Pine Lake into Round Lake, dropping two feet down a shallow rapids. (Round Lake was even two feet higher than Lake Michigan in the beginning.) The looping river defined the peninsula that once separated the two lakes until the upper channel was cut through the peninsula’s base in 1869 and the river became a side stream, long a favorite route of canoes, rowboats and small motor craft.
Old River below the Chicago Club used to be the outlet from Pine Lake into Round Lake, dropping two feet down a shallow rapids. (Round Lake was even two feet higher than Lake Michigan in the beginning.) The looping river defined the peninsula that once separated the two lakes until the upper channel was cut through the peninsula’s base in 1869 and the river became a side stream, long a favorite route of canoes, rowboats and small motor craft.
Charlevoix has been long known for its unique houses. A short distance from the channel bridge, this was 103 Main Street (Park Avenue), built by pioneer settler Amos Fox as his second home around 1879. The house was the permanent residence of the lighthouse keeper from 1908 to 1941, conveniently located near both piers. Today the property is serene Hoffmann Park overlooking the channel where the key that once turned the swing bridges is displayed.
The Horace S. Harsha House at 103 State Street, home of the Charlevoix Historical Society since 1979. Mr. Harsha built this Queen Anne-style house beginning in 1891, and the family moved in in 1892. The Historical Society needed a home after it was reorganized in 1972. Horace’s granddaughter Anne Harsha sold the house to the Society for $1 in 1978 with the stipulation it always retain its name in honor of her family. The Society moved in a year later. Three restored Victorian parlors occupy the first floor. The Harsha House Museum wraps around them on the north and west side
Next door to the Harshas stood the classy brick Bartholomew house, built by the owner of the hardware store a block away on the Park Avenue/Bridge Street corner. It is now the site of the Charlevoix State Bank.
The residence of Will Hampton, editor of the Charlevoix Courier and bitter rival of the Sentinel’s Willard Smith. It was located at 307 Michigan Avenue, now the site of the Dunes Condominiums. Will, a crack bicycle racer and organizer of racing contests, appears on the bike with an infant son. A passionate lover of literature, he named one of his boys Victor Hugo Hampton. The Hamptons lived next door to the summer home of the Teasdale family of St. Louis, whose daughter Sara became one of America’s most prominent poets.
206 Belvedere Avenue on the south terrace overlooking Round Lake. A summer home, it recently celebrated 100 years of ownership in the same family. The east and west elevations are staggered on both levels to allow a view of the lake from practically every room in the house.
This stately home at 429 Michigan Avenue was built between 1911 and 1913 by David May, founder of the May Company department store chain in the Midwest. Remodeled in the 1990s, it has 29 rooms plus 11 bathrooms that cover 15,000 square feet.
David May’s brother-in-law Col. Moses Schoenberg erected this Roman Revival mansion next door at 431 Michigan Avenue. It was purchased in 1942 by Leigh Block, owner of Inland Steel of Chicago, the sixth largest steel company in the United States.
Boulder Manor is one of the most astonishing homes in northern Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton
The “Half House" is the smallest of Earl Young's houses and is considered by many to be the quintessence of his style. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton)
Situated along the shore of Lake Michigan, this home was built in the late 1940s for William Sucher, head of the Speedway 79 Gasoline Company.
The official “Mushroom House” at the corner of Grant Street and Clinton Street is considered to be Earl Young’s residential masterpiece. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton)
Boulder Manor is one of the most astonishing homes in northern Michigan. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton
The “Half House" is the smallest of Earl Young's houses and is considered by many to be the quintessence of his style. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton)
Situated along the shore of Lake Michigan, this home was built in the late 1940s for William Sucher, head of the Speedway 79 Gasoline Company.
The official “Mushroom House” at the corner of Grant Street and Clinton Street is considered to be Earl Young’s residential masterpiece. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton)
Earl Young’s masterwork is the Weathervane Inn restaurant begun on the site of the Argo Milling Company in August, 1953.
The Weathervane Terrace built between 1961 to 1964, was one of two motels built by Young.
The facade of the "Castle House" on 3 Thistle Down. Due to extensive renovations, the stone turret and the undulated ceder roof are all that is left of the original design (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton).
The tiny porch of Boulder Manor is supported by a massive five-foot granite boulder (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton).
South elevation (rear) of 306 Park Avenue. The wall is constructed of Onaway limestone, laid in the same manner as the house.
The "White Mortar House" in Boulder Park. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton).
Facade of the "Owl House" located in Boulder Park. (Photo courtesy of Mike Barton)
103 Grant St. The "Mushroom House." (Photo courtesy Mike Barton)
Charlevoix’s schools began in a log structure erected in 1861 on Morris J. Stockman’s property overlooking Pine Lake that would later become the Belvedere Club. In 1868, the second school was put up on the Oleson grocery store property on Antrim Street downtown. The third school, a four-room building, went up in 1873 between Clinton and Mason Streets east of Grant Street. It burned to the ground in February, 1889. The fourth school was partially finished in its place and in use that fall, seen here in 1890. Its pointed belfry roof was blown apart by a lightning strike in early April of 1903 and rebuilt lower
A steady population increase caused the building known as the McKinley High School, in honor of the recently assassinated President, to be erected south of the fourth school in 1901-02. It served until 1961. After a new elementary school was opened on Grant Street in 1928, the fourth school, at right, was used mainly for meeting rooms, storage and band practice. It came down in 1945. The Community Room of the new state-of-the-art Charlevoix Public Library today occupies the site of the High School.
“There is no feature of the development of Charlevoix from the pioneer days just following the Mormon exodus that more strikingly marks our growth than the march, step by step from the little log school house to our present fine, solid, brick temple of education; and there is no feature of our progress to which we can point with greater pride than to the record of School District No. 1 of Charlevoix, in the mental training of its young.” Charlevoix Sentinel, July 5, 1894
As Charlevoix grew, pressure on the fourth school prompted the construction in 1895 of two smaller elementary (K-4) schools on either side of town. The Washington School stood at the northeast corner of Burns Street and Petoskey Avenue on the north side, and the Lincoln School was on East Garfield near Bridge Street on the south, now the American Legion hall. Here, kindergartners through second graders pose in the Washington School around 1912.
Generations of students remember the kindergarten fishpond in the elementary school on Grant Street. It was almost a rite of passage to have fallen in during one’s formative first year of education. The teachers kept dry clothes on hand. Appearing here are half of the kindergarten class of 1939. Today this is the much used Belvedere Room that houses the periodicals and newspapers area of the new Charlevoix Public Library.
The Coast Guard has been a presence in Charlevoix for over a century. In 1899 the city sold land on the south channel bank near the Lake Michigan Beach to the U. S. Life-Saving Service for one dollar. In 1900 this towered station was commissioned. It opened in 1901. Seven men and a captain manned the building, grounds, and boats for the first several years. In 1962, the Coast Guard moved into a new building on the north bank of the upper channel next to the railroad bridge. The shingled station was taken down in 1965, the ground leveled, and the property reverted to the city
Seen in 1908, the Life-Saving station was situated below and to the west of the water tower which went up in 1906. At far right was Charlevoix’s second electric plant. Half of this building, the north part shown here, was removed to make way for the second fish hatchery in 1917. The photo was taken from the north pier. At far left by the trestle appears the 1890 storage building for the oil used in the lighthouse. Just to the right of the three-masted schooner’s stern appears a little curved white structure on the revetment in front of the station
This structure was a wooden hinged pedestrian footbridge that spanned the gap in the revetment through which the Life-Saving boats were launched down a ramp and into the channel. This bridge lasted only about ten years.
The 1906 water tower was a major landmark that could be seen for miles both from Lake Michigan and inland. It had aged drastically by the mid 1990s, by which time a replacement had already been put up on Division Street near the municipal golf course. Although considered by some to be a candidate for a terrific observation tower, projected renovation, maintenance, and insurance costs proved to be prohibitive. Its legs were torched almost through, then cables pulled it over in a few throat-catching seconds in May of 1995
Life-saving drills were regularly held in the channel along with breeches buoy drills carried out along a cable suspended high over the channel to a tall pole on the north bank. The “surf boat” was considered to be unsinkable. In the early days these drills were one of the biggest attractions in town. On the 4th of July hundreds of onlookers lined both piers and embankments, in places shoulder to shoulder, many accompanied by blankets and picnic baskets.
Old 404, the Coast Guard buoy tender Sundew, berthed in Charlevoix for many years. After hosting a major vessel and its crew for decades, the town lost most of its Coast Guard vessel presence when the aging Acacia left in 2006
In the beginning, members of the Life-Saving crew also pulled duty as lifeguards on Lake Michigan Beach next to the station. This clean sugar sand beach is one of the prime attractions of Charlevoix, and stretches on the north side from the pier all the way to North Point. People gather here on fine summer evenings to watch the spectacular sunsets, occasionally serenaded by the mournful sounds of a bagpipe.
The town also provides two municipal beaches on Lake Charlevoix, Depot Beach to the north of and Ferry Beach south of the upper channel. This was The Inn hotel dock and canoe livery on Depot Beach near the train station. The Inn’s roofline appears at top. Depot Beach is the smallest, but one of the most frequented, in town.
A host of businesses have come and gone in Charlevoix. In 1885 Hiram Rifenburg constructed a gristmill on the north side of the channel next to the bridge. In 1896 new owners incorporated the business as the Charlevoix Roller Mills. On December 1, 1903, the operation was incorporated as the Argo Milling Company and flourished for about three decades. In August of 1953, after ten years of negotiations, Earl Young bought the empty rusted building, tore most of it down, and replaced the beloved eyesore with the Weathervane Inn.
Ferry Avenue and Ferry Beach were named after D. M. Ferry who in 1892-93 constructed a building between the railroad tracks and the Pine Lake shore for the production of seed stock harvested from this area’s fertile farms. It was capable of handling 30,000 bushels of peas alone. Within a couple of years, tons of seeds were going out by the train car load. After the collapse of a foundation and a larger rebuilding that was in turn destroyed by fire in 1904, this even larger building remains today.
Several businesses occupied the structure after D. M. Ferry left in 1920. In 1940, Harry Foster and William Wallace bought it for the manufacture of wood products and small watercraft. Wallace pulled out when World War II started. Foster was contracted by the Federal government in 1944-45 to quickly construct 669 small, lightweight, flat-bottomed plywood boats with a single outboard engine that would carry thousands of troops across Europe’s rivers in the final push toward Berlin. In the mid 1980s developers transformed the decrepit building and named it the Foster Boat Works Condos
The huge sugar beet factory, next to Ferry Beach, was begun in August of 1902. The 339’ x 70’ x 70’ structure was completed the next year. But conditions were not quite right here for labor-intensive beet production. Year by year more farmers realized the effort and small return involved, and became reluctant to commit valuable acreage. By 1911 it was all over. The deserted factory decayed and fell in upon itself. The wrecking ball arrived in 1964. Some of the remains became the Irish Boat Shop’s marina dock foundations and breakwaters.
From the early years of the 20th century until the Depression, Charlevoix’s first cement plant mined the thousands of tons of limestone that make up the South Point area west of town. It was located off West Carpenter Street which at one time ran all the way to Lake Michigan. This was a thriving business until the Depression put it under. Its abandoned buildings became the collective term “the lime kilns.” One of the quarries was turned into the town dump.
A big wintertime industry since the 1870s was ice harvesting on both Round Lake and Lake Charlevoix. The United States depended upon Great Lakes ice before electric refrigeration became widespread. In February of 1876, 15,000 tons were removed by a Wisconsin firm from Round Lake alone for the Chicago market. Cutting was done by hand until circular blades were attached to converted auto engines, seen here in 1930.
Breaking the cakes free was a process called “spudding.” Long pike poles guided the blocks through an open channel to a powered conveyor which delivered them to trucks or horse-drawn sledges, one per second. Transported to windowless warehouses on the shores of Lake Charlevoix and Round Lake, the cakes, often weighing up to 150 pounds, were separated and insulated by layers of sawdust from the area’s lumber mills. The spudding seen here is being done just off Depot Beach in 1924. The Inn hotel’s roof is barely visible at upper right.
Crews of men using hooks and cables loaded cut ice right from Lake Charlevoix into boxcars on a railroad siding. Much of the ice was used by railroad companies for their passenger dining cars and to store food for shipment on long journeys. A great deal traveled to the big cities where hotel demand was immense. Charlevoix’s ice usually went to Chicago from where it was distributed all over the country.
John Martin poses beside his Lakeview Dairy delivery wagon. Older residents today can remember milk delivered in glass bottles to their doorsteps. In the depth of a harsh winter, if they didn’t get it inside quickly enough, the milk and cream would freeze and rise from the opening as a white column a couple of inches high, carrying on its top the circular cardboard lid.
Harry Hooker’s horses were a common summer sight in Charlevoix for over three decades. They were housed in his garage at the corner of Antrim and State Streets, now the loading dock area of Oleson’s grocery store. Harry is sixth from the right in the dark coat and hat, in 1923. Hooker’s horses made daily parades through town to a circular paddock on the north side at the corner of Burns and Divisions Streets where he offered riding lessons and excursions.
Ray Hamilton’s boatyard in 1940 on the southeast shore of Round Lake. The sailboats are drying their canvas after a storm. At lower right, the gondola was used to carry the Venetian Queen and her court in the July Venetian Festival parade.
Boat building was an important industry on the south shore of Round Lake. A small army of master boat builders constructed rowboats through Mackinac boats through refitted lumber hookers up to passenger steamers.
In 1959, Charlevoix was chosen as the site of the nation’s fifth nuclear plant, and the first in Michigan, at Consumers Power’s Big Rock Point on the Lake Michigan shore four miles north of town. The plant became a focal point of enormous local pride, bitter condemnation, and constant controversy. But for 35 years after the reactor was powered up at 2:35 P. M. on September 27, 1962, Big Rock Point provided one of the largest tax-paying industries and employers of highly skilled people that Charlevoix and the county has ever experienced.
Big Rock Point was actually a very small plant. It was constructed primarily as a research and development facility with the encouragement and cooperation of the Federal government to investigate various methods for the efficient production of nuclear fuels that hopefully might make them cheaper than coal or gas. Although it did go online a few years after it opened, it never became a profitable component of the Consumers power grid. Kitchi-ossining, the Native-American “big rock” after which the point was named, is visible out in the water at far right.
The reactor was brought into Charlevoix from the south by train on February 5, 1962. It was 30 feet long, 9 feet in diameter with walls 5.5 inches thick, and weighed 120 tons. Protruding from the vessel’s bottom were control rod openings through which up to 84 nuclear fuel bundle exposures and reactions were hydraulically managed. On February 9, the gigantic load was taken on rails into the sphere, tilted upright, and hooked to cables attached to a crane that traveled on its own rails along the top of the concrete reactor core over 90 feet above.
Slowly the vessel rose into the air, hung from the crane while it was inched directly over the reactor housing, centered and pinpointed, then lowered into its home where, buried in tons of concrete, the atomic fuel it held would boil millions of gallons of water into steam that would turn turbines that would power generators for the next three and a half decades. Little Charlevoix, whether it liked it or not, had entered the atomic age in a big way.
Several months before the reactor was installed, a visitors center complete with auditorium was constructed near the sphere and opened on June 24, 1961. It became one of Michigan’s top tourist attractions, believed to be second only to Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village near Detroit. Within seven years, half a million people from every state in the Union and fifty-eight foreign countries had come to learn about nuclear power generation. The center was closed in 1974, by which time over a million visitors had come to see Big Rock Point and Charlevoix.
Even as the Big Rock Point plant set world records for production and established an incredible record for employee safety, industry advances made “the little plant that could” superfluous. More would have been needed to bring it up to modern standards and stringent regulations than it ever could have produced, so Consumers decided to halt operations in 1997. The entire plant, down to the last cubic inch, was removed over several years at a cost of over $400 million, and the land allowed to revert to “green field” in 2006.
By December 9, 2005 Big Rock Point’s reactor housing had been battered and blasted beyond recognition.
Two days later, the last of the bottom portion of the reactor housing stood as a gaping hulk ready to be dynamited away. The remaining segments of Big Rock Point’s sphere appear as rusted sheets of metal at bottom.
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Mother Nature is now reclaiming the land that the Big Rock Point powerhouse sat on. Only the domed Big Rock itself dominates the shoreline today.
The advent of Big Rock Point opened the door for the Medusa Cement Plant on South Point. Sufficient power was now available to allow heavy industry to put down roots. The Medusa Cement Company had owned South Point since 1919, but after the Rock Products plant was closed and torn down, Medusa hadn’t been able to do anything with their land and limestone until Big Rock Point came along. Since 1967, these silos have stored the finished product until the company’s freighter Challenger slips in beside them to download the cement for shipment around the Great Lakes
The Medusa Cement Company has changed hands three times. It became the Southdown Cement Company, then Cemex out of Mexico, and is currently owned by the St. Marys Cement Company of Brazil.
The Charlevoix Cigar Company’s Band members fill their wagon, constructed by master wagon maker and pioneer David Nettleton, in front of the Lewis Grand Opera House in the early 1890s. George Burns is the driver. At left is Rosenthal’s clothing store, soon to move to Petoskey where it became one of northern Michigan’s leading businesses. Music has been a major part of Charlevoix’s soul from the beginning. From soloists to small ensembles to large groups, both instrumental and vocal, they have made the air resound all year round.
CCB it says on their caps, the Charlevoix City Band in new uniforms, 1905. Still today, the city band provides concerts that can draw several hundred listeners each week in summertime to the band shell in East Park. Top row: Meyer Levinson, William Johnson, William Bellinger, Archie Carey, Harker Kirby, Bert Bernett, Charles Jones, Doc Wicks, Harry Dodge. Middle row: Ralph Smith, G. Fink, Frank Kenyon, Jack Rugbie, Bob Stafford, William VanderMade Bottom row: Carl Johnson (kneeling), Meyer Cohen, Harry Bowen, Mila Miller, Dar Burk, Ike Levinson”.
The Charlevoix Rough and Ready Fire Department No. 1 stands beside the town hall/county building in the 1890s and behind Charlevoix’s first fire engine, nicknamed “Little Silsby.” The middle of the three towers was used to suspend hoses for drying after a fire so they wouldn’t rot. On September 1, 1921 Ernest Hemingway walked into this building to sign an affidavit and obtain a license for marriage to his first wife Hadley Richardson. The original documents showing Hemingway’s signature are on display at the Charlevoix Historical Society’s Harsha House Museum.
The Charlevoix Fire Department early in the first decade of the 20th century. Only four have been identified. Top left: C. Y. Marshall, whose father Hank had once been fire chief. Bottom left: Meyer Levinson. Top right: William Bellinger. Bottom right: Meyer Cohen.
The Charlevoix City Hall at Mason and State Streets, constructed in 1939. The Baptist Church appears at left, replaced by the current fire hall, which used to be a small two-bay wing with an apartment on top in back of City Hall. The City Council meeting room was originally on the ground floor at left. A major renovation in 2005-2006 moved it to the top floor right.
Charlevoix’s third electric power plant was built in the 1930s on Ferry Avenue near Stover Road. It provided some of the town’s power until it was destroyed by fire in April, 1993. Now Charlevoix’s power is imported.
Charlevoix’s first hospital was on the northwest corner of Grant and West Hurlbut Streets. It served from 1920 to 1954 when the present hospital was constructed just outside of town on the Lake Michigan Shore next to Earl Young’s Boulder Park, and is now an apartment house.
The former fish hatchery, Charlevoix’s second, was built in 1917 at the base of Grant Street near the channel and Lake Michigan Beach. The first hatchery was a small house-like structure that stood next door. This larger building was put up for the Federal government’s Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife with a fifty-year lease. But in 1965, with more up-to-date hatchery facilities built elsewhere, the property reverted to the city which then leased the building to the Michigan Conservation Department, now the Department of Natural Resources, for a Great Lakes Fisheries research station.
Charlevoix’s imposing Carnegie Free Library stood at the northwest corner of State and Clinton Streets. Its cornerstone was laid in 1909 and the building served the community for almost fifty years, being vacated in 1967 and torn down to make way for the Charlevoix State Bank in 1968. City Council met in its basement until the construction of City Hall in 1939.
Winters used to be terribly long years ago. Ice could be found in Lake Michigan as late as May, in the early days delaying the shipping season when critical supplies needed to be brought in. But Charlevoix learned to cope, hunkering down when the big lake blasted its winds and snows across the town, often burying it, then shoveling out to enjoy the calm until the next onslaught. Here, a flivver strains to ascend the Grant Street hill at Lake Michigan Beach, with a patchwork blanket protecting the engine in place of a hood.
Every winter, Round Lake was expected to freeze long enough for a small city of fish shanties to dot it for a few months. For some families, fish caught through the holes in the ice was their main supply of food over the winter. In the winter of 1932, an unusual mild spell prevented Round Lake from freezing. But that did not deter a few ingenious souls. About a dozen set out for their quarry of perch on open rafts constructed of timbers mounted on empty oil drums, shanties placed on rafts, and rowboats encased with canvas housings.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, every winter Thursday afternoon an iced-over downtown Bridge Street was cordoned off while Charlevoix turned into whiz-bang bobsled run. The whole town closed up shop, even the schools. Away they flew down the slick south hill, through town, and over the channel until the north hill’s rise slowed their momentum. The goal was to top the hill at Dixon Avenue. Ed O’Neill’s taxi retrieved the larger sleds while riders of the smaller ones walked back through town with sleds in tow, trudged up the hill, piled on, and did it again. Could anything be more simple, more fun?
A winter sports festival was held for many years north of town at Mt. McSauba, the forested sand dune that dominates the northern skyline. A ski jump and toboggan run was cut through the trees on the southern exposure, and a hockey rink laid out at the base. Hundreds of spectators gathered to witness the events.
Dave Eckinger, fisherman and ice harvester, enjoys a sail with his wife and three lady friends in February, 1916. Ice boating was once one of the most popular winter sports in the region. Charlevoix boasted one of the finest racing fleets in the state. Capable of breathtaking speeds, under ideal conditions an iceboat could easily beat an automobile down Lake Charlevoix. A fifteen m.p.h. wind could send one flying up to ninety m.p.h. The trip to Boyne City took less than ten minutes. It was called “flying without benefit of wings.”
Every winter for decades the narrow grounds east of the schools were flooded to create an ice skating rink. Generations of residents remember the loudspeaker perched in the high school window that broadcast scratchy waltzes and fox trots. The warming and changing shed had a wood floor scuffed and slivered from thousands of skate blades over the years. Its potbellied stove often glowed red, making wet wool garments steam in the humid air that provided a few moments of warmth on those cold, wonderful days and nights.
For many years, it was expected that Mother Nature would perform a magic act and ice caves would form along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Wind, water, snow, and ice blown from the west combined to create these wonders. For weeks, constant winds lifted the spray from the tops of breaking waves and gradually built the freezing particles into structures that were in some places so high an adult could walk around in the caverns formed with headroom to spare. In the 1920s and 30s these ice caves became an important winter tourist attraction.
Charlevoix has always been noted for its sports programs. Many teams have achieved district and regional championships and participated at state finals levels. A few athletes have gone on to the professional level as both players and coaches. This is the baseball team circa 1912. At far left in the middle row is Robert Bridge, who, after receiving his education at the University of Michigan, returned to Charlevoix to become the longtime president of the Charlevoix County State Bank and one of Charlevoix’s most influential mayors in the 1930s and 40s. Bridge Park above the city dock is named for him.
The Charlevoix High School football team of 1902. Middle row, fourth from left: John Paddock Bottom row, from left: Allan Campbell, Mont Withers, Rollie Lewis whose father built and ran the Lewis Grand Opera House. The rest are unidentified. They are wearing the pleated shin guards of the day, and nose and mouth protectors hang from their necks of some of the players. Local women knitted their heavy sweaters.
Charlevoix’s first high school basketball team, 1910. Top row, from left: Harrison Wallace, Leland Cram, Coach Dwight Wilson, William Mitchell. Seated, from left: Guy Durgan, Hubert Paddock, Harold Jacobs. Basketball was introduced in 1909 by the placing of a regulation basket in the upper floor of the Bonthron Plumbing & Heating building by the bridge. This basket was used only for shooting practice. The first regular basketball game was played in the Lewis Grand Opera House across the street in 1910, where the seats were removed from the auditorium
Also in 1910 the high school girls basketball team was formed. From left: Helen Jacobs, Lulu Krulik, Vera Nowland, Gail Burns, Mae Swartz, and Edna Ward.
The 1908 track and field team. From left: future shoe store owner Don Campbell, future master builder in stone Earl Young, Sam Levinson, Emerald Emery, and Henry Partridge.
The Chicago Club golf course was founded in 1896. Willie Watson, one of the nation’s top course architects, laid out the nine holes. In the beginning the first tee, seen here, lay close to Chicago Avenue that bordered the resort. All club members had to do was step out their back doors and onto the course. But the construction of The Inn hotel in 1898 (background) meant that East Dixon Avenue had to slice through the first fairway to reach its front door. So in January of 1900 the club purchased 100 acres to the north, reoriented the course across Dixon, and soon doubled it to eighteen holes.
Charlevoix’s second Willie Watson creation, the Belvedere Club’s Belvedere Golf Course, opened after a year of work for the 1926 season. It was considered at once to be one of the finest courses in the country. For years the Belvedere hosted the Michigan Amateur Tournament. Golf greats who have played the Belvedere include Tommy Armour, Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, and Tom Watson. In 1999 Watson was quoted as saying, “My favorite course is Belvedere . . .” In Watson’s opinion, the 16th hole is one of the best holes of any golf course anywhere.
Charlevoix has been populated by hunting enthusiasts since the earliest days. There was no limit at first. Camp Good Luck enjoyed very good luck in 1897. From left: Wallace Whitford, Morris Cram, Al Vote (or Voght), Frank Ackert, Amos Webster, Frank Whitford, Morris J. Stockman, Hubert Ackert, and cook Mally Cram. The Crams and Mr. Whitford owned a lumber mill on the Pine Lake shore near today’s Ferry Beach area.
Round Lake and the city dock used to be filled with rowboats and anglers every spring for the annual perch run. The south shore of Round Lake is now chockablock with condos.
The Shakespeare Club was a fixture of the social scene for decades, composed of ladies from the upper reaches of society. They were noted for their Shakespeare readings done in full costume, both men’s and women’s roles. From left: Mrs. Will Hampton, wife of the Charlevoix Courier editor (“Is that a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?”); Mrs. George Priest, wife of a photographer; unidentified; Mrs. Robert Paddock, wife of a farm manager and businessman; Mrs. Robert Armstrong, wife of a doctor; and Mrs. A. D. Bridge, wife of a banke
The Venetian Festival has taken place since the mid 1930s, having evolved into the biggest event of the year and Charlevoix’s unofficial annual homecoming. Days of concerts, sporting events, programs, kids fun, a grand street parade and a spectacular fireworks display in Lake Charlevoix culminate on the fourth Saturday in July with a nighttime parade of illuminated boats around Round Lake concluded by another fireworks extravaganza in Round Lake as thousands cheer.
The Venetian Festival has always had a queen and her court, except for the World War II years. The first group of candidates in 1935 was, from left: Carol Whitley, Marge Carey, Alice Meyer, Jean Zeitler, Marguerite Hull, Julia Glados, Edna Wyers, and Jean Stelter.
The winner was Marge Carey, captured by Bob Miles in full glittering regalia befitting a first-time Venetian Queen
Every Venetian Festival has had its Saturday parade, for the past several years attracting entrants from across the Midwest. Here, Camp Charlevoix boys and counselors in cowboy and Indian outfits cross the swing bridge in the late 1930s. The top floor of the Bonthron building was where the first basketball hoop was put up in 1909.
Camp Charlevoix, its entry marked by the towering Thunderbird gateway, was part of the town’s summer life for forty-four years, eventually achieving a reputation as one of the nation’s best character-building camps for boys. It was founded in 1927 by Lewis “Chief” Reimann, a director of religious works at the University of Michigan. At its peak Camp Charlevoix was rated one of the top three of its kind in the world. Boys arrived from as far away as Paris and Barcelona. Hundreds of men regard the camp as a major influence in their lives. It closed in 1971. (See the link on the home page for more information.)
nternational recognition came to the Charlevoix area again when, on May 15, 1976 its residents turned out to bake the world’s biggest cherry pie. The project merited entry in the Guinness Book of World Records and was named one of the nation’s top twenty Bicentennial events. The pie’s ingredients were combined in a cement mixer and dump truck; the dough was laid out with a lawn roller. Almost 7,000 people showed up to eat 10,000 pieces of pie. The recently restored and landscaped pie tin is on display on U. S. 31 South just outside the city limits.
Three miles south of Charlevoix on M-66 is a remnant of the vast 1918 working farm of Albert Loeb of Chicago, vice president and general manager of Sears Roebuck and Company. The estate was modeled on a northern French chateau. Farm equipment to be sold by Sears was tested at Loeb Farms before it was put on the market. The cattle barn shown here had tiled rooms and an exercise courtyard for 200 purebred Holstein-Fresians. Its four stone silos held 1,000 tons of silage each.
Loeb Farms’ horse barn held twenty-six purebred Belgian draft sorrels. The operation became one of Michigan’s top tourist attractions. But the national farm economy started to sour by 1926. Loeb Farms closed down operations in 1928. From that point on everything but the residences began to deteriorate. As “Castle Farms” from the 1970s into the 1990s, the barns area became an entertainment venue that hosted the era’s top entertainers and rock and roll bands. In 2001, new owners began to restore it into the magnificent new Castle Farms complex. See www.castlefarms.com for more information.
Two miles beyond Castle Farms, the Ironton Ferry across the South Arm of Lake Charlevoix has long been an integral part of the Charlevoix experience. Around 1878 this 18’ x 24’ cable-guided scow was built, capable of carrying one wagon and a team of horses. A hand-powered windlass operated by the captain, assisted by his passengers, held a half-inch cable that guided the craft. Here the vessel has been pulled ashore for the winter. In 1886, Charlevoix County bought the ferry and operated it toll free until 1949
The ferries grew larger over the years. Once it was known as the Evelyn, from the name of the township that surrounds the town of Ironton.
By 1922, regulations required the Ironton ferry to carry a lifeboat. Which it did . . . sort of. Instead of suspending the additional baggage on davits, the ferry dragged it alongside.
The Ironton ferry reached its largest incarnation in this one, still in use, built in 1926. The Ripley reference refers to the worldwide fame it gained in 1936 (next).
Sam Alexander worked on the Ironton ferry from 1890 to 1941. On December 5, 1936 in newspapers in forty countries, readers learned through Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” about the man who had traveled 15,000 miles while never being further than 1,000 feet from his own home. By the time he retired, it was estimated that Sam Alexander had traveled the distance around the globe. The item caught the attention of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll who portrayed the popular “Amos ‘n Andy” characters on radio. The men made a special trip to Ironton just to meet Sam and ride the ferry