Looking Back: Charlevoix's summer legacy

CHARLEVOIX — Already, 150 years ago, Charlevoix’s future reputation as a place to visit for a summer escape had started to form in the national consciousness.

This particular name, absorbed from that of the county, was still five years away from being the settlement’s official title, but the original “Pine River” had receded to the extent that we had to endure a dual identity for almost a quarter of a century. A rose by any other name ... Charlevoix Sentinel, May 30, 1874: “Coming events cast their shadows before, and the landlords are already beginning to set their houses in order for the summer travel.” It has never stopped.

Same issue: “A contract has been made with Henry Morgan, Esq., to remove the south pier to the bank of the channel, and connect it to the shore.” This odd structure, two wood cribs each 40 feet long by 10 feet wide and placed end to end two years prior on today’s Lake Michigan Beach, was the same design as the north pier across the channel. The latter was much longer, all of it done also in 1872. There the smaller one sat, unconnected to the land, unextended into Lake Michigan, unused and ineffectual. An 1882 map of the channel shows it still there, while a longer pier appears next to it, reaching not quite to the length of the north pier. But there is a gap between the two structures. There has yet to surface any explanation why this rump pier section was created but neither finished in the first place nor connected to its successor, nor when exactly a complete south pier did make a connection to the beach.

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Again, Sentinel editor Willard Smith was wondering why we were having such a difficult time getting the federal government to contribute toward the work of keeping our channels dredged deep enough for lake commerce. He had a point. “However much may have been wasted in the opening of the upper channel (to Lake Charlevoix, if there was indeed any waste at all), we boldly assert that no harbor on the shore of Lake Michigan can show as great improvement, done with as little expense, as can Charlevoix harbor. About $15,000 has been expended (over five years), and now, nearly one year after being dredged, there is a depth of seven feet of water over the bar (the obstructive sand bar that kept building up at the mouth of the Lake Michigan piers).

“As a point of striking contrast, we refer our readers to the harbor at Frankfort, where the government has expended over $200,000 during a period of seven years. Within two years vessels drawing seven feet have at various times grounded in that channel, and still the Government keeps on ‘improving’ it. How striking is the fact that one-quarter the amount that has proven so ineffectual at Frankfort would make a permanent harbor of refuge at Charlevoix. When we make Congress believe this we will receive aid.” $200,000 in 1874 would be around $5.5 million today. What clout did Frankfort have then that we didn’t?

Fifty years later, both the Charlevoix Courier and Sentinel reported the installation of a new four-ton vault door inside the reconstructed Charlevoix State Bank that had been destroyed by fire the previous February, one of the most spectacular fires the town ever witnessed. It is still there, on the corner of Bridge and Clinton streets inside the North Seas Gallery. Both papers said that anyone who tried to get into the locked vault would set off “an alarm sufficient to arouse the dead.” Stop in to see it.

The May 28, 1924 Courier reported that “Local Amateur’s Article Accepted. Earl A. Young Wins Recognition from Eastman Co. Earl A. Young, of this city, recently received a check in the amount of $30 from the Eastman Kodak people for four pictures and an article which he contributed to the last number of their monthly booklet.” Earl, Charlevoix’s famed builder in stone, had been an accomplished amateur photographer since he was a teenager at the beginning of the century.

“The photographs consisted of four different scenes of his handsome residence on Park Avenue in this city; one taken in the morning, one at high noon, one during the month of June and one on a moonlit night in January. According to Mr. Young, houses, like people, have their moods and varied aspects subject to their environment and it was in a successful effort to bring out this fact that the pictures were taken under varying conditions of light, temperature and background. Mr. Young’s contribution was selected out of the vast number of such that reach the Eastman office daily and we think he has reason to accept congratulation on his good fortune.” 

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Looking Back: Charlevoix's summer legacy