Historic District Study

TO: Leelanau Township Planning Commission
FROM: Omena Historic District Study Committee
Date: February 24, 2005

Today our Study Committee has completed and transmitted to the appropriate offices copies of our preliminary report. This transmittal begins the next phase of the process of designation as a Local Historic District.

The State Office of Historic Preservation (SHPO), the State Historic Preservation Review Board, and the Michigan Historical Center will each review our report and will comment on areas for improvement to be made in our final report.

We will make copies of the preliminary report text available to the public, as required by law. With the assistance of Ellen Thackery of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, our committee will host an informational meeting for the interested public on April 18, 2005, at 7:00pm at the Omena Fire Hall Community Room.

As required by PA 169 of 1970, Michigan's Local Historic Districts Act, at least 60 calendar days after today¹s date, the study committee will hold a public hearing in accordance with PA 276 of 1976, the Open Meetings Act. We anticipate that hearing to occur the first week of May.

After the public hearing, the final report will be submitted to the Leelanau Township Board, together with an historic district ordinance that complies with the public act. That ordinance will have been reviewed by the State Historic Preservation Office, whose role is to advise and certify that the proposed ordinance is legally conforming and supportable.

If the Township Board adopts the establishment of the local historic district, it must adopt the historic district ordinance and appoint a historic commission at that time.

The study committee anticipates presenting the district and the ordinance to the Township Board for consideration and approval at its June 14 meeting.

While the preliminary report itself is not lengthy, there is a great volume of supporting field survey work, research, and documentation that has been completed and which will be available for study in the archives of the Omena Historical Society.

The Historic District Study Committee recognizes the contribution of David Viskochil to the preservation of the character of the Omena Community. David often said that Omena is a community that has not lost its soul. We agree, and seek to help to safeguard that soul though designation as a Local Historic District.

CHARGE OF THE HISTORIC DISTRICT STUDY COMMITTEE

The Omena Historic District Study Committee was established by Resolution #5 of 2004, on May 11, 2004, by the Leelanau Township Board. The resolution was declared adopted on June 9, 2004. The Study Committee is charged with studying the possibility of establishing a historic district in Omena according to the procedures and requirements set forth in the Local Historic Districts Act (PA 169 of 1970), and in compliance with the Open Meeting Act (PA 267 of 1976), and Freedom of Information Act (PA 442 of 1976). The initial study committee members serve without term limits, and have the right to select the Committee Chairperson and with Board approval to have members added to the Committee.

STUDY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Joan Bensley: President, Omena Historical Society; member, Questers International, Leelanau Historical Society, Northport Area Heritage Association, Northwest Lower Michigan Historical Network.
Kathy Bosco: President, Omena Village Preservation Association; member, Questers International, Omena Historical Society, Omena Woods Association; retired teacher.
Marsha Buehler: President, Omena Woods Association; Formation Committee member, Omena Historical Society; member, Leelanau Historical Society, Omena Village Preservation Association; Secretary, Leelanau Township Planning Commission.
Jim Centner: Trustee, Leelanau Historical Society; director and founding president, Omena Village Preservation Association; member of Management Committee, Cherry Basket Neighbors; member, Omena Woods Association; undergraduate and graduate degrees in History; former Assistant Professor of History, United States Military Academy.
Marshall Collins Jr.: teacher and coach, Northport School; advisor, Leelanau Township Foundation Youth Advisory Council.
Mary Frank: Founding Member, Northport Heritage Association; member, Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum, Leelanau Historical Society, Women¹s History project; retired teacher.
Amanda Holmes: member, Omena Historical Society, American Folklore Society; consultant, Historic American Building Survey and Historic American Engineering Record; doctorate, Folklore and Folklife; certificate, Historic Preservation; author, Omena: A Place In Time.
Jeff Lingaur: native of Leelanau County, employed by Leelanau Enterprise; member, Omena Village Preservation Association; owner and resident since 1990 of Putnam/Smith/Lingaur home in the proposed district; married to Sheila Smith, direct descendant of Rinaldo Putnam, who built two of the homes in the proposed district.
John Mitchell: Director, Leelanau Historical Society; author, history books for children; State of Michigan Licensed Builder.
Laura Quackenbush: Leelanau County Historian; Curator, Leelanau Historical Museum; Founder, Women¹s History Project.
Stefanie Staley: Executive Director, Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum; president, Northport Area Heritage Association, Northwest Lower Michigan Historical Network; board member, Michigan Lighthouse Alliance, The Michigan Museums Association.
Mary Stanton: Trustee, Omena Historical Society; member, Omena Sesquicentennial Committee.
Mary Tonneberger: Trustee and Treasurer, Omena Historical Society; co-chair, History Subcommittee of Leelanau County website; undergraduate and graduate degrees in History.
David Viskochil: member, Leelanau County Historical Society, Omena Village Preservation Association, Omena Woods Association, Cherry Basket Neighbors, Omena Community Improvement Fund Group; Trustee, Omena Historical Society; Owner, Tamarack Gallery; degree in Art History, University of Michigan.
Citizens not on the committee but participating in its work: Sheila Lingaur and Tom Buehler. Field Surveys: J. Bensley, M. Buehler, M. Frank, M. Stanton, M. Tonneberger, D. Viskochil, S. Lingaur. Photographs: Jeff Lingaur. Map: Tom Buehler. History of the Proposed District and Statement of Significance: Amanda Holmes. Resource List Descriptions: Stefanie Staley.

All research and work of the committee has been undertaken by volunteers. There has been no funding by other than members of the committee.

INVENTORY

A digital photographic inventory of the proposed district was conducted in July 2004 and February 2005 as part of the Omena Historic District Survey. Copies of the inventory are located at the Leelanau Township Office, the Omena Historical Society Archives, and the State Historic Preservation Office.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DISTRICT

Omena is located in sections 25, 26, 35, and 36 at the southern portion of Leelanau Township, in Leelanau County, Michigan. Omena Bay is a natural deep water harbor, and is part of larger Grand Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan. N West-Bay Shore Drive (M-22) connects the village with Peshawbestown and Suttons Bay to the south and Northport to the north. To the southwest Tatch Road leads to the hillside which overlooks Omena Bay. To the Northeast, N Omena Point Road follows the shoreline and connects the Omena peninsula waterfront community and the Omena Heights farmland with the village.

RESOURCE LIST

N West Bay Shore Drive, southwest to northeast

5000 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Leelanau Township-Omena Fire Hall. One-story, gabled roof with a false wall front and clapboard siding. The false front has four decorative brackets at the top and one large garage door for fire truck. A perpendicular section is attached with a gable roof and clapboard siding. Non-contributing.

Omena Memorial Park. The Park is to the east of the fire hall. Three large stone slab steps with stones ends flank the entrance into the small park area. A memorial stone to service men and women is placed at the top of the steps. Contributing.

5019 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Putnam Filling Station/ Harbor Bar. Two- story gabled roof building with attached two-bay concrete block garage. Garage has a flat roof with two large doors. Contributing building.

5031 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Putnam/Smith/Lingaur Home. Two-story gabled roof building with vinyl siding over clapboard. Porch supports a gabled roof over the entrance to the front door. Porch foundation is stone. Circa 1893. Contributing building. Stick built wooden plank livestock barn. Contributing structure.

5039 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Anderson Store/ Kimmerly Store/Tamarack Gallery. Two-story gabled roof with false front and four decorative brackets at the top of the façade. A porch with a slanted, shingled roof graces the front of the building. Circa 1885. Contributing building. Ice house foundation is cut stone. Contributing site. Well house is wood plank construction. Contributing structure.

5047A N West-Bay Shore Drive. Putnam-Cloud Tower House: Clapboard sided, Greek Revival farmhouse has a two-story front section with a triangular gabled roof facing the road, with large wooden, double-hung, eight-pane windows. The back section is one and one-half- story. Roof is covered by asphalt shingles. Circa 1876. Moved to current location in 2004. Contributing building.

5047 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Anderson House: Two-story multi-gabled roof with enclosed porch. The porch has a slanted roof line towards the front entrance. The wood clapboard exterior has been covered with vinyl siding. Circa 1890-91. Contributing building.

5059 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Omena Post Office: One- story gabled roof with a false front façade. The front façade has a slanted roof covering the entrance to the building. The wooden clapboard building is accessible directly at the sidewalk level. Circa 1890-91. Contributing building.

5055 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Barth Store/Omena Bay Country Store: This two-story gabled building has a combined cement block and stone foundation. The west side and partial back side are constructed with cement block, while the remainder of the building is wood. A portion of the façade has been covered with vinyl. The roof is covered by asphalt shingles. Circa 1891-92. Contributing building. Barth dock site, contributing site. Shed: barn-style vinyl-clad storage shed. Non-contributing structure.

5123 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Barth House: Two-story asbestos sided bungalow building with perpendicular attached section and an enclosed porch on both ends. Both porches have gabled roofs. Circa 1929. Contributing building. The four accessory structures are concrete block with corrugated metal roofs: milk-house, henhouse, small animal barn, root cellar/meat locker. Contributing structures. Concrete block granary, icehouse, barn, outhouse foundations are intact. Contributing sites. (The barn structure was moved about a mile to the northeast and is in use as a residence.)

5066 N West-Bay Shore Drive. Omena Presbyterian Church and Manse: listed on the National Historic Register as Grove Hill New Mission Church New Mission.
This white clapboard church has an attached shed. Resting on a fieldstone foundation, it is constructed of pine lumber. When the church was first built there were two front doors. Evidently there were no front windows. The bell is original. The Manse is a Sears Roebuck Home. Contributing buildings.

Tatch Road, southeast to northwest

E Tatch Road. Page Home site: Only the parts of the stone foundation of the home built circa 1859 still exist in an open field. Contributing site.

12819 E Tatch Road. Sunset Lodge: listed on the State Register of Historic Places. The main house is a three-story clapboard-sided house with gabled roof. An open porch surrounds the ground floor of the house. Other buildings include two two-story gabled-roof clapboard-sided cottages and a dining hall. Contributing buildings. Circa 1898-1907. Wooden shed and carriage house are also on the property. Contributing structures.

N Omena Point Road, west to east

3015 N Omena Point Road. Bourdo home, shop: This two-story wooden home and detached shop are built on cement block foundations. Each roof is covered by asphalt shingles. Non-contributing buildings. Site has two small sheds behind the home. Non-contributing structures

N Omena Point Road. Leelanau Township Park. Anderson Dock site; contributing site.

BOUNDARY DESCRIPTION

The Proposed Omena Historic District consists of the following parcels. The boundary of the district is shown as the heavy line on the accompanying map entitled ³Omena Historic District.²

45-008-126-026-00 (12819 E Tatch Road, Sunset Lodge)
45-008-135-001-10 (E Tatch Road Page/Cloud Home Site)
45-008-135-002-00 (5000 N West-Bay Shore Dr. fire hall and memorial park)
45-008-135-001-30 (vacant parcel- south of fire hall)
45-008-126-035-00 (5031 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Putnam/Smith/Lingaur Home)
45-008-126-037-00 (5019 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Harbor Bar)
45-008-126-031-00 (5039 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Anderson/Kimmerly/Tamarack)
45-008-126-028-00 (5047, 5047A, 5059 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Putnam-Cloud Tower
House, Anderson house, Omena Post Office)
45-008-126-029-00 (vacant parcel -behind store, post office, Anderson House.)
45-008-026-030-00 (5055 N West- Bay Shore Dr. Barth Store/Omena Bay Country
Store)
45-008-126-032-00 (5123 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Barth House)
45-008-126-036-00 (N Omena Point Road Township Park)
45-008-136-014-00 (N Omena Point Road Township Beach, Anderson Dock site)
45-008-136-015-00 (3015 N Omena Point Road Bourdo Home)
45-008-125-016-00 (5066 N West-Bay Shore Dr. Omena Presbyterian Church and
Manse )

BOUNDARY JUSTIFICATION

The boundaries of the proposed Omena Historic District have been drawn to generally include the commercial center of the Omena community, both historically and presently. This center has served the needs of the broader community throughout its various eras. The area includes a resort hotel, Sunset Lodge, still in use as a Bed and Breakfast. Across Tatch Road to the southwest is the site of the Aaron Page House, which served as the first rooming house, railroad hotel, and post office in Omena. Below the Page site at the intersection of Tatch Road and N West-Bay Shore Drive ( A Michigan Heritage Route) is the Memorial Park, and just south is the Leelanau Township Omena Fire Hall. Across from the fire hall on the south side of N West-Bay Shore Drive, is the Harbor Bar, which is the only structure on the waterfront in the village; it has served as a gas station, bar, restaurant and residence. On the north side of the road, from west to east, are a private residence, gallery which has been a residence and general store, farmhouse undergoing restoration for use as a historical museum, residence, post office, and general store with attached residences. The road turns north at the corner beyond the store, and there is a farm residence with outbuildings and foundations on the west side of N West-Bay-Shore Drive. Across that road to the east is the Omena Presbyterian Church, with its small cemetery and, to the south, the manse residence. At the intersection of N West Bay Shore drive and N Omena Point Road, facing Omena Bay, is a residence, built about1980 on the site of a resort annex, and earlier, a 30¹s era gas station. Just to the east is the township parking lot for the small public beach on the south side of N Omena Point Road. Visible several yards south in and above the surface of the bay are the pilings of one of two commercial docks used for many years to ship a succession of products from lumber to cherries, as well as for resort transit. The remnants of the second dock, several hundred feet to the west toward the Harbor bar, are visible only on the lake bottom.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DISTRICT

The Omena Historic District, in Omena, Leelanau County, Michigan, is significant under three criteria of the National Register for Historic Places. First, it is significant under Criterion A for its association with events that are important in understanding the broad patterns of our history. Omena, a rural bayside village, retains a tangible connection with Great Lakes maritime activities, small mercantile establishments, and the heyday of Great Lakes summer resorts.

The district is also significant under Criterion B, for its association with a person important to Michigan history. The Reverend Peter Dougherty, a Presbyterian missionary to the Chippewa, served as the genesis of Euro-American settlement in the Grand Traverse Region.

Finally, the district is significant under Criterion C, for its embodiment of the distinctive characteristics of a type of architecture. The Omena Historic District contains thirty-eight resources built between 1858 and 1935. The proposed district typifies the mix of agricultural, social, commercial and residential vernacular architecture and sites of small towns on the Great Lakes in the late nineteenth and first third of the twentieth century, particularly for northwest lower Michigan. The predominantly two-story structures reveal the modest aspirations of settlers in the old Northwest, who lived in the same communities they served, often living above their stores, or in houses built right next door. Integral to the families¹ enterprises were agricultural buildings, some of which remain intact within the district, and others surviving as footprints.

The district¹s period of significance is from 1851, when Dougherty moved to Omena (then known as New Mission) from Old Mission to establish a boarding school for Indian children, to the late 1930s, when the growing popularity of the automobile and Americans¹ changing use of leisure time gradually diminished Omena¹s tenure as a summer resort destination.

The village of Omena served the surrounding farming community, as well as the burgeoning resort population which came to Omena¹s seven summer hotels and numerous cottages beginning in the late nineteenth century. Omena¹s focus was and is towards the bay, where lumber, produce, supplies and a steady flow of travelers arrived and departed on ships and ferries at the docks, a few pilings of which are still visible in the bay today.

Omena¹s distinct line of buildings faces southward towards Omena Bay, as they have for more than a century. Even when transportation changed, with the arrival of the train in 1903 and soon afterward the automobile, the village did not change its orientation at the head of the bay. That Omena retains its early organization and the historic integrity of most of its buildings and landscape features makes it rare in a rapidly changing and developing corner of Michigan.

HISTORY OF THE DISTRICT
Rev. Peter Dougherty and the Founding of Omena

The Rev. Peter Dougherty first arrived in Omena in 1851, then an unnamed quiet ³good harbor,² where scattered parcels of land were occupied seasonally by Chief Shabwasung and his band of Chippewa families. Dougherty¹s journey to Omena was a short but precarious one, six miles westward across the waters of Grand Traverse Bay from the small peninsula where he had served as a missionary to the Chippewa since 1839, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church.

Though he had helped build a fine village, by 1850, the confluence of several government treaties brought Dougherty and the Chippewa to a crossroads that would turn Dougherty¹s original mission into Old Mission, and would lead to the founding of Omena on the western shore of Grand Traverse Bay. In that year the Indians became eligible for Michigan state citizenship, but only on the condition that they relinquish their tribal ties. Many Indians openly approved of the push for citizenship, because it would allow them to purchase lands and would make their children eligible for education.

In 1848, Chief Aghosa¹s band, with forty families, was one of the largest in the area, and
already had 350 acres under cultivation on Old Mission Peninsula. This land, though, was not yet available for their purchase. However, the land immediately to the west across the bay was available to them in 1850, and they purchased land north of present-day Omena. Their departure settled, Dougherty decided to follow and establish a mission boarding school nearby, one mile south of Chief Aghosa¹s new settlement, Aghosatown.

The site Dougherty selected for the mission boarding school lies one mile west of Omena on a bluff overlooking Grand Traverse Bay, outside of the boundary of the proposed historic district. But it was there that Dougherty oversaw construction of a large balloon frame building that would serve as a schoolhouse and dormitory, a barn, and several other buildings to accommodate the educational and practical needs of fifty Indian children, teaching staff, and his growing family buildings of which only a few traces survive today.

Even as the buildings were nearing their laboriously slow completion late in 1853, Dougherty pushed forward plans for a church building away from the school which could serve a larger audience of Indians and settlers alike. He also began to imagine a manse for his growing family. In June 1857 Dougherty applied to the county clerk ³for a piece of land for a graveyard and church lot at the harbor.² This month was, coincidentally, the same when Dougherty announced that they were ³to have a Post Office at our placeŠ the first of July called Omena.² The church was built on land donated by Judge Daniel S. Bacon, of Monroe, Michigan (whose daughter, Libby, would later marry George Armstrong Custer). Dougherty had also solicited donations of lumber and freight, and expected that the Indians would contribute labor to the construction. By July of the following year construction was underway, with much help from the Indians, and in September 1858 he announced the church had been dedicated and named the Grove Hill New Mission Church.

Because building the church involved such little monetary expense to the mission, Dougherty, who meticulously documented the mission finances, left little detail about its construction. The Mission manse and barn were built the same year as the church, but their lack of expense to the governing board has likewise shrouded record of their construction.

Yet even with all of the hoped-for and essential buildings in place, life on the mission took its toll on the family as they sought to teach young Indian children Western methods of farming, housekeeping, and behavior. The graveyard near the church also testifies to the hardship of life in the Old Northwest. Among the more than 200 interred there are several mission employees who died of illness and disease. Due to the growing strain of service on his wife and family, in combination with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions being unable to fund the boarding school after the Civil War, Dougherty determined to leave Omena, and departed from Omena¹s harbor in early 1871.

By the end of his nearly two-decade tenure, Dougherty had become one of the Presbyterian Church¹s most esteemed missionaries, and probably one of the most important to serve in Michigan. In a history of the foreign mission published by the Presbyterian Church, Clifford Drury wrote that Dougherty was ³the most outstanding of the missionaries to the Chippewa and Ottawa Indians.²

Dougherty had toiled to create in New Mission a realization of his larger vision of a place where, when white civilization inevitably arrived, the Indians might be prepared for and welcome it. He knew that he must impress this vision upon the physical landscape itself, in the buildings he constructed and in the layout of the roads and fields, so that the place might engender a life of inspiring simplicity.

When Dougherty sailed from Omena he left behind several landmarks that are still extant today: the Presbyterian Church ( 5066 N West-Bay Shore Drive) and Dougherty¹ original manse and barn, the latter two of which are just northeast of the proposed district. Today the church opens in the summer for services and at other times of year for special events. Guest ministers played such an important role in the summer community that the Presbytery built a second manse in the 1930s to house the clergymen and their families. The Sears and Roebuck building still stands directly south of the church.

Dougherty¹s original manse has had a long history as a summer retreat, first as a cottage and then, from 1921 through the 1950s, as a summer resort under several proprietors, the original being John R. Santo, one time mayor of Traverse City. Beginning in 1978 the manse was reclaimed as a single-family residence. The barn is linked to Omena¹s enduring theme of hospitality, and in the 1980s opened as a bed and breakfast.

Omena Village: A Water-Directed Life

Even before Dougherty left Omena, the village began to develop its potential as a place of commerce and respite. Omena Bay provided a rare safe deep harbor in the Great Lakes, and over the years had at least four docks. Dougherty had used the natural landing places in front of his manse and near the present site of the Omena Traverse Yacht Club as landing points and later built at least one dock, but as soon as enterprise warranted, two new docks were erected in the 1880s by competing store owners. The latter two have traces remaining within the proposed district. The pilings of John Anderson¹s dock, built in 1886, still appear above the water in front of the public beach, whereas the pilings of the Barth dock, built in 1889 or 1891, are below water level a short distance to the west. From the time of Dougherty¹s arrival in 1851 until the late 1920s, ships were a vital and often only link to the rest of the world. Before the railroad reached into the northern reaches of Leelanau County in 1903, the waterways served as the region¹s highway, an often turbulent and unpredictable connection between local environs and the larger world.

Visitation to the area and the demand for a hostelry in Omena was great enough as early as the late 1850s that Aaron B. Page built a rooming and boarding house to accommodate everyone from summer visitors to lumbermen clearing Leelanau County¹s yet untapped virgin timber. The boarding house is extant now only as a pile of cement and stone foundations on the west bluff of Omena, across from present day Sunset Lodge (12819 E Tatch Road). The undeveloped land and the view from the boarding house¹s perch above the bay, however, remains an important landscape feature for the district. From this vantage point the earliest visitors and residents of Omena did not solely seek summer views, but glimpses of incoming ships. Local community members also gathered here to collect their mail from Page, who served as one of Omena¹s first Postmasters from 1859-1881.

The 1880s and 1890s were a pivotal time for Omena, when a critical mass of people had settled in the area and the community could support several businesses. Two buildings in particular, and the businesses that they have contained, have shaped Omena. In 1884, Andrew F. Anderson opened his general store (5039 N West-Bay Shore Drive), followed shortly after by Paul R. Barth opening a store to the east in 1889 (5055 N West-Bay Shore Drive). These two businesses, begun by men of disparate temperaments and ambitions who came to the area as immigrant boys, created lasting anchors for the community that neither man could have envisioned. Anderson¹s store now houses the Tamarack Gallery and Barth¹s the Omena Bay Country Store.

The stores in the small row of vernacular buildings seemed to promise future growth for the little northern Michigan town. But unlike other communities, the boom never extended beyond the boundaries established by 1890. Three two-story frame houses grew up near the stores, each accompanied by a number of outbuildings meant to serve the interests of the stores as well as the proprietors¹ families. Omena preserves, as well, the building which housed an ice cream parlor, built ca. 1890, today the U. S. Post Office (5059 N West-Bay Shore Drive).

Curbside gasoline pumps appeared in front of Anderson¹s store in the 1920s. Competition from two other gas stations emerged in the mid 1930s as other local residents also sought to benefit from the increasingly busy highway. Sweetie Bidleman, proprietor of a nearby summer resort, sold Sinclair products on the northeast corner of M-22 and the Omena Shore Road. The business ceased operation soon thereafter and the building and site was used for a series of other enterprises until a private home was built in the 1980s, a non-contributing property in the district.

John Putnam¹s Texaco station grew over the years from a 14¹ x 16¹ building on the bay into a full-service garage, bar, and living quarters. Keith Brown, the new owner in 1957, expanded the restaurant and living quarters and added marina facilities. The Harbor Bar building has been the focus of the most significant changes in Omena during the twentieth century, gradually expanding directly on the shoreline (5019 N West-Bay Shore Drive). Except for the construction of a fire station and community room, just a minute¹s walk from the main row of buildings, the establishment of a memorial park after World War II, and grooming part of the bay front into a swimming and playground/recreation area little else has altered the landscape.

The most notable addition to the landscape has been the arrival of the Putnam-Cloud Tower House, moved to its present location in June 2004. True to Omena residents of the past finding practical and creative new uses for old buildings most often involving physically moving them the Putnam-Cloud Tower House continues a tradition begun in the days soon after Rev. Dougherty departed in the 1870s. Portions of at least three buildings within the district have been moved from previous locations, and others are partially built from materials salvaged from other buildings, including the mission buildings themselves. In one instance, the Barth barn, the building was moved out of the district, but the foundation remains.

Such frugality and buildings on the move has extended the history of many buildings throughout the Omena area, most recently the Putnam-Cloud-Tower House. (5047A N West-Bay Shore drive). The Greek Revival gable-end house was built ca. 1876 by Rinaldo Putnam, a newly arrived settler from Canada, and is now the second oldest farmhouse standing in the Omena area. After farming the rocky land for nearly two decades, Putnam moved to more fertile property inland, and sold his land and farmhouse to Frank Cloud of Cincinnati, and the house was used as the Cloud family summer home for nearly forty years. In 1936 the land and old modified farmhouse passed by will to the Second Provincial Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus, and became known as Villa Marquette. The farmhouse gradually fell into disuse, until the Detroit Province manager determined it should be razed.

Local residents banded together to save the Putnam-Cloud-Tower House, and under the auspices of the Omena Historical Society moved the building to the center of Omena, between the Tamarack Gallery and the Anderson House. The house¹s gable-end continues to gaze across Omena Bay, only a mile north of its original location, but where it maintains its integrity in the Omena area. Rinaldo Putnam had been a major land-owner in Omena in the nineteenth-century and the building was moved from one piece of his original property to another. Omena¹s changes have been adaptations built upon its existing structure, and the village has not suffered the wholesale eradication, wasteful misuse of resources, and reconstruction that is so common in this country.

Omena Summer Resorts

In the late nineteenth century countless towns and villages in the Great Lakes Region welcomed summer visitors from the cities and other places in the Midwest that broiled in the summer sun. The more famous watering spots in the region are Harbor Springs, Petoskey, and Mackinac Island. Omena, however, once had seven summer resorts at different locations on the bay which boasted as loudly as any, in colorful and poetic brochures, about the healthful offerings of their particular bay and lake breezes. Omena businesses cultivated the image of Omena as a summer destination, especially A. F. Anderson, who catered to summer visitors and residents as heartily as he did to his farming clientele.

Sunset Lodge (12819 E Tatch Road) preserves the built legacy of the resort era in Omena, not only in the survival of most of the Victorian buildings known to have been built between 1898 and 1907, including the main building, separate guest cottages, dining and staff facilities, barn and other utilitarian structures, but in continuing operation as a hostelry today. Sunset Lodge also has ties to Omena¹s years as a mission. Leonard H. and Rhoda Spicer Wheeler moved to Omena in 1868 from Odanah, Wisconsin, where they both served with Leonard¹s father at the Odanah mission boarding school, and had corresponded with Rev. Dougherty. After three years they decided to rent out their buildings and acreage, and returned to Wisconsin to work in the family¹s new Eclipse Windmill enterprise. Nearly thirty years later they returned to Omena and built Sunset Lodge, so named because they saw it as their ³final home dwelling place.²

The array of buildings shows that running a resort at the turn of the twentieth century involved skills both social and agricultural, with many of the labors taken on by the Wheelers themselves, later with help from family. Surviving records also preserve the struggle by the owners of modest resorts to appeal to the changing tastes of resorters, who in the years Sunset Lodge operated arrived first solely by steamer, then by train and steamer, and then motored in for shorter and shorter periods by automobile. Factoring in, as well, the effects of World War I and the Depression, it is surprising that Sunset Lodge stayed in operation nearly four decades as a full-service resort. Even after the resort closed, the family rented out the cottages and continued to live on the property until it was sold in 1976. In the mid-1990s it reopened as a bed and breakfast, with patrons, like those of the past, taking walks to explore the village, to purchase refreshments at the country store, and to test the waters of Omena Bay.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Materials and Manuscripts:

Dougherty, Reverend Peter. The Correspondence of Reverend Peter Dougherty. American Indian Correspondence. Collection of Missionary Letters, 1833-1893. Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Grand Traverse Herald. Traverse City, Michigan.

Leelanau Historical Society. Leland, Michigan.

Marbach, William A. ³Summer Ministry Recollections.² William A. Marbach and Marbach Family Collections.

Minutes of the Old Mission and New Mission (Grove Hill) Church, 1843-1871. Text transcript on-line at www.members.aol.com/Vwilson577/mission.

Omena Historical Society. Omena, Michigan.

Register of Deeds. Leelanau County Courthouse. Leland, Michigan.

Sunset Lodge and Wheeler Family Papers. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan, and Leelanau Historical Society, Leland, Michigan.

Tax Roles of Leelanau Township. Tax Assessors Office. Leelanau County Courthouse. Leland, Michigan.

Taylor, Hazel. ³First Days in Omena and Ingalls Bayside.² Typescript, 1981. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan.

Maps and Property Abstracts:

Ferris, Charles E. Atlas of Leelanau County, Michigan. Knoxville, Tn.: Charles E. Ferris, 1900.

Greene, W. O., Surveyor. ³Plat of First Addition to Omena Heights.² 1894. Omena Historical Society, Omena, Michigan.

Hayes, E. L. Atlas of Leelanau County, Michigan. Philadelphia: C. O. Titus, 1881.

Wadsworth, Abram S., Deputy Surveyor. ³Geological Survey, Township No. 31 North, Range No. 11 West.² 1851. Register of Deeds, Leelanau Court Courthouse, Leland, Michigan.

Published Articles, Books, and Reports:

Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan¹s Native Americans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

Clifton, James A., George L. Cornell, and James M. McClurken. People of the Three Fires: The Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibway of Michigan. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Michigan Indian Press, 1986.

Craker, Ruth. First Protestant Mission in the Grand Traverse Region. N.p., 1931.

Dougherty, Rev. Peter. ³Diaries of Peter Dougherty.² Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 30 (1952): 95-114; 175-192; 236-253.

Drury, Clifford Merrill. Presbyterian Panorama: One Hundred and Fifty Years of National Missions History. Philadelphia: Board of Christian Education, 1952.

Fennimore, Keith J. The Heritage of Bay View, 1875-1975. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975.

Flink, James J. The Automobile Age. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

Green, A. D. Omena, the Beautiful. Grand Rapids, Mi.: Dickinson Bros., ca. 1903.

Holmes, Amanda J. Omena, A Place in Time. A Sesquicentennial History, 1852-2002. Omena Historical Society: Omena, Mi., 2003.

³Hotel Leelanau: A Beautiful Family Summering Place on Lake Michigan.² Grand Rapids, Mi.: Valley City Engraving & Printing Co., ca. 1895.

Leach, Dr. M. L. A History of the Grand Traverse Region. Traverse City, Mi.: Grand Traverse Herald, 1883. Reprint. Chelsea, Michigan: Book Crafters, Inc., 1988.

Leelanau Township Historical Writers Group. Lawrence Wakefield, ed. A History of Leelanau Township. Revised Edition. Chelsea, Mi.: Book Crafters, Inc., 1983.

McAlester, Virginia and Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses. New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1998.

McClurken, James M. Gah-Baeh-Jhagwah-Buk: The Way It Happened, A Visual Culture History of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa. East Lansing, Mi.: Michigan State University Museum, University Publications, 1991.

Morse, Robert L. ³From Ferry Route to Cherry Route: A History of the Traverse City, Leelanau & Manistique Railroad.² Omena-Traverse Breeze, May 1965 3-6.

Pittman, Philip McM., with George M. Covington. Don¹t Blame the Treaties: Native American Rights and the Michigan Indian Treaties. West Bloomfield, Mi.: Altwerger and Mandel Publishing Company, 1992.

Vogel, Virgil J. ³The Missionary as Acculturation Agent.² Michigan History 3(1967): 185-201.