A vintage resort

A Press-Ready Travel Feature
From the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau

Please feel free to use this material in any way you like. You may run it in part or in its entirety (with or without byline), or use it as a source for stories of your own. And if I can be of any additional help, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Michael A. Norton
Media Relations
(800) 940-1120; (231) 947-1120, fax (231) 947-2621
mnorton@VisitTraverseCity.com

Photo Credit: Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau
Cutline: Angie Jensen leans against an ancient white pine in front of the Old Mission Inn. Built in 1869 near the tip of Michigan’s Old Mission Peninsula, the Inn is the oldest continuously operated hotel in the Traverse City area.
(Other high-resolution photos available on request.)

By MIKE NORTON

OLD MISSION, MI – Sometimes, Bruce and Angie Jensen aren’t sure whether they’re operating a bed & breakfast or a historical museum.

The Jensens run the Old Mission Inn, the oldest continuously-operating hotel in Michigan’s scenic Grand Traverse region. But when they first moved here nine years ago, they were simply entranced by the idea of owning a quaint old inn in a picturesque harbor town on the Old Mission Peninsula, and had no idea how significant the building or its surroundings were.

“We had enough work on our hands just getting the place back into shape,” says Angie. “We never intended to get caught up in the history angle.”  

There certainly was enough work to keep Bruce, Angie and their son Tyler busy. The rustic green-and-white hotel with its long veranda and gabled windows – a rare surviving example of 19th century vernacular-style resort architecture – had been stripped of furnishings and was in need of serious restoration. Working weekends and evenings (often commuting over 200 miles to his regular job as a mechanical contractor in southeast Michigan) Bruce replaced the building’s ancient cedar shake roof, put on a new porch deck, installed new plumbing and electrical systems, and removed an unbelievable amount of shag carpeting and dark paneling that had been installed during the 1970s.
 
Then one day an elderly woman named Suzanna Reicha showed up at their door. As a little girl, she had been an upstairs maid in the hotel, and her memories of those times were extremely vivid. As she regaled the Jensens with stories about her childhood and showed them where long-forgotten rooms and buildings had once been, the new owners found themselves drawn into a vanished world.

Tucked into a secluded harbor 18 miles from the town of Traverse City, Old Mission is a town that seems frozen in time. Founded in 1839 as a joint venture by leaders of the local Ottawa Indian tribe and a wiry Presbyterian minister named Peter Dougherty, it began as a kind of social experiment: a small colony of teachers, artisans and farmers – Indians and non-Indians alike – who lived and worked side by side in this idyllic spot at the water’s edge.

In 1850 the mission was moved to a larger site across the bay where the Indians would be able to buy land of their own, and Old Mission became the quiet farming and resort community that remains to this day. Some of its original structures are still standing, including the broad frame mission house built by Dougherty and his Indian neighbors in 1842, and have the look and feel of museum pieces -- except that they’re still being used.

The Inn’s history goes back nearly as far. Originally known as Hedden Hall, it was built in 1869 and served as the village post office until 1889. In 1902 it was rechristened the Porter House and became the headquarters for the local telephone company, as well as a stagecoach line that picked up guests from the steamship dock across the harbor and brought them to the hotel.
Following Reicha’s clues and spending hours researching old newspaper files, the Jensens have done their best to recreate that period in the hotel’s history. They’ve filled the 13 guestrooms with period antiques, restored the old telephone switchboard and post office rooms and created a 70-foot “Hall of History” filled with photos, clippings and documents – including a page from the 1936 hotel register showing the signatures of two famous guests -- Babe Ruth and Joe Louis, who each paid $2 for dinner and a night’s lodging.

“I’ve become the foremost authority on this building and its owners,” says Angie. “When Suzanna showed us where the old outhouses had been, it was like having our own archeological dig right in the back yard.”

Fascination with the Inn’s history hasn’t distracted the Jensens from the less glamorous work of promoting their hotel to new guests. They’ve just finished putting a new deck on the second-story veranda and have plans to restore the long-abandoned third floor and reopen its once-thriving restaurant. If anything, their enthusiasm for the past has proven infectious – and guests sometimes even help in the search for clues.

“When you get excited about something, other people catch that excitement from you,” says Angie.  

NEARBY ATTRACTIONS: Old Mission Village is full of other historic buildings, including New England-style Congregational Church with its tall white steeple, the village schoolhouse (now a private residence) and the original house built for Dougherty by his Native American flock in 1849, which is being developed as a historical park and interpretive center. Down the roads is the eclectic Old Mission General Store, built in the 1840s, where visitors can buy anything from ice cream cones to coonskin caps. Haserot Beach, the site of Dougherty’s 1839 landing, is a popular place for families with children because of its protected location and crystal-clear water.

Three miles to the north is the Old Mission Lighthouse, built in 1870 to warn ships away from the rocky shoals of Old Mission Point. The simple frame structure sits on a low bluff above a wide public beach, where a sign informs visitors that they’re standing on the 45th Parallel, exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. The lighthouse is surrounded by acres of public shoreline and parkland, with miles of trails for hiking, cycling and cross-country skiing.

For more information about the Old Mission Inn, log on to the Jensens’ web site at http://oldmissioninn.com/ To learn more about the village of Old Mission and other historic sites in and around Traverse City, call the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-TRAVERSE or visit their Web site at www.visittraversecity.com