MISSIONARIES, LUMBER BARONS AND BOHEMIANS: TRAVERSE CITY REDISCOVERS ITS HISTORY
A Press-Ready Travel Feature
From the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau
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Michael A. Norton
Media Relations
(800) 940-1120; (231) 947-1120, fax (231) 947-2621
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Photo Credit: Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau
Cutline: Sleder’s Family Tavern, built in 1882 as a social club for Bohemian woodworkers, is still a favorite watering hole in Traverse City’s Slabtown Neighborhood, where 19th century sawmill hands built their homes from slabs of sawmill scraps. Patrons can still belly up to the original carved mahogany bar amid a menagerie of stuffed animal heads, including a famous moose named Randolph.
(Other high-resolution photos available on request.)
TRAVERSE CITY, MI – For years, visitors have been drawn to this scenic Lake Michigan resort community by its dramatic natural beauty and its reputation as a four-season staging area for outdoor adventure.
But there’s more to Traverse City than its scenic and recreational qualities. It has a brief but dramatic past – a story in which Native Americans and missionaries, lumberjacks and fur traders, fishermen and farmers all played important roles. And now, thanks in large part to persistent questions from curious tourists, local residents have begun to reclaim that past.
“Interest in our historic sites has grown considerably in the last few years,” said Dan Truckey, director of the Grand Traverse Heritage Center, a historical and cultural museum headquartered in the city’s 1903 Carnegie Library building. “Recreation is still the main thing that brings people to Traverse City. But once they have a chance to look around, a lot of them want to know more about the community and its history. They just don’t always know where to find the resources.”
But as they say in the history business, that was then and this is now. These days, volunteers from the Heritage Center conduct regular 90-minute walking tours highlighting many of the city’s most interesting historical sights. The summer tours are held on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons from June to September, and have become a popular attraction in their own right.
Starting at the Heritage Center on Sixth Street, the 90-minute tour first goes through the Con Foster Museum. From there, the tour guide leads participants onto Sixth Street and discusses some of the historic homes there.
The Grand Traverse Heritage Center's Historic Traverse City Walking Tours are held on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m. and begin at the Heritage Center on Sixth Street.
Fortunately, reminders of the past are scattered everywhere along this remote coast: lonely lighthouses, humble mission churches, workingmen’s taverns, quaint Victorian cottages and the grand estates of 19th century lumber barons. It’s a remarkable historical legacy, says Truckey, since the Traverse City area was one of the last places in America to be settled.
Indian hunters and French traders were the first people to visit the area, and it was they who gave the region its name – La Grand Traverse, because of the “long crossing” they had to make by canoe across the mouth of the bay. But they weren’t interested in staying; even the area’s historic Ottawa and Chippewa people didn’t arrive there until the early 18th century, and it wasn’t until 1839 that the Rev. Peter Dougherty established the area’s first permanent settlement, an Indian mission at the tip of the Old Mission peninsula.
The modern-day village of Old Mission still occupies Dougherty’s idyllic site: a place seemingly frozen in time, where many of the original mission structures, are still standing and in use. Three miles to the north is the quaint Old Mission Lighthouse, built in 1870 to warn ships away from the rocky shoals of Old Mission Point.
By 1847 a small but growing community was forming on the banks of the nearby Boardman River. In 1852 the little sawmill town was christened Traverse City -- but until the first road through the forest was built in 1864 it remained a remote outpost, accessible only by water.
It must have been a prosperous outpost, to judge by the number and size of the homes and public buildings that were built in the waning years of the century. The Boardman Neighborhood along Boardman Avenue and Washington Street preserves some of Traverse City’s oldest and most ornate homes, many in the fanciful Queen Anne style, while the turn-of-the-century mansions of Sixth Street (known as “Silk Stocking Row”) include the immense 32-room house built by Traverse City founder Perry Hannah in 1893.
After decades of neglect, the nearby Front Street shopping district has been extensively restored and is now a picturesque and pedestrian-friendly reminder of the city’s historical roots. Its tree-shaded sidewalks now border shops, restaurants and galleries that have made creative use of the Victorian buildings they occupy. One special landmark is the ornate 1891 City Opera House, recently reopened after more than $8.5 million in exquisite restoration work.
Of course, not everyone in 19th-century Traverse City was a millionaire. The city’s west side – known at various times as Baghdad, Little Bohemia or Slabtown – was home to mill workers and skilled woodcarvers, including a substantial community of Bohemian immigrants who built tidy cottages for themselves out of scraps from the sawmills. Many of their homes are still standing, and so is Sleder’s Family Tavern, a 123-year-old social club that is still a favorite hangout for locals and visitors alike.
When the lumber boom peaked, its place in the local economy was taken by manufacturing and agriculture – potatoes, apples, and eventually cherries. But the city’s biggest economic windfall came in 1885, when it was designated as the site of the Northern Michigan Asylum, a huge state institution whose founders believed mental illness could best be treated by a combination of healthy food, exercise and beautiful natural surroundings. The asylum became one of the city’s major employers and eventually housed a population several times larger than that of the town itself.
In what may be the country’s largest historic re-use project, the 480-acre site of the former hospital – now known as the Grand Traverse Commons -- is being redeveloped into a unique “village” of shops, restaurants, apartments and galleries. Developers are preserving both the castle-like Italianate century buildings that once housed staff and patients, while its lovely wooded campus has become a favorite place for hikers and cyclists.
“There’s a great deal to see and a lot of places to explore,” says retired teacher Ann Hoopfer, one of several guides who conduct groups on the city history tours. “You just have to know where to look.”
Contact information:
Tickets for the Heritage Center’s summer walking tours are $10 for adults and $5 per student; children 12 and under are free. Reservations are recommended, since tours are limited to 15 people. For more information or to make a reservation, call (231) 995-0313.
Maps, descriptions and information about other historical sites can be obtained by contacting the Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-TRAVERSE or on line at www.VisitTraverseCity.com
