Number 6 is the First Omena Inn that Graves owned. Look for number 4, the sidewalk that led to the Inn.
Courtesy Bentley Historical Museum. From early Omena Resort brochure, ca. 1890s. Bay View Association
Imagine you are living in Grand Rapids in the 1880’s, with its smoke and noise from its many furniture factories. Imagine the roughshod lumberjacks accompanying the logs from the forests upstream to the sawmills sawing up the logs into lumber for those furniture companies. A flood of foreigners also came to town to work at those furniture companies. The streets were filled with smoke and noise, and the cacophony of horses and humanity. Then add the heat of summer. Wouldn’t you want to get out of town?
Grand Rapids in the 1880’s. You can see the hustle and bustle, as well as the smokey air in this photo. Courtesy Grand Rapids History
There was a way for families to go north. Since 1854, the Grand Rapids to Mackinac Railroad, the country’s largest north-south railroad, had provided passenger service. In 1875, sensing a new market with willing and eager customers, the railroad struck a deal with the United Methodist Church, which was looking for a place to hold summer camp meetings. If the Methodists would clear the area and improve it for their camp meetings, holding them there for the next 15 years, the railroad would give them 340 acres of hilly, wooded land, and the railroad would be extended to Petoskey providing easy transportation for the area.
Petoskey Bay View Association
The following summer the first group of Methodists travelled to the site, cleared an area of underbrush, and built a preaching stand and an audience area under the trees, and began holding meetings there. Originally just tents for the visitors to stay in, over the next five years, about 150 cottages had been built on the site, and the religion-oriented camp meeting program had languished. Victorian architecture was in style at that time, and most of the cottages that were built had Victorian features such as wrap around porches, towers, second story porches, and spindle work. In short, they were adorable. But the land….the 340 acres of wooded acres which dropped 200 feet in a series of terraces down to Grand Travers Bay, who owned that?
Beginning in 1885 the land was owned by the Bay View Association who leased it to cottage owners by the year. The cottages were built on 50 foot lots which had been platted along gently curving streets running along natural terraces. So, the people owned the cottages and the association owned the land. And the community was thriving.
Frank Graves took notice
Perhaps he took that train from Grand Rapids to Petoskey for a vacation. Maybe he attended a lecture of two at the Bay View Lecture Series and admired the attractive Bay View cottages. Maybe he watched from a distance as in Omena in 1868 the Rev. Dougherty’s Mission School closed and was sold to Valentine Miller, who sold it to Joseph Walker in 1881. Then Thomas Foulds bought it in 1883, and finally to the Omena Hotel Association in 1889 which owned it for a few years. In 1892, Graves had a chance to purchase 151 acres of the formerly Mission property, more than a mile of beautiful woods and shore on Omena Point, for $4300, and he jumped at it. He could envision another Bay View there.
But how to divide it up into salable lots? Back in 1876 in Bay View, committee members without formal surveying or design skills, explored their acreage on foot and determined the best way to plat the grounds was to take inspiration from the natural glacial terraces and the bay shoreline. Graves liked that plan. He had his newly purchased Omena Point land platted so that the lots and road followed the natural terraces, and a block and lot system divided them into small buildable lots. Graves platted it for as many cottages as he could squeeze into the 152 acres, each to be just 50’x125’, like Bay View. He called it the “Plat of New Mission Point on Omena Bay” and advertised them for sale from $50 to $400 each, depending on whether they were waterfront or not.
New Mission Point
However, unlike Bay View, the owners of the cottages in Omena would own the land, thus controlling what would be built on it and if they would clear it or not. Instead of the Victorian cottages with gingerbread architecture of Bay View, Grave’s “New Mission Point” would end up having cottages falling into several architectural categories, ranging from rustic log cabins to balloon-frame, multi-floor Victorian cottages boasting tower views. Most would be similar to the area farmhouses, personalized with porches, gables, and ornamentation. And they would be built on several lots so they would not be as crowded.
Some problems did arise in Omena and still do to this day. For instance, in 1903, when General Grierson wanted to chop down the trees interfering with his view there was nothing General Cutcheon, his neighbor who loved trees, could do to stop him. And there is very little you can do today to control what gets built on the lot next door. But in general, we are a very close community.
There are problems with the jointly owned land like in Bay View too. In 1879 a very shallow artesian well water system was installed by the association to all the cottage existing then. However, the pipes were laid so shallow, so near the surface, the water had to be drained in winter months to prevent freezing. The whole community had to be closed from November through April, and all residences must be vacated, like it or not.
High Hopes
An early photo of the first Omena Inn. You can see the tower, and the windmill which was used to pump water to the Inn. Courtesy Omena Historical Society
Graves had high hopes for his development. Old Omena Postcards show children’s playgrounds, and pavilions nestled in the woods, but these never appeared. He felt a hotel was essential for sales, people needing a place to stay when they came to look over the development, so he bought the First Omena Inn when he bought the land, 1892. Steamboats came to Omena the year Graves bought the land, so now people had a more dependable way to arrive than on schooners.
After a couple of years, though, Graves lost interest in the hotel and sold it to W. H. Dewey, who ran it for a summer or two, and until, about 1904 it burned to the ground in a terrible fire, going up “in a black pillar of smoke” according to Ruth Craker. As for the pavilions and playgrounds, they did not ever get built. Trains did not go north to Omena from Traverse City, until 1903. Land sales languished.
Only 15 cottages built
By the time of Frank Graves death in 1906, just 15 cottages had been built. Did he love Omena too dearly? Did the price it too high? Were the lots too small? Or did real estate just tank around that time. By 1900 there were 1,100 lots available from which to choose in Omena, including Graves “Plat of New Mission”, lots on Omena Heights, Ingalls Bayside, and Page’s Resort which had lots as well by then. They all had limited success. Why?
The cottagers worried that now that Graves was dead, his descendants did not care about the lands they had inherited, and that they might sell to lumbering interests. The family seemed to have neither the interest nor the skill to manage the Omena Resort. It must have seemed to them like Graves had made a poor investment and had gained far less than he had paid for the property in 1892. Perhaps they wanted to recoup the investment by selling to the highest bidder.
Lingering Estate
An early Omena Resort cottage. Courtesy A History of Leelanau Township
The estate lingered in limbo for ten years, and finally went up for public auction in 1916. After the bidding slowed and stopped, John Santo had made the highest bid, $4,394. The family had a small return on Franks investment. The cottagers were relieved, at least for now. The Northport Leader announced, “Big boost for Omena and resort business as it included practically all the point south of the road leading to Snyder and Hawley orchards that has been idle for a great many years (in litigation).”
Santo was able to hang on to the land until the depression. He then it sold in a mortgage sale to Carmichael for $5770 plus attorney fees. After Hector Carmichael died in 1952, his wife, Jesse, stayed on in Omena, becoming very active in the community. Being short on cash and having lots of land, Jesse offered it for sale to the other cottage owners. Piece by piece, Omena Resort found its way to what we see today.
And so, the cottage community of Omena Point had survived the crises. It is still the place of sparkling water and clear air that Graves saw in 1892. The trees are alive and well, and, happily, none of the crowded tiny lots Graves had foreseen came to pass.