Vintage Light Bulbs
Up until the early 1900’s Omena was in the dark. Arriving at a lamp-lit cottage, with hand-pump well and heat producing wood-stoves. With ice boxes for cooling food, and a thin walled out-house was a shock to early Omena visitors from the city. But improvement in basic utilities came at different times to the various homes and cottages.
A Detroit firm constructed a dam in Leland sometime between 1906 and 1908, according to A History of Leelanau County. The dam provided electricity for Leland, Northport, Omena and Sutton’s Bay twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week but did not even try to reach the outlying farms or cottages on the Point. Many cottages got electricity in the 1920’s, but some were without through the depression and even until after WWII because they were they were too far away from town for the power company to bring the lines to them.
Electricity was a luxury
It was a luxury, and not a natural part of existence like it is today. The flicker of lamplight on an evening card game, the chill damp air of a summer rain creeping into the corners of the cottage, the hand pump, and runs to the outhouse all became part of the atmosphere of the cottage. People went to bed early…and they got up early.
Not everyone did without conveniences, however. The local hotels had to offer the most modern facilities to attract the most desirable guests so gas lights and running water were amenities that were necessary. What made gas lighting easily available to them was that the gas could be made on the spot. It was made by combining a white powder with acid, both of which were kept on the grounds, in a separate building and then piping it into the hotel or house.
Gas Lamps
The light produced by gas lamps was not much brighter than that of kerosene lamps, but with less clean up. Children detested the job of cleaning the lamp chimneys of their greasy black residue. Because of this dim lighting, most people went to bed early and got up early. Some grew to love gas and kerosine light and bemoaned the introduction of electricity and it’s disturbance of the Point’s soft summer ambiance..
Before the road was even paved, wires appeared on Omena’s main street. – Photo credit Don Harrison, Up North Memories
Once you had power, it was not uncommon for the light to dim or blink. As weak as the current was, a breeze on the utility wires would make a bulb flicker like a candle in the wind. Sometimes it would be out until the following day. Patient consumers would shake their heads and smile, remarking “Another fish over the dam.” Once families got power, they wanted as much power as they could get, and continuously over taxed the system causing it to be neither steady or dependable. Vin Moore remembered that in 1922 families had to keep their candles and a box of matches handy.
Courtesy Omena, A Place In Time, Omena Historical Society, and A History of Leelanau County