This is an early photo of the Chicago Club, but must have been taken after 1885 when bicycles were invented.
Courtesy Omena Historical Society
Avoiding the heat and dust and congestion of Chicago’s summers was a primary concern for three Chicago businessmen: Chase, Jameson, and Waldron. They wanted a place for their families to stay safely during the summer. So as early as 1868, they built a duplex, the first little “resort” of its kind in Omena. They named it “The Shabwahsung Club” after the Indian Chief who once lived on Omena Point with his band. It soon became known as the Chicago Club because of the fact that families from Chicago had their headquarters there every summer.
This was the early days of Omena. 1868 was just six years after the first road was cut through the woods to Traverse City. There were no stagecoaches coming to Omena for another four years. Steamships didn’t pull up to the docks until 1892. The train “Maude” wasn’t running until 1903. The only way for people to come from Chicago to Omena was by schooner.
The trading post run by Lewis Miller had closed the year before Chicago Club began. Andersons Mercantile Store didn’t open until 1883. Barth’s store opened in 1889, some 20 years later. I’m sure they were very glad to see the schooners come in with supplies. Or maybe they ate a lot of fish.
1868 was before any of the other Omena resorts catering to families came to be. A few years earlier Aaron B. Page had built a rooming and boarding house up on the bluff west of Omena across from where Sunset Lodge is today. The house catered to the lumbermen who flocked to the area. But around 1900 the lumbering ceased as the trees disappeared and Pages Boarding House became a residence.
The Chicago Club served as a home away from home to other people as well as the original families. It became a bachelor boarding house for officers and captains of lake boats. Once in a while, local families, both Indian and white, lived there as well. Julia Barnes of Grand Rapids lived there with her family as a toddler in 1889 while her family was building a cottage on Omena Point. She remembered an Indian family, possibly named Petoskey, lived on the other side of the duplex. It was just a duplex. And a no frills one at that. But it was the first accommodation for families in the area and it had a wonderful location.
The Chicago Club was right between where Lavender Lane is today (formerly where Bidleman’s Gas Station was) and Peter Dougherty’s Manse. It was convenient to the beach and water breezes, and the views couldn’t be beat. (See #7 on the map below)
This hand illustrated map of early Omena was illustrated by Nina Collins.
It is the inside cover of “Omena, A Place In Time”, Omena Historical Society.
Rev Dougherty’s Mission school closed the same year the Chicago Club came into being, and the Dougherty’s were in their last few years of service here. It was the end of the Mission period, and the beginning of a new time in Omena, a time of businesses starting up, and by 1885, the beginning of the resort period.
There are few mentions of The Chicago Club over the next few years. George Smith, the missionary from Northport, wrote in his diary on August 20, 1869, (the year after Chicago Club began) that he went in a wagon to see Chief Aghosa about agricultural statistics and called on people in the “Shab-wasing” Club and afterward took tea at Mr. Wheeler’s. Later, in 1874, Rev Smith preached at the Omena Presbyterian Church and wrote in his diary “Quite a number of the Shab-wasing Club attended.”
A.F. Johnson’s Leelanau County: Historical and Descriptive gave this information in 1880: “The Shabwahsung Club, composed of ladies and gentlemen from Chicago, have their headquarters at this place every season.” At this time, it was still owned by Chase, Jameson, and Waldron.
The club and its membership was of enough renown by 1886 that the Grand Traverse Herald bothered to announce when Mr. Jameson and his family arrived to occupy the grounds. But within a few years of the Jameson family’s visit, Peter Mougey purchased the property and added it to his growing holdings in Omena, including Dougherty’s manse directly to the east.
The Chicago Club dropped out of sight for many years and then….In November of 1920 John R. Santo and his wife, Frances, purchased the manse from Mougey, including the Chicago Club land. The Chicago Club was gone. It is not known how many more year’s families from Chicago and sea captains were able to escape the heat and dust and regain their land legs in the Chicago Club before it was torn down. To this day there is nothing there.