Horton Bay – A Little History - Excerpts from “100 Years of Horton Bay” 1876 – 1976 by William Ohle.
On October 22, 1841, the deputy government surveyor in this particular area certified that he had surveyed and divided into sections, fractional township number 33 North Range 6 West which included most of the land that is now designated Bay Township. He described impressive stands of cedar, birch, hemlock, elm, and sugar maple on the rolling sandy acreage.
Originally settled by Samuel Horton, the first white resident of record and his wife who sailed by boat, the (Rover), a substantial size craft to Pine Lake from Toledo, Ohio, and arrived about the first of August 1856. Mr. Horton had sailed north on Lake Huron and around the tip of the lower peninsula with the intention of proceeding to Grand Rapids where two of his sons were living. Being short of provisions he put in at Pine River. Adverse winds prevented the craft from leaving on the remaining portion of his trip. So, at the Bay that has taken his name, he found a shack apparently abandoned by a Mormon in the waning days of King Strang’s influence in the area. A spring of cold clear water marks the spot. He and his family were the only residents of Horton Bay for 2 decades.
Mr. Horton was born at Long Point Bay, Canada in 1800. At the age of twenty three he went to Ohio where he resided until he came to Horton Bay. Thus he was fifty six years old when he took up residence here. He and his wife, originally Sophie Adams, were the parents of thirteen children however only 7 girls and two boys came with them to Horton Bay.
His living was made by using the boat as well as selling a “medical potion”. In those days patent medicines were the answer to virtually all ailments and there were dozens of brands on the market. His original tonic consisted of
Flex Lobelia, ¼ oz
Golden Seal, ¼ oz
Blood Root, ½ oz
Prickly ash, ½ oz
Turkish Rhubarb, ½ oz
Alcohol,1 oz.
He was also justice of the peace and officiated the first wedding in Bay Township on July 5, 1869. It was only the 22nd in the whole county.
The Indian Treaty of 1855 opened much of the land in this area to homesteaders, including of course Indians, many of whom made land selections in neighboring Hayes Township including Kay Bay O May Jaay, William (which translates into William Greensky. There were not many Indian selections in what is now Bay, but one is interesting: Mick Saw Bay, Theresa and Isaac. If you read their family name rapidly you will discover how Mt. McSauba in Charlevoix acquired its name.
By the early 1870s a great deal of the timber in southern Michigan had already been harvested. The terrible fires of the dry fall of 1871 had left Chicago and other cities in need of seemingly unlimited board feet of lumber.
Alonzo Stroud and William Ohle bought a portable sawmill and put $250 into land. (Just about all of Horton Bay). The mill was built in 1876 which is the reason for declaring this year to be the start of Horton Bay’s Centennial year.
A few years later after building the sawmill at the foot of the Lake Street hill, Ohle built the Horton bay General Store and two inns, one of which is still in existence. It was a hotel and four family residence, now known as the Red Fox Inn.
James Dilworth was a first rate blacksmith who had immigrated from Canada by way of Berea Ohio. The usefulness of a man good at this trade in a lumbering community is obvious. Dilworth was a success from the start, both as Stroud’s partner when Ohle sold out and later at his trade to which he devoted himself exclusively a couple of years later.
There were six products that resulted from the tree harvest around Pine Lake . Hemlock bark for tanning leather was in demand at the tannery in Boyne City . It was usually stripped from the giant logs two or three weeks after they were felled, with the help of iron Spuds. Lumber, primarily Hemlock and White Pine, were used locally for building material, but the choicest was usually shipped to Chicago, Boyne City and Ironton. Cedar was used to make shingles which were packed by hand, splinters notwithstanding, for local use and the Chicago trade. Wood alcohol was rendered at the big chemical plant in Boyne City. Barrel staves were fashioned in a factory in Boyne City.
The most celebrated ceremony held at the forlorn little Methodist Church, and perhaps the only solid reason to regret it’s passing was the first of the many weddings of Ernest Hemingway who married lovely Hadley Richardson of St. Louis there on a fine September day in 1921. (This church has since been restored.)
As a boy, and for a summer after “the war” Ernest frequently availed himself of the open handed hospitality of James and Mrs. Dilworth, making himself at home in “Pinehurst” at frequent intervals. He and Wesley Dilworth had been childhood friends, and the Senior Dilworth’s had been close friends of Ernest’s parents, which is how his Horton Bay sojourning started. Ernest would often leave the summer ménages owned by his parents on either side of Walloon Lake and hike the four miles across Sumner Road to Horton Bay for days at a time.
There were once three restaurants operating at the same time with in 300 yards of each other in this community of 45 year round residents. Good ones. Most of the customers for all of them had to travel a number of miles to get to their table, by either motor boat or automobile in a day when both were new fangled and prone to mechanical troubles. The first of these exceptional dining rooms started around 1910. Elizabeth Dilworth started serving meals at the Dilworth Lodge because the smithing business just couldn’t support the family after the mill shut down. She just put her natural talents to profitable use. Aunty Beth could perform magic on her cast iron stove with chicken and dumplings and gravy, vegetables from her garden out back, and fresh bread and desserts way beyond the ordinary. Word spread rapidly and Pinehurst became the “In” place to entertain vacationing friends. Dinner parties were frequent – all by reservation. No short orders.
At the same time the Red Fox Inn and the Waffle Shop were competing businesses.
Appetite for modern conveniences could be detected very early on this frontier. An example was the urge for telephone service. A paid “notice’ in the Boyne City Standard” of July 8, 1881 called for public help in getting a new line started: “G.E. Bain will connect Boyne Falls and Boyne City by telephone providing the above mentioned towns will raise $100.00 to aid in the enterprise.” Although it wasn’t immediately successful, it reached Horton Bay from Boyne City in 1887.
Electrical power came to Horton Bay officially April 4, 1938 when Paul Skornia officially recorded the 56 yes to 10 no on a Township public proposition to grant a franchise to the Top o’ Michigan Rural Electric Co for the purpose of constructing maintaining and operating in the public streets, highways, alleys and other public places in the Township of Bay, County of Charlevoix, Michigan all needful and property Poles, Towers, Mains, Wires, Pipes, Conduits and other apparatus requisite for the transmission and distribution of electricity.
Summer People:
Various categories of people visited Horton Bay in the summertime. There were the people who bought the Point who were really summering in Charlevoix, and used their handsome Point ménage as “a place to escape from their place of escape” from St Louis and Chicago heat in summer. The Charlevoix places were elaborate and formal and complete with nursemaids and retinues of servants. The deluxe rustic playground created on the Point served as a change-off from the stylized social formality that wealthy Charlevoix summer life had become over the years.
There were other regular visitors, most of whom were paying guests of Jim and Elizabeth Dilworth’s “Pinehurst” and “Shangri-la” which was a resort later enlarged and otherwise improved by Wesley and Kathryn Dilworth.
Prior to being called Pine Lake it was Lake Mormon. Before that Long Lake, and before that Green Lake, and before that, Lake Pun-A-Pun
For that matter, Walloon Lake was Bear Lake within the memory of some of our residents.
Organized in 1887
