By Amy Polk

A group of vacationers around the turn of the 20th century takes a break from summer activities in the Les Cheneaux Islands, pausing on the porch of a local summer home.

For more than 100 years, the Les Cheneaux Islands have been a haven for vacationers.

The area enjoys an allure that has coaxed thousands of visitors, whether they are just passing through or visiting family and friends, to buy a piece of land and put down roots.

The Les Cheneaux Historical Association wants to know more about the historic summer homes, both great and small, that characterize the community.

The Association has launched a project to record the histories of many summer homes in the area, and is seeking information and stories from the people who own them.

Les Cheneaux Historical Museum Curator Annegret Goehring is leading the project, and she obtained a $630 grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs to cover some of the costs. The project is called "Les Cheneaux's Early Seasonal Residents," and targets residences built between the 1880s and 1930s.

Recognizing the importance summer places have in Les Cheneaux history, Mrs. Goehring thought it was time someone collected the histories of these places before they are lost. She is seeking the names of the people who owned the place, the date of their arrival in the area, where the place is in the area, when the cottage was built, and the name of the current occupant. She is providing people with maps to mark the location of their homes.

"This community is what it is partially because of the summer people," Mrs. Goehring said. "Summer people offered jobs to people and used local services, and they have been intrinsically involved with the community."

Not to mention the architectural influence they have in the area. From the humble camp without water or electricity to the magnificent early 1900s "cottages" built by wealthy city folk, summer places display a colorful variety of architectural styles. Many island residents built boathouses to match their homes. Some of the more elaborate structures depart from the functional, with flower boxes and shutters.

Fine examples of the Craftsman architectural trend that persisted through the 1930s are prevalent in the area. The style features low-pitched roofs, wide eaves with exposed roof rafters, stone chimneys, gabled dormers, sloping foundations, and deep porches with square columns, and its influence can be seen in many summer and year-around homes in the area. Log structures from the 1920s meld with the popular new log homes that have appeared recently.

In addition to the bare bones information, Mrs. Goehring hopes to get anecdotal stories, photographs, and family trees from seasonal residents.

“The museum really doesn’t have much of that information on summer families except what’s in Phil Pittman’s Les Cheneaux Chronicles,” she said.

In some ways, summer families contribute as much to the community culture as year-around residents. Several families have been in the area since the turn of the 20th century, and they contribute to local charities and the Les Cheneaux Community Foundation. Many are members of local organizations, serving from May through October, and even occasionally return to attend meetings through the winter.

"I think it's significant that the family's descendants keep coming and that they appreciate not just the nature, but the communities they stay in as well," Mrs. Goehring said. “They appreciate that this isn’t the city, and it’s still pristine, quaint, and has small town community spirit.”

Mrs. Goehring herself was a former summer visitor, whose family and their friends traveled up north from Akron, Ohio. Her late husband was a commercial artist and Ohio resident who fell so much in love with the area while visiting friends, that he bought Birch Island, a small island near Hessel, in the early 1900s.

“He bought it for $600, and it took him a long time to pay it off,” Mrs. Goehring said of the place.

The island is still treasured by the Goehring family, which maintains a small cabin there, much the same as it was in the early to mid-1900s. Its earliest inhabitants spent their days on the island in canvas tents with a cook-stove outdoors.

“A lot of the early summer places were tents and camps, or homes built with whatever was around,” she added.

The Wagner house on Pickford Avenue in downtown Hessel is another summer place with an interesting history. Mrs. Goehring said the house was once a pool hall, and later a boarding house. Drinking water was carried into each apartment, and each had its own outdoor privy, Mrs. Goehring said.

Such stories give color to the area’s history, Mrs. Goehring said, and surprisingly few of them are on record at the museum. She hopes to soon have a collection of history and photographs representing the tradition of seasonal migration to the Les Cheneaux Islands.

This project complements a centennial homes project Mrs. Goehring completed last year. The project included gathering photographs and information to confirm the age of historic homes in Cedarville and Hessel, and awarding signs with the year of construction on them. The Historical Museum hosted two discussion sessions in 2004 and 2003, when home owners were presented with the signs and the audience could share historical information.

The Historical Museum is also preparing to launch the eighth season of Artist of the Week. The program features two artists each Wednesday, who demonstrate their skill to the public. Demonstrations are usually outdoors, depending on the weather, and some offer activities for spectators and children. The program is supported by the Les Cheneaux Historical Association and a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Mrs. Goehring will also participate in a middle school history project with Les Cheneaux Community Schools students. Students will be asked to bring historical items or family heirlooms from home to the museum for a display. The museum can accommodate 12 to 24 items. The project is part of the Historical Association’s effort to reach out to young people.

“It will give them experience in bringing items in and making a connection to history,” she said.

A future project will include inviting an artist to teach people to make American Indian porcupine quill boxes.

The museum will open for the season the weekend before Memorial Day, and will remain open through Labor Day weekend.