Author’s Collection
The early-20th-century transition from rowing craft, which were ubiquitous in the upper Great Lakes at the turn of the last century, to motor-driven boats is evident in this 1940 postcard from Birch Hill Hotel on Grand Lake near Presque Isle, Michigan.
Generations ago, boats such as those on the waterfront at Birch Hill Hotel in Grand Lake, Michigan, shown in the photograph above, could be found at almost any lake across the Midwest. Today’s diligent seeker of small historic boats might find a weathered pair of oars at an out-of-the-way antique barn near Grand Lake, but finding one of the boats would be a far greater challenge. Unfortunately, little has been done in the upper Lakes region to preserve and document these craft; we have no counterpart to the historian John Gardner or to Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum to celebrate the glory days of such boats. What’s required instead is a careful perusal of historic sources and well-planned crawls through widely scattered archives and museums. The accompanying photographs show a few examples sifted from my 40 years of such activity.