Little Traverse Bay: Lumber, Steamers, and Deep Water
Near Petoskey, Michigan
The wide blue water in front of you is Little Traverse Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan that reaches about ten miles inland from the big lake. Its waters narrow toward the town of Petoskey and its rival town across the water, Harbor Springs. Its harbor is deep and sheltered, and its shores are underlain by the same ancient Devonian limestone that gives us Petoskey stones.
For the town's first industry, that deep, sheltered water was everything. In the late eighteen hundreds Petoskey was a lumber town. Loggers stripped the surrounding forests of pine and hardwood, floated timber down the Bear River to the bay, and loaded it onto ships bound across the Great Lakes.
Some of Michigan's lumber is said to have helped rebuild Chicago after the great fire of eighteen seventy-one. When the resort era arrived, the same waters carried a different cargo. Passenger steamships sailed up from Chicago and Detroit, calling at Petoskey, Harbor Springs, and Charlevoix, delivering summer visitors by the thousands.
Water made this town, first as a working port, and then as a playground.
