Lake Life At Lake Louise/Thumb Lake
Nearby ~ In Hudson Township
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Please do not copy the photos on this site, many of which have been
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Charles Dawley described his above photo from a drone's view taken on 2 July 2015 as
"Thumb Lake, looking East towards the township park"...
and noted that
on that beautiful afternoon, many, many people were splashing around,
adding to the Lake Life at Lake Louise/Thumb Lake.
The photo below is of Thumb Lake, looking West...
"Thumb Lake, looking East towards the township park"...
and noted that
on that beautiful afternoon, many, many people were splashing around,
adding to the Lake Life at Lake Louise/Thumb Lake.
The photo below is of Thumb Lake, looking West...
TWO Photos Above:
More of Charles Dawley's remarkable videos and photography can be viewed on his
Drone Photography from Charles Dawley facebook page.
More of Charles Dawley's remarkable videos and photography can be viewed on his
Drone Photography from Charles Dawley facebook page.
As early as 4 July 1883, Thumb Lake was providing a place for exciting activity.
These two top photos were taken Summer 1898 in Thumb Lake. On 16 February 1905 these children died in a tragic house fire on top of Chandler Hill. In these photos are the children of Frank and Nellie Mackie Pearson: John "Leslie" born 1895, Esther born 1894, and Eulila "Lila" born in 1892.
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Photo Above: Albert Howard worked as the caretaker at the Lake Louise/Thumb Lake Methodist Camp for a few years until 1937 when he bought his farm on Magee Road Chandler Hill Chandler Township Charlevoix County MI, about three miles away from the lake. Albert and his sons often rented their own fleet of row boats, as seen above near the public boat landing, on Thumb Lake which is located on Thumb Lake Road between Boyne Falls MI and Vanderbilt MI.
Photo Above: Albert Howard's sons Virgil and Vernard Howard
stood by a peaceful Thumb Lake setting where their family rented rowboats for 50¢ a day.
stood by a peaceful Thumb Lake setting where their family rented rowboats for 50¢ a day.
Photo Above: Don Howard, son of Vernard and Blanche Howard...
and Oralee, daughter of Ed and Beulah Howard Lick, stood by the running board of a vehicle parked on the shore of Thumb Lake about 1938.
and Oralee, daughter of Ed and Beulah Howard Lick, stood by the running board of a vehicle parked on the shore of Thumb Lake about 1938.
Don Howard with his dad Vernard Howard.
Marion Bush Howard with her husband Karl "Cub" Howard (Vernard's brother) by Thumb Lake.
Marion Bush Howard with her husband Karl "Cub" Howard (Vernard's brother) by Thumb Lake.
As stated in Ralph Harmon's obituary below,
Ralph "put forth a tremendous effort to maintain Thumb Lake Beach and keep it open to the public."
Ralph's wife Inis Howard was born and raised in Chandler Township,
and together they lived in Charlevoix County all of their lives.
In 1975 the road still ran dangerously near
the bathing beach of Thumb Lake. The above 4 September 1975 newspaper article comes from the archived Gaylord Herald Tribune newspaper website: Otsego County Library Newspaper Archive Portal |
The road, going so close to the beach previously, had been moved away from the Thumb Lake bathing beach,
which made room for new restrooms, and a new parking lot to be built to provide safety from the previously busy road. |
8 August 1935 ~ "The Singing Village" Will Present Hiawatha
North Michigan Music Camp
in the
Building of the Old Thumb Lake (Lake Louise) Post-Office
North Michigan Music Camp
in the
Building of the Old Thumb Lake (Lake Louise) Post-Office
Photo below left: Libretto: Indian play -- Hiawatha, played at Wa-ya-ga-mug, on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway, near Petoskey, Michigan, each summer season, by native Ojibway Indians; (1912) ~ The Library of Congress
The play of Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha" had been a popular production for several years by 1935 when the Singing Village presented Hiawatha on the edge of Lake Louise near to Chandler Township. Hiawatha had been presented in the natural setting of Round Lake near Petoskey where the audience often arrived by train. James C. Whitfield of Walloon Lake wrote about his own attendance at the play: "It was about that early time, too, that my folks took me over to a place on the Conway line of the GR&I called ‘Wa-yag-amug’. It was on the shore of Round Lake and was where the Indian pageant was put on, every afternoon in the summer. The entire cast was composed of local Indians and they enacted the Longfellow poem, ‘HIAWATHA’. We took the early afternoon train to Petoskey, then changed to the one for Conway and were let off at a special stop designated as ‘WA-YAG-AMUG’. We traipsed down to the lake and into a small pavilion built partly over the water of an inlet of the lake. The ‘stage’ consisted of the natural woods and shore of the opposite side of the inlet. An Indian teepee was set up there and all the trappings of the Indian village and beside a couple of real birch bark canoes, pulled up on the beach. The only white man in the presentation was George Franklin of Petoskey who read parts of Longfellow's poem hidden behind a rock on one side. The play started and continued as the Indians moved about on the stage and ended as the villain of the poem was chased by the villagers and as he climbed to the top of the rock from where he jumped off into a pool of water and a stuffed beaver skin was floated up in his place. Then Hiawatha was supposed to die and that Indian stepped into a canoe beached in the lake, itself and holding a paddle straight up he was towed by an underwater rope to a spot on the farther shore where he stepped into the woods. It was quite well done and I was thrilled, but what interested me most was the home made birch bark canoes in the play, and I kept thinking how wonderful it would be if I could make myself one."
~ James C. Whitfield [The program for ‘The Indian Play Hiawatha’ in the Land of the Ojibways spelled the name place ‘WA-YA-GA-MUG'.] |
In the early 1950's cottagers of Thumb Lake came to the farm of Cub Howard to relieve him of the multiple huge piles of field stones he had gathered. Cub had picked up the sizable stones which managed to work themselves up toward the top of the soil in his farm fields each Spring as the frozen earth began to thaw, and move around. Cub had to get the stones out of the way of his tilling machinery. He threw the stones into piles so he could farm around them. It worked out well for Cub when the two Gregg families, and their related Westcott family, decided to use stones to build parts of their Thumb Lake cottages, and also to build the beautiful fireplaces inside their summer cottages. Those families remained great friends and invited Cub's family to their cottages for meals, and visits, and swims, for many years. This allowed Cub to doubly enjoy the fruits of his labor in having the stones removed from his fields, and of their labor through the interesting uses the cottagers found for the stones in their homes.
July 1958 ~ Dusting Operations to battle the sawfly larvae which destroyed pine plantings happened near Lake Louise. The fine spray of 50% DDT was applied at the rate of two gallons per acre. The plane sprayed 434 acres of private land and 450 acres of state land in the previous week. UPDATE: The United States banned the use of DDT on 14 June 1972 because it persists in the environment and causes animal issues. DDT is considered a "possible human carcinogen".
Photo Below: Living on Horner Island in Thumb Lake...
Photo Above: Alex Childress' additional work also may be viewed at Alex Childress Photo.