Historic Arcadia, Michigan

What's New?

Shipwrecks Near Arcadia - United States Life-Saving Service -- May 2008
What would a story about shipwrecks be without talking about the brave men who battled cold Lake Michigan surf to try to save lives? This is a summary of their story with links to many more details.

Shipwrecks Near Arcadia -- April 2008
Violent storms made Lake Michigan a dangerous place particularly in the spring and fall, and many ships were lost. This new exhibit summarizes more than a dozen shipwrecks in the Arcadia area between about 4 miles south of Frankfort and about 5 miles north of Ludington.

AAHS Events for 2008 -- March 2008
The museum will open again on the weekend of June 20. The summer of 2008 will include at least two Crackerbarrel events (July 13 and September 7), where experienced people will discuss life in Arcadia way back when, and more than 100 quilts will be on display on Saturday, June 28th.

Museum Tour 2007 -- January 2007
We revised the animated images to slow them down a bit and add a label identifying the number or pictures in each set. We also added a few more museum views, for example, what you see when you walk in the back door.

Museum Tour 2007 -- November and December 2007
This is an extensive revision to online tour of the Arcadia Area Historical Museum including the new Carriage House. Starting with up-to-date sketches of the floor plan for the museum and carriage house, we identified key exhibits available during the summer of 2007, photographed them, and tied them together here for the online tour. Also, some of the photos are a series of photos showing what you would see if you were standing where the photographer was and slowly turned your head.

The Postcard Photographer's Walk -- April 2007
Imagine you're a postcard photographer in the early 1900s. Starting from the corner of M-22 and Lake Street, walk west toward Lake Michigan. What photos would you take? We updated this exhibit. Watch for more Lake Street photos coming soon.

More Railroad Photos -- February 2007
We updated the railroad photo album to add still more photos. Among them is a close-up of the station at Henry.

Research Updates -- January 2007
The Channel Closes: We found a photo postcard from 1937 with a picture of Arcadia's channel between Lake Arcadia and Lake Michigan. The channel is filled with sand and shoreline plants. Clearly it had been closed for a while.

Events for 2007 -- December 2006
This page lists the Arcadia Area Historical Society's events for 2007. Happy New Year!

Sawmill Research -- November 2006
We're developing an exhibit on the sawmills in Arcadia. We've been revising the timeline to include some of what we've learned in the process. For example, see 1910 or the related information photos in the sidebar.

Securing the Museum's Future -- September 2006
We revised this page to correct an error and to add a photo of the carriage house.

A Brief History of the Lutheran Church -- July 2006
The Lutheran congregation was formed in Arcadia in 1881 and built a now-historic church that was finished in 1887 and stands today looking much as it was then.

My Life by Gladys Frederick Brown -- July 2006
Long time resident, teacher, volunteer, and friend describes her life in the Arcadia area beginning when she first arrived in Arcadia. She attended school in Arcadia, became a teacher herself beginning in a one-room Indian school, went to Detroit during World War II, came back with husband Bub Brown, taught school in Arcadia and elsewhere for thirty years, and finally retired.

Arcadia Furniture Company -- June 2006
By looking more closely at the furniture catalogs, we learned that the 1908 catalog was the first one produced solely for Arcadia Furniture. Only the 1907 catalog was a joint catalog for The Arcadia Furniture Company and the Fox & Mason Company. The catalog summary was revised to correct this and to add more details about the catalogs.

In addition to this correction, we've added details here and there based on the research involved for the new museum exhibit. If you haven't looked at it in a while, it's probably worth checking out again.

Arcadia's Railroad -- May 2006
This winter Jack Simmons found this web site and shared railroad photos and facts with us. John W. Martin, author of "Malcolm: A Station on the Arcadia and Betsey River Railway," reviewed our upcoming booklet on the ABRR and shared his memories and research with us too. We've just begun to use that information where it applies in the railroad exhibit and elsewhere. (See Cal Dunke and the steam log loader.)

Arcadia Furniture Company -- April 2006
This year is the 100th anniversary of the Arcadia Furniture Company founded in 1906 in Arcadia, Michigan. We updated the exhibit to add new information and photos and to make the information easier to find.

Updated Timeline -- March 2006
We revised the timeline based on this winter's research, new exhibits in process, and to improve access to existing exhibits.

Other Local Shipwrecks -- October 2005
We received an email from Jim Evans, the webmaster of a site about a shipwreck near Watervale, the Marinette, and it dawned on us that this is a subject we've neglected so far. For now, we added a link on the Minnehaha page that leads to the site about the Marinette, but research has begun on other shipwrecks in the area.

Arcadia's Railroad -- August 2005
Thanks to Ryan McKenna, we have a photo of the station in Henry from July 6, 1930.

Arcadia's Railroad -- June 2005
In 1881 Henry Starke began building a narrow gauge railroad to help in his lumbering business. By the end of 1896, the standard gauge A&BRR reached Copemish 21 miles from Arcadia, where it connected with the Ann Arbor Railroad, and passenger service was added.

2004 Museum Tour -- October 2004
(Replaced by Museum Tour 2007)
The tour of the Arcadia Area Historical Museum has been updated and greatly expanded to show much more than the old tour did. With the real museum closed for the winter, you can still tour many of the museum's exhibits right here.

Site Map -- July 2004
The site map provides another way to find information of interest to you in this web site. The site map lists every page in the web site at least once. To view a page, find it in the list, and click its title.

The site map will always be a work in progress. As new things are added elsewhere, the list of topics will grow. If you have suggestions for ways to organize this information, please contact us.

Excerpts from "My Memoirs" by Ruth Starke Burkhead -- July 2004
These excerpts from Ruth Burkhead's "My Memoirs" summarize Ruth's early years as a girl growing up in Arcadia and going off to college.

Arcadia Baseball Teams and Arcadia Versus the Illinois Giants
-- June 2004
Construction has finished for now on the exhibit Baseball in Arcadia. The last two pieces have been added: Arcadia Baseball Teams and Arcadia Versus the Illinois Giants.

Baseball in Arcadia -- May 2004
"On a Sunday afternoon you could find the bleachers full of baseball fans rooting for their home team." That's the subject of this exhibit. Exhibit Areas: The Early Days of Baseball in Arcadia, Baseball and the 4th of July, Arcadia Baseball Teams, and Arcadia Versus the Illinois Giants. (The last two are still under construction.)

Shipping in Early Arcadia -- December 2003
This exhibit summarizes shipping in Arcadia beginning in the late 1800s and ending when the channel officially closed in 1925. In addition to the sections of the exhibit listed below, the exhibit covers the channel's opening, the Pere Marquette Line, and the channel's closing.

The Arcadia Pier, The Steamer Arcadia, and The John D. Dewar --
November 2003
We are developing an exhibit about shipping in Arcadia about a hundred years ago. The first two installments are upgrades to these two exhibits. Coming Soon: Opening the Channel, The Marquette Line, and The Channel Closes.

Corrections: The Arcadia & Betsey River Railway -- September 2003
A reader pointed out errors in this summary of the history of the A&BRR. When the railway reached Henry in 1895, it interchanged with the Chicago & West Michigan Railway, which later merged into the Pere Marquette Railroad in 1900 and then into the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in 1947. When the A&BRR reached Copemish in 1896, it interchanged with the Ann Arbor Railroad, formed in 1895 from the Toledo, Ann Arbor, & North Michigan Railway. The timeline was also corrected.

How to Make Donations -- September 2003
This page summarizes two endowment funds -- the Arcadia Area Historical Museum Fund and the Arcadia Area Historical Museum Carriage House Fund -- and provides access to pages on the web site of the Manistee County Community Foundation, the organization contracted to manage the funds, where you can make online donations.

The Postcard Photographer's Walk ---- May 2003
Imagine walking west along Lake Street in Arcadia, Michigan in the early 1900's. That's what a postcard photographer did, and the postcards in this exhibit show us the photographer's view of Arcadia at the time.

1928 and 1930 Catalogs Added --- - May 2003
These catalogs have been added to the online database. This completes the series; every known catalog from the Arcadia Furniture Co. is in the database.

1913 Catalog Added -- March 2003
This catalog has been added to the online database. You can access it and every other online catalog through the catalog library.

Timeline Updated and Reorganized -- February 2003
The timeline of events in the history of the Arcadia area was broken up into chunks of time representing periods in Arcadia's history. The story starts now with the first settlers to the Arcadia, Michigan area. In addition, the timeline includes new new links to articles and pictures. (We needed a break from working on the catalogs.)

1908, 1909, 1916, and 1929 Catalogs Added -- February 2003
These catalogs have been added to the online database. You can access them and every other online catalog through the catalog library.

Furniture Company Catalog Library -- January 2003
We spent much of the winter scanning furniture catalogs... every page, both sides. Soon you will be able to use the new catalog library to peruse every catalog in the museum's inventory. Only 11 are available, and only 4 of those are online today, but they cover hundreds of furniture styles and variations.

Museum Tour Upgrade -- September 2002
(Replaced by Museum Tour 2007)
The new version of the tour includes the real museum's exhibits as they existed when the doors closed for the winter except by special appointment. (The doors to the virtual museum never close.) We've also added See Also links to related information. The Toys exhibit is not yet ready.

Methodist Church Centennial -- August 2002
The building housing the Arcadia United Methodist Church was built in 1902. This exhibit summarizes the building's history with photos of the church and neighborhood near Fourth Street and Division.

1907 Furniture Catalog ---- July 2002
This was the Arcadia Furniture Company's first furniture catalog. It was published jointly with the Fox & Mason Furniture Company of Corunna, Michigan where the sales office for both companies was located.

The William Quimby Family in Arcadia -- July 2002
William Quimby was one of the earliest settlers in the Arcadia, Michigan area. Like many early settlers, he received 160 acres of land from the US Government to use to build a homestead. This exhibit uses his pension application, the property abstract, a plat map from the period, US census data, tax data, store account entries, the Manistee City Directory, and the recollections of people who remembered the family to piece together what we know about them and life in the area at that time.

Early American Settlers by Kate Matteson 1958 ---- April 2002
"Few are left to tell the many little stories which will some day be gone forever. This paper tells stories typical of the experiences of all early settlers." So starts this oral history written in 1958 and recently re-discovered.

Do you have memories to share? The Arcadia Area Historical Society is collecting oral histories. For more about how you can can help, see Collecting Oral Histories.

Furniture Catalogs for 1912, 1922, and 1933 -- March 2002
We scanned each page and edited the images from three Arcadia Furniture Company catalogs: 1912, 1922, and 1933. For each catalog, a new display includes thumbnails of every page of the catalog. Each thumbnail leads to a larger view of the page. Eventually we'd like to provide every available Arcadia Furniture Company catalog online using this format, so if you have any comments, please contact us.

1929 Catalog Mirrors -- February 2002
The 1929 Arcadia Furniture Company catalog included four pages of mirrors that could be purchased separately. These mirrors are beautiful examples of the products produced at the factory's mirror works.

Walking Tour -- August 2001
The Walking Tour pamphlet available through Arcadia Area Historical Museum was the source for this online version of the tour. The first page of the tour contains a map of Arcadia with numbers identifying key sites and a list of the sites by number. For details about a site, click the number on the map or the site name. A popup window displays the details above the map.

The Javascript used for this behaves a bit differently based on each browser's interpretation, and some older versions of browsers will hide the popup behind the current window. To report any problems (Please do.), click here.

Museum Tour Additions -- July 2001
(Replaced by Museum Tour 2007)
The PBS web site has a new section called Chasing the Sun covering aviation history. The Aviation Timeline and Innovators sections lead to details about Harriet Quimby's place in history, and one of the related links leads to the Arcadia Area History Museum Tour's Harriet Quimby room. To make this link more useful, we added a link to the summary of the historic marker dedication and details about Harriet's childhood home near Arcadia.

Museum Tour Additions -- June 2001
(Replaced by Museum Tour 2007)
The museum parlor includes two wedding dresses and a bridesmaid dress from the 1860s.

Timeline -- February 2001
The timeline has been updated to include links to miscellaneous pictures supporting the summaries of events in the history of the Arcadia Area. Look for these links in the right-most column.

Arcadia's Prehistory -- January 2001
This exhibit summarizes the formation of the area up to the first human inhabitants. It describes the impact of glaciers and the development of plants and animals in the area with pictures provided through the courtesy of NASA, Tom Lowell at the University of Cincinnati, and Erich Schroeder at the Illinois State Museum. The exhibit also includes links to other web sites providing details about glaciers and the Midwest about 16,000 years ago.

Native Americans in Arcadia -- January 2001
This exhibit describes several views of the earliest Arcadia settlers. The first French explorers reported small, widely scattered groups of native peoples in the northern Great Lakes. In the 1850s, Sam Gilbert described a 40-50 acre Indian farm in what became present day Arcadia. In the 1970s, John Williams discovered many artifacts providing detailed evidence of how Point Arcadia was used.

Museum Events -- July 2000
Thanks to the hard work of many volunteers, the grand opening on July 15 was a huge success. Literally hundreds of people attended the ceremony, and most stayed for at least a quick tour of the museum on its first official day. The museum events page was updated to include comments by local state representative Dave Mead, museum hours, and a link to a photo of the ceremonies.

Update to the 1909 Virtual Showroom -- July 2000
This exhibit has been updated to show clearer pictures of the furniture and a brief description of each piece shown. In addition, if you click on any of the pictures, you will see a larger version of the picture. (Why not just show the larger pictures? The page already has so many images that it displays slowly at standard connection speeds. Each detailed image is large enough to make the download and display process even slower... annoyingly slow with slow connections, so it only happens when you ask for it.)

Museum Events -- July 2000
The grand opening is July 15, 2000. This page summarizes the day's events and other upcoming events of interest to museum goers.

Arcadia Days... The Old Way -- June 2000
Last summer while I was hanging out at the museum, someone donated a program from the Arcadia Days celebration held at the Arcadia School auditorium Thursday and Friday April 4-5, 1918. Arcadia Days bears little if any resemblance to the Arcadia Daze of today. Instead Arcadia Days included lectures on agriculture (for example, "Diseases of Fruit and their Remedies"), penmanship, citizenship, and prizes for compositions, penmanship, agricultural products, and baked goods.

Harriet Quimby Michigan Historic Site Marker -- May 2000
After nearly ten years of effort by Bonnie Hughes, historians have accepted the facts that Harriet Quimby was probably born in the Arcadia area and that she certainly spent her childhood in the area. The new page includes a picture of the historic site marker and links to a lot more information about the site, the event, and Harriet Quimby provided by students and faculty of the Onekama Consolidated Schools. Thank you, Barb Eldridge, for sharing this with the rest of us.

New Minnehaha Wreckage Photos -- April 2000
Low lake levels have exposed much more of the wreckage allowing a closer look without getting wet.

Timeline Details -- March 2000
Links were added to details about the Steamer Arcadia and the Arcadia Pier.

Exhibits -- March 2000
This is a new page that provides another way (in addition to the timeline) to find the interesting stuff on this web site. The Exhibits page lists the major things available to see here (and it should continue to do so long after the home page would have been filled). Each major exhibit and the timeline also include links to this new Exhibits page.

The A&BRR Route Today -- February 2000
Using the old map and a new map with the same county sections, we recreated the approximate route of the Arcadia & Betsey River Railway to figure out where the rails would be today, if the railway had survived.

The Furniture Company Site Today -- February 2000
John Manilla suggested this addition after discovering a photo of Arcadia harbor on the Michigan Department of Natural Resources web site. (Thanks, John.) A representative from SailNet.com, identified by the site's webmaster, kindly gave us permission to use the first photo. The second photo shows the location of the water tower.

A&BRR Engine 4 -- January 2000
While searching the web for information about railroads in the Arcadia area, we came across a photo of a standard gauge engine from the Arcadia & Betsey River Railway sitting on a siding in Henry. (The engine not the photo was sitting on the siding.) The people at the Kelsey Publishing Company kindly gave us permission to use the photo and added a link on their A&BRR page to our online museum for details about the A&BRR.

The 1909 Virtual Showroom -- December 2000
This new exhibit shows samples of each kind of furniture that could be ordered from the Arcadia Furniture Company's 1909 catalog, which was the first catalog produced exclusively for the Arcadia Furniture Company. (Earlier catalogs also included furniture from the Fox & Mason Furniture Company of Corunna, Michigan.)