Skip to Main
The Four

Time Traveling With The Benzie Magical History Tour

9&10 Logo

All aboard the Benzie Magical History Tour.

The Benzie Bus is like a time machine taking you back centuries.

First stop – the Lake Ann Historical Center.

“That’s part of the old store, which is now the Lake Ann Grocery Store and that was built after the first fire that hit Lake Ann,” said Barb Sheaks, with the Lake Ann Historical Society.

The Lake Ann Historical Center tried to preserve as much as they could.

“The original post office after fire,” she explained. “A whole collection of historical photographs that are actually in working order.”

Also preserving where and why the fire began.

“The gambler mill that caused the first fire and also has a set up for the farming section and the original kitchen,” she said.

“After that, the village continues outside to try many different displays,” she said. “So we are like a mini Greenfield Village of up North that you can go visit and find out and walk through history with us.”

A few steps outside we find ourselves in the fire house.

A piece of history – that’s become a part of modern history.

It leads the homecoming parade each year.

“A 1946 international fire truck it’s in perfect working order except for its manual drive,” she said.

“Next is the boathouse holding a Thompson wood boat, which used to be popular on Lake Ann, back in the day,” Sheaks explained.

“This is the Brethren Babcock house and he and his family built this house back in 1872 and it was moved here in 2003,” she said.

He was a minster in Lake Ann and this was one of the few buildings missed by the fire.

“You first walk into the dining room and that’s where they would entertain people, have tea, have bible study, and little luncheons,” she explained.

“Every home had to have one back then — was a sewing machine — because everyone had to make their own clothes,” she said.

Everything in this home was donated by people from the area.

“To try to keep it so the house looks like when Mr. and Mrs. Babcock left the house,” she said.

This tour gives modern people a taste of what life was like before they were even born.

“This is the village in the village of Lake Ann and this is a walk back in time,” she said.

Your history lesson doesn’t stop once you leave the museum.

Al narrates the past couple centuries as you navigate your way through Benzie County on the Benzie Bus.

That’s until you find yourself at the next stop…

It’s time for class at the drake school.

“This is the only school that’s been restored in county,” said Al Bryant, a docent with the Benzie Area Historical Museum. “This would have all sorts of grades in it…might have first through sixth grade, they’d be studying all different things.”

That lasted until 1953.

“They did away with the one room school houses,” he said.

As we make our way outside, we notice the American flag, like most traditional schools today, but flags were made a little differently in 1907…

“Our flag out front is a 45-star flag,” Bryant explained.

Next stop, Honor.

“Honor was built by a lumber baron, Mr. Gifford, and he has a daughter named Honor so he named Honor after her, it was a lumbering company,” said Sharon Osborne, a docent with the Benzie Area Historical Museum.

A historical street filled with buildings whose walls have witnessed many stories throughout the centuries.

“A lot of older buildings with some of the older faces on them, like the silver dapper was across the street,” she said.

The final stop on this magical tour takes us to the Benzie Historical Museum — around since 1969.

“Originally this was a congregational church,” said Bryant.

History fills these walls from floor to ceiling.

Their collection is eye catching and ever evolving.

“We try to change things so it isn’t always a static collection,” he said. “We have one of the nicest collections on the Grand Army of the Republic, which was sort of like the VFW or American Legion of the Civil War.”

When the magical history bus tour is complete and your mind is back in the 21st century, you might just walk away with a deeper appreciation for the world we live in, today.

“There’s a lot of history here, it’s fun because you get to introduce this to other people,” he said.

 

9&10 Logo

Local Trending News