Lake County Celebrates 150 Years With Trip Back In Time

It’s March 18th, 1871, and Governor Henry Baldwin signed legislation officially establishing Lake County in the State of Michigan. Fast forward 150 years and a lot has changed, but some things have managed to stay the same.

“I tell people for such a small county, we have a huge history,” says Lake County Historical Society President, Bruce Micinski. “It’s a melting pot of people from immigrants to African-Americans to civil war soldiers to the logging days to recreation.”

This week Lake County is hosting a variety of events to celebrate the sesquicentennial of the unique 567 square mile area.

Sid Woods has lived in Chase his whole life. He can trace his family back to the region in 1869, before Baldwin or even the county was established.

“My  great-grandfather, John Batchelder homesteaded in 1870. He came up in 1869 for health reasons. A doctor in Ohio told them to go where there’s pine,” says Woods, standing on wooded property off US-10. His family almost held on to the land for 150 years, but it sold several years ago. 

John Batchelder traveled from Grand Rapids via stagecoach – a popular mode of transportation at the time. He stayed at a settlement called Summitville, now a ghost town. Batchelder went back to Ohio once his health improved, but later returned in 1870 to make his homestead at 21 years-old.

“It was quite a big two-story house there,” says Woods’ as he points to the towering trees off the highway. He points in the direction where the house sat, decades before. “It was used for a post office and stuff too.”

Batchelder wasn’t the only settler to find a home there. Union soldiers, returning from war, came with the promise of 40 to 80 acres of land and timber rights.

“Many of the soldiers were looking for a new place,” says Micinski. “A lot of those soldiers came up here and had awarded land sight unseen and started to homestead, cleared the land, built a log cabin and started their lives.”

Car settlement, outside of Baldwin, was one of the settlements. 

“That was started in 1867 by Charles Car and Benjamin Barnett, who are brother in laws,” says Micinski. “They came here from Lawrence County, New York, and started to farm and to clear the land. That community is still in existence today.”

Immigrants came to the area for their health, much like Batchelder did. The area is rich in lakes, woods and wildlife.

People also came to the area in search of refuge. Idlewild, known as a the Black Eden, became a safe haven for African-Americans as early as the 1900s.

“[It] was selling lots to African-Americans, which was very unusual at that time,” says Micinski. “They could buy a 25 by 100 hundred foot lot and own a piece of land, which was something, again, very unusual for an African-American family back in the nineteen hundreds.” 

There was a great migration north for the auto industry in Detroit. As more people were able to afford vacations and driving cars, the area began to boom. Ads to buy cottages or to vacation could be seen in places like Chicago. Idlewild even made it in the Green Book – a guide for safe places African-Americans could eat, sleep and travel to before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Famous names W.E.B. DuBois, Della Reese, Sarah Vaughan and Four Tops visited many times. Dr. Dan Williams came from Chicago, and was the first surgeon in America to perform open heart surgery. 

Baldwin also has a great deal of history. It wasn’t always the seat of Lake County.

“We had the great battle of Chase in which the Baldwin Knights, who thought they should be the county seat, actually went and stole the county records and returned into Baldwi,” says Micinski.

Governor Baldwin presented Baldwin with an American flag in 1872, as a thank you for naming the town after him. The flag, on display for the 150th celebration, is 13 by 26 feet, hand-stitched with only 37 stars. It was retired when more states were added to the union.

Many of these towns have changed over time. Places like Marlborough, once bustling with industry, are now crumbling ghost towns. Baldwin and Chase remain active, but as they used to be.

“We need to improve,” says Micinski. “Maybe our having employment availability for jobs for people who remain here. But as we said in our our sort of our banner that we did our logo for the one hundred and fifty years, we said our history is still unfolding.

Some hope the area can be revived to the tourist hub it once was.

“We hope that the area is progressing as far tourism,” says “We are seeing development here in in Baldwin and other areas as far as some new restaurants being built.”

Here is a list of events for the Sesquicentennial: