Overview: Lumbering in the Arcadia Area

For a thirty year period beginning around 1869 Michigan was the leading lumber producer in the

United States. Lumbering in Michigan started in the southeastern part of the state and moved north

and west in a continual search for new stands of timber. Along almost every navigable stream that

could carry logs, lumber camps cut logs and sent them downstream to sawmills that turned logs into

lumber and other wood products.

As time passed, the methods used throughout the process improved. Human- and water-powered

saws were replaced by commercial steam-powered saws. Sailing ships picked up lumber along the the

Lake Michigan shoreline, until piers were built into Lake Michigan for the sawmills at Pierport,

Arcadia, Burnham, and all along the shoreline. Lumbering that could only be done in the winter nears

rivers and streams became a full-time operation with the introduction of big wheels and narrow

gauge steam engines. Safe harbors like Arcadia’s and steam ships like the Arcadia and Sydney O. Neff

transported wood products to Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities along Lake Michigan's shore.

In the 1850s Harrison Averill’s sawmill near Watervale was one of the first to provide lumber to

settlers in that area and to ships anchored along Lake Michigan's shore. Around 1874 the Huntington

Sawmill was built just south of present day Arcadia to provide lumber to settlers in the immediate

area and ships. Henry Starke made his first purchase of timber land in the spring of 1866, and by

1883 he owned around 2,000 acres in northern Manistee county and a sawmill at the north end of

Lake Arcadia.

Imagine riding a carriage in the mid-1800s just south of what would become Arcadia and seeing the

valley for the first time. The area had large forests of pine, the staple of Michigan’s growing lumber

industry. Streams nearby might be used to transport logs. The small lake could be used to store logs

next to a mill where they would wait their turn to be cut into lumber. The lake was separated from

Lake Michigan only by a narrow sand bar, so a channel to Lake Michigan was within reach. A large

sawmill and a safe harbor could help fill an insatiable demand for lumber in Chicago and with what

seemed like an inexhaustible supply in Michigan.