There are thousands of places to go fishing in Michigan, but there is only one Fishtown.
Tucked between Lake Leelanau and Lake Michigan, with the Leland River running through it, is a tiny commercial fishing district, dotted with wooden shanties dating back decades.
According to a 2011 report by the Fishtown Preservation Society, the site originally was inhabited for hundreds of years by the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes. In 1853, Antoine Manseau, a French-Canadian ship builder, carpenter and millwright who had been living on the west side of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, arrived in the area while looking for a river that could supply power for his sawmill. He built the sawmill and a dam on the river, originally called the Carp River, and founded the town of Leland.
Lumber mills soon took advantage of the nearby beech and sugar maple forests, and three docks for shipping wood were built by the 1860s, the Fishtown Preservation Society report said. By 1867, the town had “three stores, a saw and grist mill, a stave and heading manufactory, two hotels or boarding houses, shoe and blacksmith shops, a physician and grocer,” according to an edition of the Michigan State Gazetteer.
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In the next 30 years, an ironworks company came and went, and the lumber industry began to lose money. As the industries faded away, Leland became mainly a fishing village.
By the early 1900s, there were several fishing operations pulling herring, whitefish, lake trout and sturgeon out of Lake Michigan. Most of the shanties were built within the next 30 years; the oldest one surviving today dates to 1903.
“If someone dropped into Fishtown today, and they had been here 120 years ago, they would still recognize this place,” said Amanda Holmes, executive director of the Fishtown Preservation Society.
With the new century came new breakwaters, improvements to the harbor and a concrete dam as the fishermen upgraded their sailboats to steam and gasoline-powered tugs. The fishing companies of Leland thrived through the first half of the 1900s.
A new name for the shanties and houses surrounding the river emerged: Fishtown.
Around the same time, the sea lamprey began to invade the Great Lakes, feeding on trout and whitefish. According to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, “before the sea lamprey invasion, Canada and the United States harvested about 15 million pounds of lake trout in the upper Great Lakes each year. By the early 1960s, the catch had dropped dramatically to approximately 300,000 pounds.”
As the fishing industries suffered, and many companies disappeared, tourism around Leland began to expand. Two popular destinations, the Cove restaurant and Falling Waters lodge, were built in the mid-1960s. Fishing shanties and icehouses became shops and retail businesses.
“Some of those businesses have had the same owner for nearly 50 years,” says Holmes. “Having those business there are part of why Fishtown survives. It’s become part of the tourist economy up in this area.”
The Carlson family, whose roots in the area dated back to the 1870s, ran one of the commercial fishing business and eventually owned many of the structures of Fishtown. But the family ran into financial trouble in the 1990s and there was concern that the area would soon be home to condominiums and modern businesses. The Fishtown Preservation Society was formed to save the site “as an active fishery and to preserving the historic integrity of its buildings,” according to the book “Fishtown,” by Laurie Kay Sommers.
“We’ve built on the work of fisherman and others who also wanted this place to survive,” says Holmes. “The organization came together to make certain it would be here for future generations.”
In 2007, the society purchased many of the buildings from the Carlson family and now owns 10 of the 14 shanties in the district. Some of them are used for storage or vacation rentals, but most are rented out to businesses that appeal to the tourists.
“When they’re here we also hope that they can recognize that it’s still an active commercial fishery,” says Holmes of the tourists. “It’s this incredible experience, and a Great Lakes experience that people get to have just by walking and enjoying. There’s something here for everyone.”