Editors note: Our series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Record-Eagle continues with a look at the top 10 stories of the last 150 years. Perry Hannah top the list, and more on the lumber baron and his impact can be found in today's online History section, record-eagle.com/150, along with a look at some of the other people important to the area over the past century and a half. During the coming year, Loraine Anderson will write about the growth of the paper and Grand Traverse region.
The votes are in.
The life and career of lumber baron Perry Hannah in 1851 and a landmark early Indian treaty lead the Record-Eagle's list of top 10 local stories of the last 150 years.
Granted, there weren't that many current readers around when they happened, but they qualify because of their dramatic and lasting effects on the history of the entire Grand Traverse region.
Those two events created different destinies for the area's American Indians and Euro-American settlers -- two paths that only began to merge in the late 20th century when federal courts upheld fishing rights and sovereignty of the Michigan tribes who signed the Treaty of 1836.
This list isn't the editors' alone. Readers, local historians and history buffs helped compile it as part of the Record-Eagle's year-long birthday celebration of the Grand Traverse Herald, founded by Morgan Bates on Nov. 3, 1858. The Herald was Michigan's first newspaper north of Grand Rapids, and lives on today as it was one of the Record-Eagle's forerunners.
So here is our list. Selections were made based on their enduring impact on the area.
1. Hannah, Lay start company
Perry Hannah and A. Tracy Lay start Hannah-Lay & Co. following Hannah's 1851 scouting trip to the Grand Traverse region. The company's lumber, retail, shipping and development enterprises turn Traverse City into a "Queen City of the North" by the late 1800s and a regional business and industrial hub.
2. Treaty ramifications
Michigan's Ottawa and Chippewa Indians cede 13.9 million acres of land to the federal government in 1836. It includes 37 percent of present-day Michigan's land and water. This paves the way for statehood and a flood of settlers. Entrepreneurs and venture capital will fuel unprecedented expansion and growth that will haul out the lumber, passenger pigeons and fish to city markets, drastically altering traditional native social and governing structures, families, hunting-gathering-bartering economy, language and culture. Treaty promises are broken, but the concept of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights withstand an arduous century-long test of time.
3. Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad arrives
The Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad arrives in Traverse City in 1872, accelerating settlement, logging and development. The city experiences an economic boom and construction frenzy from 1800 to 1900. By 1892, three railroads serve the area.
4. Northern Michigan Asylum opens
The Northern Michigan Asylum opens here in 1885 and becomes an important economic stabilizer for the area for the next century, providing jobs and supply contracts for area businesses. It will house more than 3,000 patients in the 1960s, when a national trend of de-institutionalization and community treatment begins. The state shut it down completely in 1989.
5. Fruit business
The Grand Traverse City region becomes a prime fruit-growing area by 1900 and is well-known for its cherries by 1915. This leads to the development of canneries along the shoreline and elsewhere, as well as other farm and fruit-related businesses.
6. 'Motoring' tourists arrive
The pastoral orchards, scenic views and more campgrounds make the area a favorite of the new "motoring" tourists. Traverse City civic leaders promote the region's beauty in the late 1920s and create the National Cherry Festival, the state's first major summer festival as part of its continuing effort to build area tourism. It's still one of the state's big festivals and draws an estimated hundreds of thousands yearly to Traverse City.
7. Waterfront cleanup
Cleanup and redevelopment of city's industrial waterfront, basically a dump, starts and Clinch Park opens in 1930. Beautification of the bayshore continues through the present with the construction of the Grandview Parkway in the early 1950s, creation of the Open Space, Traverse Area Recreation Trail along West Bay and the remake of Clinch Marina in 2004.
8. Interlochen Music Camp
Ann Arbor music teacher Joseph Maddy founds the National Music Camp in 1928 on 50 wooded acres. It grows in size and national reputation and will bring national and international musicians and artists to the area. Interlochen Arts Academy, the nation's first independent arts boarding school, opens in 1962 and its classical radio station WIAA-FM the following year. It launches Interlochen Public Radio station in 2000.
9. NMC opens
Northwestern Michigan College opens in 1951, making it possible for many area residents to obtain two-year college degrees and technical training. In 1989, it buys the former Sara Lee Corp. office building along Cass Road. It opens the University Center there in 1995 with Rotary Charity startup funds, providing some four-year degree and post-graduate programs to area residents.
10. Rotary Charities
Rotary Charities is created after the Traverse City Rotary Club discovers oil and gas deposits in 1976 under Camp Greilick, a 400-acre parcel it owns and rents to the Boy Scouts. Since its inception in 1978, Rotary Charities has awarded 704 grants totaling $38.4 million to 271 organizations. Its grants have helped build bike trails throughout the region, renovate the State Theatre, conserve fragile lands, and underwrite projects for health programs, museums, libraries and a multitude of other community-building services and programs.
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