Manistee County Historical Museum

The Manistee County Historical Museum is located at 425 River Street, only 1/2 block from the Municipal Marina.

We found the museum to be extremely interesting. Hopefully the photos in this blog can capture the atmosphere of the place.

There are a wide variety of exhibits. One of our favorites was a table full of old books. Unlike at other museums, visitors can browse through these books.

One that we found interesting was “Book #3 – Miscellaneous Boats”. Here’s an excerpt about the Onekama Sailing Club:

The book went on to talk about the trouble that this club had keeping a cook. As the book says, the good ones quit and the bad ones were fired (some things never change). One left after seeing “swamp angels”. They eventually got “Mother Monaghan” to come on board. Her first lunch was Corned Beef and Cabbage. For dinner she made Corned Beef and Cabbage. For breakfast the next day, she made, you guessed it, Corned Beef and Cabbage. When the crew started to rebel, she told them “ ‘Tis better that what you’re getting’ at home. You’ll eat this and like it!” That’s a real cook for you! (Phil hears those same words pretty frequently - and, as difficult as this is to admit, they are usually true!)

Much of the museum was devoted to nautical items, such as models of old sailing ships and freighters on Lake Michigan.

For you antique powerboat fans, they had a really nice example of an old Century boat – located high up on the ceiling.

But there’s more to the history of Manistee than boats. The second floor of the museum shows “slices of life” from the 1800s. Here’s a room showing the typical “office” at a lumber company.

There is much more to the museum than we are showing here. It only costs a $3 donation per adult (or $5 per couple) to tour the museum.

Manistee (with an "S") Michigan

We had a nice trip up from Pentwater to Manistee. It was a sunny day, and the lake was relatively calm as we pulled out of Pentwater. Not as flat as some of our earlier days, but very comfortable.

Bernie made up a great little lunch while underway – a fruit plate with cheese and crackers. She put so much into the visual aspect of it, that we had to document it.

The highlights of the trip were going around Big Sable Point and seeing our first real freighter of the trip. As we are rather inexperienced freighter spotters, we first thought it was two ships … then two ships that must be connected to each other … finally, it became clear that it was a very large freighter with two pilot houses or deck houses or whatever those things are called.

As we entered the Manistee River, we had to move aside for a cruise ship. Not quite as large some of the big ocean going ones, but an honest to goodness cruise ship nonetheless.

In Manistee we stayed at the Manistee Municipal Marina. It is not far from the channel entrance and has fairly roomy slips. The slips can be a little unnerving for the inexperienced as the front of the slips are very rocky, where the water gets shallow quickly. You can’t see that from the helm. Well, at least not from ours. But the marina sends out dockhands to assist with all boats coming in and the dockhands know how deep the slips are and position you according to how much you draw.

One of our cruising guides mentioned the river current as something to watch out for. But we found it to be very slow, almost unnoticeable at the marina, and since we were moving upriver, it actually helped with the turn into the slip.

When we pulled in, the dockhands that helped us were both females. It’s nice to see that there is equal opportunity employment out there in what you normally see as “man’s work”!

The marina has free wi-fi.

Manistee, itself, seems to be trying (rather successfully it appears) to transition from an industrial town to a more tourism-focused town. The Port of Call book that we use mentioned that the town was quaint without being a tourist trap. And that truly is what we found. The downtown area is well kept. It is full of independent shops (almost no vacant storefronts) with interesting architecture.

The notable feature of the town, we thought, is the Riverwalk. It runs the entire length of the Manistee River with easy access to the main street in town (River Street) at least every block. Portions of it are REALLY a river walk as it extends over pilings. It meanders out to the channel, past all the marinas and the public boat launch. Bernie ran her morning jog/run along the Riverwalk this morning and saw a beaver. It looked odd because it was on land but the characteristic big flat tail gave it away.

The Riverwalk also has markers that point out historic information about the town’s lumber and shipping history. And there is a lot of history here. The markers were so interesting that we stopped by the Manistee County Historical Museum. As it turns out, the Museum is worth a separate blog post – because we took so many pictures while at the museum.

There is enough to see and do in Manistee that we could have stayed another day.