This was a busy stretch of the Great Lakes, as I said before. Charles C. McCarty was the first one to recognize a business opportunity here because of the protected harbor of Sleeping Bear Bay and the abundant supplies of hardwood. He built the dock in 1865 and started selling cord wood. In 1868 he built a sawmill on the shore of Little Glen Lake near where the picnic area is today. The first mill burned down, but he had another one going by 1869. We cut trees around the lake and floated them over to the mill, where they were cut up and hauled on flatcars using the tramway to the dock. We used teams of horses to pull the flatcars. Back in those days, this was a dirt road, and the rails for the tramway ran along it all the way out to the dock. You could hear the horses straining at their harnesses and the creaking wheels of the flatcars loaded with lumber as they made their way through town to the dock. In 1907 D. H. Day bought a locomotive, and we moved the tramway so it came into town behind the Inn.

NTC took over the dock and wooding operations from McCarty in 1878. They had a fleet of 24 steamers that ran routes from Buffalo to Chicago and Milwaukee. Glen Haven supplied about one quarter of the wood for the fleet.

Continue your tour of Glen Haven on the following pages

Glen Haven History Intro Page
Glen Haven Dock
Sleeping Bear Inn
Wooding & Lumber Operations
General Store
Blacksmith Shop
Schoolhouse
Glen Haven Shipping
Canning Company
Other Topics