From a Railroad Town to a Gaslight District

How history defines Petoskey

By Hannah Cumler | May 25, 2024

“It is a beautiful downtown. And that’s why I came back,” says Amy Tweeten, manager for Petoskey Downtown.

Tweeten recently moved back to Petoskey after a brief stint as a city planner out West. But before that, she served as a city planner for Petoskey for 16 years. Truly appreciating the beauty of northern Michigan may be a realization you have to come to by leaving, but just take a look at Petoskey’s history, and you’ll see that the city has long been desired by residents and tourists alike.

“The passenger train started in the summer of 1875, and really, right away, people started coming,” Jane Garver, executive director of the Little Traverse History Museum, says as she reflects on the town’s history of tourism.

While many of us drive, bike, or boat to Petoskey today, Garver says the railroad is what really opened up the city to tourism, an industry that still defines it today.

But long before the railroad, Indigenous peoples called the Petoskey area home. “The Odawa people lived here for hundreds of thousands of years. Then, in 1852, a Presbyterian missionary named Andrew Porter came to the area,” explains Garver. “The Odawa camped around here, but a lot of them lived in what’s now Harbor Springs, but there were some in this area and Andrew Porter started a missionary school because he wanted to convert the Odawa people.”

Garver explains that Porter also had a couple of mills, including a sawmill and a gristmill, as far as she knows. “There was also a lot of industry,” says Garver, “H.O. [Hirem Obed] Rose got his money from the Gold Rush and then came here and started the lime kiln on the waterfront.”

Rose made a fortune in Petoskey with lime quarries and other business ventures, contributing to the industry of the area. “There were sawmills and grist mills all up and down the river. Michigan Maple Black was here, in some form starting in 1880, all the way until 2020,” Garver says.

Around the same time that the trains began running in 1875, Bay View, a Methodist Chautauqua, opened its doors. “It started more as a campground,” Garver says. “The cottages didn’t start right away. But people started coming here for the summer starting in 1875. So we’ve really been a resort town almost since the train started coming.”

Railroad Boom

Although train passengers didn’t roll into town until 1875, the railroad was required to be completed by 1874. Engineers and builders at the time used every last day, working right up to the deadline to complete the rail.

“The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad arrived December 31, 1874. Because they had a contract with the government, they had to come in 1874, so they made it by that time,” explains Garver. “Passenger trains started in the summer of 1875.”

Most of those passengers were making their way Up North from Chicago, St. Louis, or Detroit. Petoskey was a summer town, and “a lot of the stores were seasonal because people came either via boat or rail,” says Tweeten. Garver adds that tourists were brought right into downtown Petoskey, which once boasted over 10 hotels, as well as boarding houses.

“The only one we have left [in operation] is The Perry Hotel because a lot of them were wood structures and easily caught fire,” says Tweeten. “But if you go around downtown and you see we have surface parking lots … they’re all named after a lot of those hotel sites. There’s a sign that shows a picture and gives a little history of the hotel that was at that location.”

Another iconic spot in downtown arrived about 50 years later: JCPenny.

“Mr. and Mrs. Penny came to Petoskey on their honeymoon and decided to open a store here,” says Garver. “They thought Petoskey would be a great location for a store. That building was there before they opened the store; it had been a billiards hall and some other things.”

JCPenny opened on the corner of Mitchell and Howard streets in 1926 and only recently closed its doors in 2020 after 94 years in business.

Gaslight Questions

History continues to be a big part of downtown Petoskey, reflected in its architecture, multi-generational businesses, and more. The downtown, referred to as the Gaslight District, is on the National Register of Historic Places. “We have 278 contributing structures downtown in the historic district,” says Tweeten.

As for how it became known as the Gaslight District? Well, that has less to do with the city’s history than one might assume.

“That is interesting, because when I look at the pictures from say the 1880s and ’90s, I’ve only seen two gaslights in any old pictures,” says Garver. “So I don’t know that they necessarily used them.”

Garver explains the city’s moniker was actually formed much later. “In 1967, Bill Barney, who had Barney Linens on Lake Street, formed the Gaslight Association, and he got other merchants to join him.” The association was formed to get people interested in coming downtown. “As far as I know, it wasn’t like there were always these gaslights there.”

Blending Past and Present

Gaslights or no, preserving historic buildings and finding businesses to occupy the space has always been a high priority for the city. “That’s what the beauty of a downtown building is … the framework stays the same but the storefronts can change,” Tweeten says.

While some businesses have stood the test of time in their original locations, others have found new homes in the city’s historic buildings.

“Two contrasting businesses: you have Grandpa Shorter’s at the corner of Lake and Petoskey, which has been a gift shop for three generations,” says Tweeten, “and then you have North Goods, which is at the corner of Lake and Howard, which used to be a bank, and they’ve turned it into a retail space.”

Although new businesses come and go, memories of the building’s previous life will always remain. As Garver explains, “The place where Gypsy Vodka [Gypsy Distillery] is now, was Jesperson’s Restaurant for 114 years. That was a place where Ernest Hemingway went.”

(It wouldn’t be a true recollection of Petoskey history without mention of Hemingway, who spent summers at nearby Walloon Lake. “After he [Hemingway] was injured in the war in [Italy], he spent November and December in town in Petoskey at a boarding house and kind of hung out downtown and frequented Jesperson’s and what is now City Park Grill,” Garver says.)

As Petoskey looks ahead to the future, the city’s history and preservation efforts are paramount. While the downtown district is on the National Register of Historic Places, Tweeten says that “for many years we’ve had this discussion that we really need to create a local historic district which allows for local regulation to try to preserve buildings, to prevent buildings from being torn down.”

Tweeten adds that there was a study committee created for the local historic district shortly before the pandemic, but as with so many other endeavors, COVID slowed its progress. “There’s still very much an interest both from the city as a whole, and the downtown community to move forward on that process,” she says.

Photos courtesy of Little Traverse History Museum, Little Traverse Historical Society, and Downtown Petoskey.

Correction: A previous version of the story noted Ernest Hemingway's injury happened in Spain rather than in Italy.