BLANEY PARK

Region: Tahquamenon & Seney, Grand Marais & Whitefish Point

Blaney Park is one of many examples of lumber towns that survive in transmuted form. It's on M-77, one mile north of U.S. 2 and 12 miles south of the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. Blaney began in 1902 as the company town of a logging company based in Chicago. In 1909 the townsite and some 33,000 acres were acquired by Wisconsin Land and Lumber Company, owned and operated by the civic-minded Earle family. Its founder had invented the machinery that first produced tongue-and-groove flooring, sold under the IXL brand. (The IXL Museum, a beautifully preserved office of its main IXL mill in Hermansville, west of Escanaba, can still be visited today.)

USGenWeb

The sleek front porch of the Blaney Park Resort from over a century ago.

By 1926 logging was over. The next generation of Earles considered other possibilities for Blaney, including cattle ranching, forestry, and agriculture. The best possibility seemed to be recreation based on hunting and fishing. They remodeled existing buildings and in 1927 opened the Blaney Park Resort—33,000 acres of cutover land with many small lakes and streams. Eventually the resort's appeal was broadened with a restaurant, tennis, golf, and riding, successfully aimed at affluent guests. Old logging roads became hiking and riding trails. Cottages were built. In 1933 the first heated swimming pool in the Midwest was built. A private airfield enabled guests to fly in. Hunting and fishing in the backcountry was always the big attraction of the Blaney Park Resort.

Blaney Park’s company houses are sized right for retirees or summer residents. Larger buildings are used as lodgings like Blaney Lodge and Celibeth House B&B.

The resort thrived into the 1950s but then declined, a victim of superhighways and air-conditioning. The Earles auctioned off the land and buildings in 1984-1985. A variety of small businesses sprang up. Quite a bit of Blaney's back acreage was purchased by the community-minded Zellar family, descended from one couple who had 11 children. (That's why Zellars seem to be everywhere from Blaney to Newberry.) The Zellars' land is used for hunting, fishing, fourwheeling, and timber production, too.

Now the original 1984 generation of Blaney small business entrepreurs has passed on the torch to younger people. The old schoolhouse (later the resort theater, with plays) at 4370 North M-77 is now Scott Barr's BLANEY PARK ANTIQUES (see Blaney Park Antique Shops), a multi-dealer mall open daily from May through September. House sales in Arizona and Texas yield some sophisticated pieces, while snowshoes, fishing lures, and such come from around here. Antiques are also sold at the CELIBETH HOUSE at Blaney's north end, and on the channel in Curtis, at the eclectic ANTIQUES at the OLD BOATHOUSE (906-586-6033). A coffeehouse/antiques shop may come to Blaney's onetime general store. Newberry plumbing contractor Norm Colburn and his wife have renovated the beautiful BLANEY INN, also formerly part of the Blaney Park Resort, as a banquet facility with a new kitchen and hardwood flooring. (906-586-6122; nfc14072 sbcglobal.net.) Area residents hope it might become a restaurant.

With many fishing lakes nearby, Blaney Park is a pleasant, laid back kind of place. It's a quiet place—except for Father's Day weekend in June, Friday to Sunday, when the BLANEY PARK RENDEZVOUS attracts thousands of motorcycles to the corner of U.S. 2 and M-77, where the Blaney Cottages were before fire destroyed some of them. After the Rendezvous's original backer died, area loggers Bill and John Zeller have sponsored it as a family event to promote the area and raise money for Bay Cliff Health Camp's expansion into a year-round facility for handicapped children. A $30 weekend pass covers free camping, two days of live music, bike-related vendors, games, and a motorcycle rodeo. See online details.

Sometime in the first week of August, the Dodsworth Saxhorn Band plays in Blaney. It's a period brass band where the newest instrument is around 90 years old. (Call the Blaney Lodge for details—906-283-3883.)

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