CHASSELL

St. Anne's is a handsome introduction to Chassell for motorists heading north.

Chassell is the village everyone drives up through if they head up the Keweenaw Peninsula on U.S. 41 from L'Anse and Marquette. First settled by French farmer John Chassell in 1867, it grew into a substantial place in the 1880s because of its location on a railroad and on Pike Bay. Lumber drives all along the Sturgeon River south to Covington and beyond floated logs to booms in Pike Bay, where they waited to be sawn. Over 15 fishing boats were busy during the fall herring run. The Dormer Fish House, active from 1930 to 1968, was busy cleaning, salting, and packing fish.

Chassell's history is well told in words and photos at the Chassell Heritage Center and online at www.chassell.info . Scroll way down to "history." This content-rich, user-friendly web site reveals many of Chassell's natural attractions and diversions under "exploring Chassell" and "Park/Recreaton." The site also has maps, Chassell Cemetery and historical records for genealogists. It could be a model for similar towns.

Interesting places like this doll and crafts shop are scattered throughout Chassell's downtown along U.S. 41, the main entrance to Houghton-Hancock and points north in the Keweenaw.

Chassell is still known for its strawberry farms, now down to half a dozen. The strawberry story is told in the new permanent exhibit at the Chassell Heritage Center, "From Lumber Kings to Strawberry Queens." Its lively Strawberry Festival, held the first weekend after the Fourth of July, features tasty strawberry shortcake and a wonderful small-town parade Saturday at 11 a.m.

Chassell is today a more of a bedroom community with a farming heritage. Its population is about 1,800 - roughly as big as Baraga or L'Anse. The success of The Einerlei gift shop and garden, started in 1975 in one of Chassell's then rundown commercial buildings, has inspired additional antique and crafts shops to occupy some of the town's old commercial buildings. The name, Nancy and Bill Leonard explain on their web site, means "one and the same" in German. "When they opened their store, their philosophy was to have their work and their play 'one and the same.'" Thirty years later, you bump into the results of their steady energy all over town, most noticeably at the history museum and the Friends of Fashion, but also from Bill's long tenure in township government.

The one-mile, lighted Chassell Classic Cross-Country Ski Trail starts and ends at the parking lot of the Chassell Heritage Center in the former school. Trails wind along the wooded hillside, with views of the Portage Waterway.

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