Luce County Historical Museum

Historic preservationists lost the 1970s fight to save the county’s elaborate courthouse, but managed to keep the elaborate sheriff’s house, now the Luce County Historical Museum.

The museum of the Luce County Historical Society occupies the 1894 sheriff's house and county jail. It resembles a lumber baron's mansion. Its many stone arches and stained glass windows, its turret, and its rich textures of pressed brick, red sandstone, and shingles all make for a lively composition in the Queen Anne style. The building is worth a visit in its own right. Despite some later wallpaper, it's pretty much intact, with its original parlors, kitchen, dining room, bedrooms – and original jail cells, too. The turret has now been restored, its windows and sills renovated and its roof painted with four layers of gleaming gold paint.
In the 1970s, when modernizers sought to replace the entire courthouse complex, the newly formed historical society managed to save the grand the sheriff's residence. However, the courthouse, which also resembled an overgrown Queen Anne mansion, was demolished. The iron fountain and graceful crane, now in front of the museum, was originally part of the courthouse's park-like grounds.

For kids, the museum highlight is the sparsely furnished jail cell, a grim place clad in iron. It's the perfect place for a photo of dad. Other highlights depend on the visitors' interests. There's a lot here and if you ask, you'll get the story behind the objects – or the town. Captioning and interpretating are ongoing, starting with a display of old photos of Newberry.

Some visitors like the details of home life: how the cream separator and the butter churn worked, how irons were heated, how the ice box was drained, what items were in the country store, what toys kids played with, how quilts were made from recycled fabric, how women used collars and buckles to make old dresses look new. Collections are here and there: bottles, fans, a striking hat collection, African artifacts, and Swedish and Indian baskets.

Some rooms have approximate period furnishings. Others are more archival storage areas housing photographs, maps, books, a newly organized obituary file, yearbooks, and scrapbooks, including a special memorial album of area residents.

A very large map locates the important archaeological sites discovered in the 1960s by the late Charles Sprague Taylor and his son near Naomikong Point on Whitefish Bay. They found pottery fragments and points washed up in the bay, and worked with University of Michigan archaeologists to research them. Their finds proved to be one of the most significant sites of the Middle Woodland Period of Upper Great Lakes Culture between 200 B.C. and 800 A.D.

Taylor loved the area's woods and rivers and its history. Being in the forest products business gave him a chance to become quite familiar with the Tahquamenon River watershed. In writing Tahquamenon Country: A Look at Its Past , he drew on the stories of area lumbermen from the early 1900s. If your museum guide is Taylor's widow, Carol Taylor, you can hear the exciting story fof the Taylors' discovery first-hand and gain a knowledgeable perspective on the lumber era, too. She makes available to interested people his archives, including interview transcripts, lumber-era photographs, and the Naomikong discoveries. i

411 W. Harrie St. at Court, 4 blocks west of M-123/Newberry Ave. and a block north of McMillan. (906) 293-3786. Open from mid June into early Sept: Tues, Wed & Thurs 1-4 and by appointment thru fall. Free admission; donations appreciated. Wheelchair ramp: west side.
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