The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗In 1836, individuals from various tribes of native people signed the Treaty of Washington, which ceded the northwest portion of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan to the United States. At the time, native people lived in the Bear Lake area, evidence remaining in various burial mounds of the region, including one at Pierport.
In 1841, John Stronach and party came to the Manistee area and started a lumber mill. During the following twenty years, the city of Manistee grew as virgin forests were cut, and the logs put into the Manistee rivers to float to the mills on Manistee Lake.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Start Bear Lake’s collection
The first neighbors to add old photos shape how Bear Lake’s history is told.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Bear Lake
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Bear Lake, decade by decade
2000
Nothing in Bear Lake is on the National Register yet
That’s true of most small towns. It doesn’t mean Bear Lake has no history, only that no one has written up a nomination. The closest listed place is Manistee County Courthouse Fountain in Onekama, 4.9 miles away.
Bear Lake and the nearest listed places
How a place gets listed
Then & now
When neighbors add old photos, retakes from the same spot appear here side by side.
Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.