“I had a deep interest in history from Day One,” Fel Brunett says. “I was born in the house my great-grandfather built in 1881.” Fel still lives in that house—not far from Fife Lake where he is Curator of the Historical Museum.
Walking through the Museum, Fel points out an old ballot box with its sealing wax. “They took to Traverse City for the official count,” he says. Other showcases feature cranberry harvesting equipment, blacksmith bellows, sawmill blades, and a local still from Prohibition.
What did that whiskey taste like? “Pretty good,” Fel says, “according to my dad.”
Although Fel knows a lot about history, he’s even more fascinated by pre-history. “A family friend found a Clovis point in a potato field and I had a chance to photograph it.” Clovis points are spear heads that were used by native peoples to hunt mastodons 13,000 years ago. “The Manistee River was 500 feet wide back then,” he says, “but they got across it.”
The Museum welcomes about 600 visitors a year, Fel says. “People are more interested in history from the 1980s than the 1880s—but that’s because it’s not interpreted well. Any area can be as rich in history as this one.”