150 years of history in Mears continued

railroad by the Spring Lake Iron Company of Fruitport. Some 40,000 bushels were produced monthly by a crew of 70 men.

1880: The Golden School listed 283 students in attendance. The school included students through the 10th grade. Juniors and Seniors could go to Hart for the remaining two years of high school.

1880s: A narrow-gauge logging railroad runs from along Goyt’s hill at Mears to the sawmill on the west edge of Morris Lake.

1881: The Chicago and Michigan Lake Shore Road is taken over by the Chicago and West Michigan Railroad. Reportedly, 60.5 acres of apples and other fruits are growing in the township. The second Golden Township school is built.

1882: There are reportedly two post offices in the Mears area: one in Mears proper and one located in East Golden Township.

1890s: Up until World War I, 12 passenger trains traveled through Mears each day to Hart, Pentwater, and Muskegon.

1890–1900: This decade is the best guess as to when the historic Fenton Mill building was built.

1893: The Swedish Evangelical Mission Church of Mears formally organizes.

1895: A map of the dunes and Silver Lake shows the lake to be some 1.4 miles wide at its widest point, with three parcels of land totaling 92 acres on the west side of the lake.

1898: The Swedish Covenant Church building is built and dedicated.

1899–1918 The Mears Post Office is housed in the former Edwin Johnson family home.

1902: The Mears Methodist Church is built. Its large fieldstone foundation and red brick adorn the exterior. Inside, oak trim and furnishings and stained-glass windows, made in Belgium, complete the sanctuary. The present-day church is the third Methodist Church building in Mears. The first, made of logs, sat on the corner of 7th and Joy Streets and burned down when a forest fire came through the village. The second Methodist church sat near the same location and was later sold to the local fraternal order of Maccabees.

1907: A cement block school is built one block east of the four corners. It had three classrooms for Kindergarten through 10th grade students. It also had a room that was used as a gymnasium and a full basement with two Holland furnaces. In 1930, indoor toilets were installed in the basement. It would be used as a school until 1961. At one time, the school operated its own high school for Mears residents, with an additional 22 tuition students from surrounding rural schools.

1908: The Ward and Walker Store burns to the ground on July 8. Damages were sustained in buildings owned by R. T. Morris, C. L. Gold, and E. A. Post.

1909: The Swift Lathers family moves to Mears.

1910: A second train depot is built in Mears after the first burned down. Mac Woods comes to Silver Lake to farm and ends up in the tourist business with his Floradale Resort.

1912: Ernest Johnson arrives in Mears from Sweden.

1914: Swift Lathers starts the Mears Newz newspaper. The weekly paper sold for a 50-cent subscription fee for its entire 55 years of existence.

1914: Mrs. Augur’s Kanning Kitchen opens as a custom cannery. The business, owned and operated by Warner and May Augur and their daughters Helen, Gertrude, and Alice Augur, continued for 46 years until 1960.

1914: The first “Golden Fair Flower Carnival” is held. The annual event would include produce displays put together by local schools and displayed at the town hall, a meal served at the church or school, often with a program afterward, and the crowning of a king and queen by the local schoolchildren.

1914: The first street lights appear. The Mears Civic Association, or “Booster Club,” forms

1915: Alice Wright Fuller is crowned the first queen of the Golden Fair Flower Carnival.

1915: The Tiffany family builds a bakery and combines it with a general store.

1915: Luther Fenton, forerunner to the Fenton Receiving Company, buys land from Charles Mears to build a home.

1917: Mears reportedly includes a lumber yard, feed mill, livery stable, two blacksmiths, wagon sales, two grocery stores, general dry goods stores, a hotel, a bank, a newspaper, a post office, a bakery, Methodist and Baptist churches, and a railroad station.

1919: Land owned by Carrie Mears is sold to the state park’s commission for a state park.

150 Years of HistorY in Mears

is continued on page 6