bight: /bit/ n. 1. a curve or recess in a coastline, river, etc.

Ask for directions from someone in Northport and you’ll often hear, “It’s north of ‘the bight’,” or “It’s the next road past ‘the bight’.”

Our curiosity piqued, the Enterprise staff thought a little research was in order, first, to find out what “the bight” is.

And secondly, to learn if the name means the same thing to all people as a point of reference.

Blink and you'll miss it: "bight" near Northport.

“The Bight” is located in Section 26 of Leelanau Township, just north of Northport on County Road 640, at the north end of North Shore Drive. It can also be described as just south of where the county road splits into Woolsey Lake Road and Northport Point Road.

“It’s the bottom of a bay within a bay,” said Sue Hammersley O’Connor, who lived across from the bight for many years, beginning in 1975.

She and her late husband Dick Hammersley purchased the large house across the road from the bight in 1972.

“It was a boarding house for the original families that settled here,” said O’Connor, adding that they had their work cut out for them tackling the structure. “It had been vacant for 40 years. There had also been migrants living there.”

O’Connor’s research indicates the home at the bight is one of the oldest in the community, dating back to 1855 when it was constructed by Otis White. He was a New Yorker who came to Leelanau with a brother.

At one time the bight was also the site of a pier, from which goods were brought in or shipped out by water.

“My soul still resides there,” said Hammersley, whose family lived in two travel trailers during the renovation project. “We didn’t move in until 1975.”

A connection with the bight is also personal for longtime county resident Ray Kellogg, “I was born in the ‘bight school’,” said Ray, who grew up in Northport, the son of Orvall Kellogg, the first “modern day” fire chief in the community.

The school was located near Snyder Road, “at the top of the hill” where the road drops down by the water.

“My dad pulled the schoolhouse on skids during the winter to the village and made a house out of if,” he said. “I was born in that house.”

The home, owned by village Trustee Fred Thomas, is located on the northern end of the village across from a greenhouse in the pine trees.

“You could never tell it was a school at one time,” Thomas said.

Tom Bowker and his wife, Carol, live near the bight and have incorporated the landmark into the name of their business. “By the Bight” gallery is located at the intersection of Snyder Road and County Road 640.

“The first time I remember (hearing about the bight) we were living up by Cathead Bay,” said Bowker. “Folks in town would say ‘go north of town past the bight’. I never paid too much attention to it.”

Then couple moved their studio and gallery from the village to just south of the bight. Not long afterward, the couple talked with neighbors Phyllis and John Kilcherman, who have an antique apple farm nearby, and learned about the school.

“Today I could tell you that a ‘bight’ is an indent in the shoreline that open up to a larger bay,” he explained.

Others have said that the “bight” is aptly named in that it looks as if a “bite” was taken from the shoreline.
Leelanau Township fire chief Hugh Cook has two points of reference when it comes to the bight.

“We used to swim there when I was a kid,” he said. “As the fire chief, it’s a great water point. It’s a calm area.”
County emergency services coordinator Tom Skowronski said recently he didn’t know the location of the bight.

Dispatchers are routinely trained in colloquialisms for locations such as:

• Polack’s Corners — where M-72 turns to the north, connecting with Armstrong Road and County Road 669 heading south toward Benzie County. Polack Lake is located just north and east of the intersection.

• Shimek’s Corners — Just to the north of Pollack’s Corners, it is where M-72 makes a 90-degree turn to the west, intersecting with County Road 669 to the north. Acreage to the east has been owned by the Shimek family for many years.

“I’ll be sending out an email to the dispatchers to let them know where the bight is,” Skowronski said.