The year 1933 was a pivotal one for Leelanau County.
It may be said that the Depression year marked the end of the "old days" and the start of the more modern era, of which we are all part today.

The country hit rock bottom in the spring 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated president. One of the first acts of the new administration was the declaration of a “bank holiday.” Banks across the country had been failing and the temporary closure of all of them was considered necessary to avoid a complete financial meltdown.

Other measures undertaken by the administration to combat the Great Depression included the establishment of various “alphabet soup” agencies, such as the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps).

By 1933, Leelanau County had already lost its once familiar freight and passenger steamships, following the stock market crash of 1929. A transportation element that for decades had done much in building up the county was gone for good.

The county’s rail lines faltered, too, but they would survive the Depression only to face elimination in later years.

On the other hand, although the Great Depression gripped the entire country, its hold on Leelanau may have been less apparent than elsewhere. In fact, “we hardly knew we were in a depression,” Al Barnes, an area historian and former Lake Leelanau resident, once said. “Times simply were tough, just as they had been for years.”

What Barnes was alluding to was the passing of Michigan’s fabled lumbering era, which had spurred growth for virtually all of the Northland in the latter 19th century. After this era had peaked, there was a long sliding decline, which is reflected in census figures (Leelanau hit a peak in 1910).

The entire Grand Traverse region languished for decades after the timber had been cut.
When Empire Lumber Company’s mill at the lakefront burned in 1917, for example, it was not rebuilt, as it had been once before. Too much timber had been logged off.

Four years later, the tracks of the little Empire and South Eastern railroad were taken up and the rolling stock was disposed of. There was still farming, trade and tourism, but the general level of activity in the region was slower.

The onset of the Great Depression simply meant things would slow up even more.

Some of the county’s “resorter” families, according to Leelanau historian Laura Quackenbush, were able to weather the Depression by temporarily moving into their seasonal homes, where they could grow vegetables and collect firewood for heating.

Other “resorters” appear to have been doing fine in an economy that saw one out four without employment. Meanwhile, the county’s “pioneers” were passing from the scene. In its edition of Feb. 23, 1933, the Enterprise carried the news of the loss of one of them.

“Frank Shalda, Pioneer Resident, Died Monday” was the heading above the story. “Frank Shalda, one of Leelanau county’s earliest settlers, died Monday night at his home in North Unity, in Cleveland township. He was 82 years old,” the newspaper reported.

“Mr. Shalda was born at Ondrejov, near Prague, in what is now Czecho-Slavakia, July 7, 1850. He came at the age of four years with his parents, Mr. And Mrs. Joseph Shalda, to America. After brief stops at New, York, Chicago and Traverse City, the family settled in Cleveland township in 1855. They were the first settlers in that part of the county.”

By 1933, the automobile was here to stay, although the horse hadn’t entirely gone out of use and it was related that “Mr. Shalda’s father had the first team of horses in that vicinity.

“Frank Shalda married, on August 5, 1878, Miss Mary Svoboda, who had also come from Czecho-Slovakia a few years before. They made their home near what is known as Shalda’s Corners, and some years ago they moved to a location on M-22, where Mr. Shalda built a store in 1909. He conducted this store personally until his last illness.”

A few months later, in its issue of June 29, the Enterprise carried the news of the passing of another pioneer named Frank, who was born one year after Shalda.

“Leelanau county lost one of its oldest remaining pioneers in the death of Frank E. Fisher of Glen Arbor, Tuesday morning. He had been ailing for some time,” the Enterprise reported. “Mr. Fisher was born in Wisconsin July 3, 1851, and came to Glen Arbor with his parents, Mr. And Mrs. John E. Fisher, in 1854. Glen Arbor was his home during the remainder of his life.”

Fisher’s father, John, was one of the “Three Johns” credited with the establishment of Glen Arbor, the other two being John LaRue and John Dorsey.

According to the Enterprise, “Mr. Fisher watched the progress of Leelanau county almost from the earliest days of its settlement by white men, and many were the interesting tales he could tell of the early pioneering days.”

Coincidentally, a member of another pioneer family that had settled in the same part of the county, William Kelderhouse, died the same day as Fisher.

Now the year 1933 is also history – as remote from today’s world as the world of the 1850s may have appeared to readers of the Enterprise three-quarters of a century ago.