History, including local lore, can be ironic.

It is ironic, for instance, that today Greilickville, despite being as populous a community as there is in Leelanau County, has no post office.

A primary reason for this is because the community languished for many decades and did not really begin growing to what it has become today until the 1950s.

An aerial view of Greilickville and Cedar Lake, published
April 17, 1962 in the Enterprise

Before the telephone became virtually universal, and certainly prior to the advent of the personal computer, the U.S. Mail played a larger role than it now does. Personal letters were much more commonly written, and it was very common to send out postcards – their use wasn’t necessarily restricted to vacation trips or other special occasions.

In 1901, there were 76,945 post offices in the U.S., but Rural Free Delivery was only five years old at that time. Sixty years later, the number of post offices was less than half (35,750) and RFD had a great deal to do with the drop in number.

Leelanau County certainly had many post offices (generally located in stores) a century ago that are history today.

Communities, other than Greilickville, that once had post offices include Gills Pier, Good Harbor, Schomberg, Elm Rock (Elmwood Township), Bodus, South Manitou, North Manitou, Glen Haven, Glenmere, Burdickville, Isadore, Kasson, Leelanau (South Fox Island), Oviatt, Bingham, Fouch (Perrin’s Landing), Port Oneida and North Unity.

Some of the county’s post offices were rather short-lived, closing after just a few years, and a post office at Bodus was “rescinded” after only two week’s operation in May 1904.

There were also instances of post offices closing only to be reopened again at a later date.
Island post offices operated a remarkably long time – many decades. South Manitou closed in 1943 and North Manitou lingered on until 1950.

Originally, RFD routes were serviced by horse-drawn vehicles. Later, better roads and motorized vehicles sped the mail – and the tiny post offices’ closings were sped up, too.

The same factors that were working against small post offices resulted in the closing of one-room schools, too.

Fred Dickinson, a former publisher of the Enterprise, wrote that the post office in Norrisville (later to become Greilickville) was originally established Sept. 7, 1881, with Ebenezer Cobb as first postmaster.

After being in operation less than a year, “the office was closed on June 13, 1882, but was restored from May 7, 1884, to July 31, 1902.”

He also tells us that, after the coming of the railroad in 1892, the station there “was named Greilickville, and gradually the village took the name.”

In its edition July 17, 1902, the Grand Traverse Herald printed the following short article:
“The postoffice at Greilickville is liable to be discontinued at any time now. W.E. Greilick, the present postmaster, is tired of his job and says that unless someone else takes the place right away, the office will be closed. He posted a notice to that effect the first of this month and expects to close the office sometime this week, although he has yet no official notice from Washington.”

A few weeks later, the same publication announced the post office’s closure in an even briefer item. Interestingly enough, the older name, “Norrisville” this time shows us that the community was apparently still in a transitional state in so far much as its name was concerned.

“Walter Greilick, postmaster at Norrisville, has received notice from the postoffice department at Washington to discontinue the postoffice after July 31,” the Grand Traverse Herald reported on Aug. 7.

A similar situation took place in the re-named community of Lake Leelanau in the 1920s. The village’s former name of “Provemont” wasn’t abandoned quickly nor easily.

Meanwhile, Greilickville, following the winding down of lumbering activity, remained somnolent.

An aerial view of Greilickville printed in the Enterprise in 1952 shows little more than a crossroads (Cherry Bend at M-22) and just a smattering of buildings.

But things were soon to change – and would continue to change.

By the mid 1950s, two of the first new streets connected Grand View and Cherry Bend roads.

Regal Street was named after one of the developers, Regina Depka. Nearby parallel Sylvia Street was named for her husband, Sylvester.

The Depkas called their development Cedar Lake Gardens, but the name faded from use as other properties in the area were developed and more homes were built – everything simply became part of Greilickville.

Orchards were removed, lots were sold, and additional new streets were put in. Where residents may have once been counted in the dozens, there were now hundreds.

Tom’s West Bay Shopping Center was another 1950s development that included a drug store.

For a time, the drug store housed a postal sub station, but that has been gone some years now.

Perhaps some one was simply “tired of his job,” just as Walter Greilick was, back in 1902.