This continues a series adapted from the book, “A Port Oneida Collection,” Volume 1 of the twopart set, “Oral History, Photographs, and Maps from the Sleeping Bear Region,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear. Here we look at the Carsten & Catherine Miller Farm, surrounding the present-day trailhead for the Pyramid Point Trail.
Mary Miller grew up with five sisters in a small log house built by their father 400 feet west of the present-day Pyramid Point Trail parking area, in a place now marked by just a few scattered foundation boulders, a cellar pit, and a gnarly old apple tree. Neighbor Lucille (Baker) Barratt remembered the old place as having a “beautiful long porch on the front ... It was a nice-looking home.”
Little is remembered about Mary’s parents, Carsten and Catherine Miller, who homesteaded the land. Neighbor Jack Barratt told that he once heard that when they first arrived by boat, they simply dumped the cattle they had brought into the lake and let them swim to shore.
