History of Benzie County

Like much of northern Michigan, Benzie County has been "settled" for a little over 125 years. Benzie didn't become a county in its own right until 1869 when the legislature made it independent from Grand Traverse County.

Voters made Frankfort the first county seat, albeit amid a flurry of controversy.

Many people who came to Benzie during the second half of the nineteenth century were attracted by the economic possibilities afforded by the two magnificent rivers that meander through the region.

One of the rivers, through a variation in pronunciation, gave its name to the county. By all accounts the word "Benzie" derives from the French name, La Riviere Aux Bec Scies, for the Betsie River, which means river of the saw bill ducks. The Native American name, Uns-zig-o-ze-bee, also had the same meaning.

The combination of the rivers and the thousands of acres of virgin timber that covered the region, fostered a lumber boom throughout northern Michigan that lasted until there were so few trees left that selling and milling them was no longer profitable.

The first sawmill in the county was operated by one Harrison Averil at Herring Creek in the 1850's.

There were sawmills in at least a dozen communities in the county during the heyday of lumbering, which began during the 1860's, built swiftly, then all but died during the early years of the 20th century.

Many communities in Benzie County disappeared when the mills closed. In 1890 there were 15 post offices in Benzie; today there are less than six.

The county has numerous "ghost towns." Aral, named after the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union, is probably the most famous because of a dual murder that took place there in 1889.

In 1873 an ambitious but ill-advised project was put through in an effort to connect Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan with a navigable channel. The original level of Crystal Lake was, at that time, much higher than it's present level.

The project was a complete failure in respect to its accomplishing its proposed purpose.

The result was a lowering of the lake and exposing a wide stretch of beautiful sandy beach around the entire lake and making possible the development of Crystal Lake as a resort and residential area as well as the site of the village of Beulah.

The combination of Crystal Lake and the pristine wilderness of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has given the area the magic allure of the true "North Woods."