Pellston

Pellston. Rich in history and natural resources. , "I'll build a little Chicago!" , Colonel Charles Bogardus, Union army officer and Civil War hero, Illinois legislator and banker, came north in 1901 to develop the town laid out on paper by his late father-in-law William H. Pells. In the following twelve years, the Colonel made Pellston into a vital lumbering center with four active lumber camps and mills, manufacturing facilities, paved streets, electric lights and power, railroads, and the Pellston City Bank. However, while Pells was a thoughtful, foresighted businessman, his son-in-law was an impractical dreamer, and in a move that has been the undoing of many a banker before and since, Bogardus founded a holding company that issued paper notes to various banks in Illinois. Eventually, the Chicago bank examiners caught up with this paper trail and by 1912, Colonel Bogardus and his "Little Chicago" were in trouble. The foreclosure included over 10,000 acres of land, and entire city blocks in Pellston, including most of the Bogardus empire. The Colonel and his wife lived out their years in Pellston where the Colonel died in 1929. Today, the Bogardus memory lives on at the University of Michigan Biological Camp, on Douglas Lake land donated by the Colonel and his wife in 1908. Pellston never became the "Little Chicago" of his dreams, but Bogardus left behind a community of natural beauty and village charm.