Historic homes tours will be featured during Love Ludington weekend

June 1, 2023

Historic homes tours will be featured during Love Ludington weekend

LUDINGTON — As part of the Ludington Sesquicentennial celebration, the Mason County Historical Society is hosting “A Walk Back in Time,” a tour of some of Ludington’s historic homes on Saturday, June 10 and Sunday, June 11, during the Love Ludington Weekend celebration.

Tour participants will be invited to view and learn about many of the homes that are now part of the district that has been entered into the National Registry of Historic Districts by the United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. They will come face to face with several of Ludington’s most famous leading citizens—the indomitable and endearingly irrepressible Kate Cartier; her father-in-law and patriarch of the Ludington Cartiers, Antoine Cartier; Mrs. Sarah Culver, wife of Stearns Siding Lumber manager, W.T. Culver; Ludington and Scottville businessman Daniel Goodenough; famed orator, U.S. Senator, and presidential candidate who visited Ludington during one of his bids for the presidency– William Jennings Bryan; Marshall Butters, who, along with his father Horace, brought to this area the Mason and Oceana Railroad, often called the “Miserable and the Ornery” by those who rode its rails between Buttersville and Walkerville; Ludington resident and Vaudeville star Ms. Myrtle Moore Dahtanis; and the Sweedish-born Ludington resident and the longest employed and valued worker of the Star Watch Company August Hjalmar Lidberg.

The Walking Tour on Saturday, June 10, will feature several of Ludington’s most famous and impressive historic homes from outside the home—The Culver home, The Butters home, the Goodenough home—and focus on several others. The Sunday, June 11 Walking Tour will concentrate on several of Ludington’s most imposing and grand Bed and Breakfast homes —The Cartier Mansion, the Lamplighter Inn, the Ludington House, and the Candlelite Inn.

The “Walk Back in Time” tours will all commence at the Mason County Historical Society’s Research Center, 130 East Ludington Avenue, at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. on both days. The tours will be led by Mason County Historical Society President James Jensen and West Shore Community College Professor Mike Nagle. Tickets for the “Walk Back in Time” tours can be purchased at Mason County Emporium in Downtown Ludington or online at masoncountymihistory.org. Tours are limited to 20 people per tour; advanced purchase is recommended.

Mason County Historical Society was founded in 1937, the historical society operates Historic White Pine Village, a living history museum, the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum, which celebrates Mason County’s rich maritime history in a state-of-the-art museum located in a historic Coast Guard station, and its Research Center, which houses archives, including photographs, documents, letters, books, maps, newspapers, family

histories, and so much more, all telling the story of Mason County’s maritime and lumbering history, the State, the surrounding area, and Lake Michigan.