TRAVERSE CITY -- A Leelanau County time capsule offered its probers a glimpse of local history.
Historical preservation graduate students from Eastern Michigan University spent last week at DeYoung Natural Area on Cherry Bend Road just north of Traverse City. They located and inventoried a treasure-trove of local artifacts and remnants of the industrial revolution from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The farm was founded in 1854 by Henry Campbell, who built barns there between 1883 and 1887. He grew barley, rye, hay, clover and other crops, and raised dairy cows, pigs and chickens.
Louis DeYoung purchased the 145-acre farm in 1923 and raised dairy cows before he planted eight acres of cherries near the end of the Great Depression, and became one of the area's early cherry growers.
Decades later, the DeYoung family simply locked the doors and walked away from the farmstead and its contents, a fact preservationists discovered last week.
"The dishes were still in the sink and the cabinets were full," said Ted Ligibel, EMU professor and director of the historical preservation program.
The site work is an excellent lesson for the students, he said, and the goal is to expose them to as many professional historical processes as possible, such as window restoration, masonry analysis, artifact conservation, documentation and more.
It's been exactly that for graduate student Stefanie Staley, of Traverse City, also the director of the Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum in Northport.
"This is awesome because we've been able to go into the house and inventory what they left behind," Staley said. "This is part of our history. The farm and the agriculture here is part of the history, as it was. You don't often come into a place and have it all still be there."
The home's contents included children's building blocks, paper dolls, an old quilt, sketches of a tall ship, ice skates and a dress worn in a National Cherry Festival pageant.
The DeYoung family's frugality was well-documented, including examples such as stacks of saved and neatly folded aluminum foil and drawers and shelves lined with old magazines, rather than the several rolls of shelf-lining paper left behind, said Susan Odom, from the Leelanau Historical Society.
Artifacts collected at the farm likely will end up in local or state museums, she said.
Remaining buildings include the farmhouse, several barns and a water wheel building.
The water wheel generated power from a diverted creek that flows into nearby Cedar Lake, a unique development that allowed the DeYoung family to be the first in the area with electricity.
"We think it's one of the most historically important industrial buildings in the region, perhaps the state," Ligibel said.
One disheartening discovery for the students is the missing cornerstone of the lower barn, stolen sometime in recent weeks, said Jenee Rowe, stewardship director for the Leelanau Conservancy, which owns the farm.
The stone is dated 1884 and measures about 10-by-14 inches. EMU students are offering a small reward for its return, Ligibel said.
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