Glen Eyrie going strong for a century and more
By Beau Vallance
Current Contributor
“I love how this road works!” said a friend visiting the north shore of Crystal Lake. He was observing the quarter-mile stretch along the common beach of Glen Eyrie, a community that is a century—and many generations—old. Neighbors were strolling the road, visiting at cottages.
In the panoramic group photo of the 2004 centennial celebration picnic, one man appears on both edges of the crowd, having moved between camera shots. Many people visible between his two locations have since passed away, but the event’s commemorative banner, “Glen Eyrie – 100 years in 2004,” still hangs on a weathered boathouse across the road. Glen Eyrie is now 114.
The Beginnings
The story is told in a record created by Jean Nichols Hillman, whose family came to Glen Eyrie in 1919 from the Chicago area. The Glen Eyrie Story, first printed in 1984, has been updated twice, now 128 pages and modernized as a digitized PDF document. It covers geology—ice from the last Ice Age filled a bay of primeval Lake Algonquin/Michigan, walling off Crystal Lake with a loop of moraines—the plat’s legal chronology, and the stories of the families.
The property started its legal life just after the Civil War, as a land grant that had been assigned by President Andrew Johnson to four people named Carpenter. It changed hands several times, before Sydney Strong—a minister from Oak Park, Illinois, who had been attending meetings with the Congregational Summer Assembly (CSA) since the 1890s, even before the CSA’s permanent home on Crystal Lake began in 1904—rowed around the lake, seeking a place to build a cottage. (In those days, any interaction between groups on the lake could only take place with boat shuttles, as the road around Crystal Lake had not yet been built. For instance, open-deck shuttle boats traveled from the CSA to Beulah and back for $0.25.)
In 1904, Strong bought 29 acres with 1,700 feet of shoreline for $350. Someone later named it Glen Eyrie, for the eagle’s nest there, confirmed in an old photo. (During a recent outdoor annual meeting, two eagles flew over; the event was noted in the minutes.)
Strong registered the plat in 1910, specifying a “lakeway dedicated to the common use of all property owners.” He brought friends and colleagues north from Illinois, and the early cottages were built by these people—Congregational ministers, a settlement house worker, a missionary, a church organist, a Chicago Board of Trade member, a doctor, a dentist. But early settlers also included a jelly-maker from New York state; an Ohio druggist; someone from Omaha, appearing briefly in early records; and, by 1941, my grandfather, an Ohio college professor who was undaunted by his inexperience in construction.
The early cottages were homemade “vernacular architecture,” with daylight visible through walls and additions, as needed. One was reportedly a Sears & Roebuck kit house and has weathered a century of regular use.
Progress
Beulah existed by 1904, thanks to the accidental lowering of the lake three decades before, but Crystal Drive was a dirt road then. Summer people did grocery shopping by boat or horse and buggy. Decades passed, the road was paved, and the community is now 17 homes across the road from the beach, only four inhabited year-round. Some are extremely basic: one has wallpaper made of birchbark and a bed hanging by chains on the screened porch; in another, one corner was supported by a log and tree stumps, long since rotted; all have water and electricity.
Over time, the cottages acquired telephones, washing machines, internet access, and structural improvements, such as an actual foundation replacing the rotted logs of the cottage mentioned above. Many added bathrooms, but one added a bathroom that is accessed through an outside door next to the kitchen door; another has new kitchen cabinets from Ikea. At least two older cottages have one insulated/heated room, allowing stays past summer. And with added generations, as many as 10 families now share cottage space among the summer weeks—schedules can be elaborate, accommodating several families’ claims on specific weeks or weekends of the high season.
Originally settled by Chicago Congregationalists, Glen Eyrie now brings summer people from Illinois and Michigan, as well as Connecticut, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. The population is increasingly diverse with respect to religious affiliations, including “none.” Lifelong friendships, even marriages, have been formed among the cottagers, and the beach has hosted marshmallow fires, stargazing, proposals, weddings, and ashes-scatterings. Life happens there.
That shared beach on Crystal Lake—an open, sandy space, dotted only by beach sheds for more than a century—has, by tradition, been maintained and used in sections, corresponding to the cottages facing them. But use is shared: neighbors walk the length, a large floating fun island (now defunct) was a community resource, as is a picnic table now, and the community meeting and picnic are scheduled around the availability of one cottage’s rustic old boathouse.
Challenges and Survival
The common beach has been challenged twice. In the early 1970s, neighbors in Crystal Highlands, another Crystal Lake community located just above Glen Eyrie, were prevented from converting one recently purchased cottage in Glen Eyrie into a clubhouse with beach access for all Highlands owners. Few still living remember the details, but that plan was defeated; the Highlanders sold that cottage and have been excellent neighbors for decades since.
Then, almost 10 years ago, people from half of the cottages tried to legally block construction of a new “boathouse” on the beach (plumbed, with kitchenette and other advanced amenities, and no lakeside boat door), and took the battle to the Michigan Supreme Court. They lost, but the challenge—citing also an earlier covenant, attempting to protect the beach—made public their commitment to keeping the lakeway free of cottages.
The current elders who fought the “boathouse” were once children making sand castles. They are now well into retirement in their 70s and 80s, more than half the age of Glen Eyrie itself. They, their extended families, old neighbors, and new owners keep Glen Eyrie strong. More year-’rounders—an added resource—watch over cottages that are closed for the winter, and the new “Mayor,” Mary Kinzie, is an enthusiastic newcomer.
Voluntary dues cover small expenses, like the Glen Eyrie road signs. And that well-attended yearly picnic—missing some people from the centennial photo but replenished regularly—follows the meeting, recently blessed by eagles.
Sydney Strong might be astonished that Glen Eyrie has lasted into the digital age. But, having dedicated that strip of land as a lakeway to be shared for generations, he would be pleased. And he might agree that the road works well.
Beau Vallance has been a member of the Glen Eyrie community since she nearly died of whooping cough at the family cottage when she was one year old, in 1947. She has served as Mayor and is currently Town Crier.
Featured Photo Caption: Actually, as of 2018, it has now been 114 years of Glen Eyrie. Photo by Beau Vallance.
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