This 500-pound round table is a centerpiece of the furniture museum at Shrine of the Pines. It was formed from a single 700-pound stump and includes several carved-out cubby holes. Photo by Kevin Howell.
By Kevin Howell
A few miles south of Baldwin, in western Lake County, a gravel drive extends from M-37 several hundred yards to an opening in the pines along the Pere Marquette River.
“Your first time riding up that driveway, your heart opens up as the yard opens up,” Layla Nelson-Dumas observed, recalling her first glimpse, “… we fell in love with it.”
The site
That feeling from more than 30 years ago brought Nelson-Dumas back to the Shrine of the Pines more than once. Now she manages the 30-acre site, hidden among tall white pine trees and the source of much of this part of Michigan’s prosperity during the lumber era.
Past the open yard, trails lead through the woods. They bring solace and a sense of peace to those who wander there.
In the midst of the opening, a log cabin constructed of pine hides the treasures within, some 200 pieces of hand-hewn pine furniture, pine décor and artistic taxidermy displays of native wildlife. It’s all the work of Raymond W. Overholzer, a hunting and fishing guide. He and his wife Hortense displayed his pieces for the public to see.
“This place has been here since 1941, 80 years, and it’s the dream of one man and his wife,” Nelson-Dumas’s mother, Brenda Nelson, said.
Brenda and her husband managed the shrine before their daughter took over, and Brenda still serves on its board of directors and acts as a tour guide.
The man
Overholzer was a farmer from Wapakoneta, Ohio. After hearing of Lake County from friends and visiting the area, he and his wife Hortense resettled in 1920 to Marlborough, a Lake County ghost town today.
When they arrived, logging had taken a serious toll on the towering white pines Overholzer loved. To preserve the trees’ past, he began hunting for and collecting unique stumps, roots and branches to make furniture, his way of honoring the trees.
His accumulated pieces outgrew their Marlborough home, so in the 1940s he built a structure near Baldwin to display his work.
“This is a model of a hunting lodge,” Brenda explained. “Nobody ever lived here, but he would work on the furniture (here) in the wintertime.”
Attached to the museum building is a small dwelling where the Overholzers lived, after a fire claimed their Marlborough home and some of his works. Raymond died at the shrine site in 1952, but Hortense lived another seven years in a small widow’s cabin, now a gift shop, on the property.
The museum
Entering the museum is an experience. Preserved animals sit on log rafters. Gnarled roots form window frames, decorative furniture, and letters spelling the name of the cabin: Hunter’s Rest.
One centerpiece is a round table formed from a stump with carved nooks and crannies.
“This picture right here,” Brenda told us, pointing to a photo of the original stump, “is a 700-pound stump he found. He would go around a five-county area looking for stumps the loggers would leave behind. Now it’s 500 pounds, because he cut the stump off with a one-man crosscut saw; it took him three days. Then he put 62 inlays in the rotten places with his secret glue.”
Most of his material came from the Manistee National Forest, and his creations were made with hand tools ⸺ without using screws, nails or other metal parts.
“All the creations were done by hand,” Brenda explained. “He never used a power tool; there’s also no finish on any of this furniture, no varnish. He would get old sanding belts and ground glass and glue the glass to the belts. He used his own glue recipe, he took that to the grave, and he would sand the furniture with his homemade sanding belts.”
Another centerpiece, though not of wood, is a grand floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace with a hewn white-pine mantelpiece. Some 70 tons of stone were used in its construction.
Other pieces catch the eye: a revolving gun rack with 39 round white-pine ball bearings, a rocking chair so balanced that one push sets the rocker going 52 times, a “bootleg” table with hidden compartments for bottles of alcohol (made during Prohibition), bunkbeds of pine and a chandelier of roots ⸺ all lovingly and exquisitely made by hand.
For mother and daughter, the decades-long love affair with Shrine of the Pines began many years ago with a Father’s Day request.
“I was in my early 30s,” Nelson-Dumas explained, “and my dad goes, ‘For Father’s Day I want to go to Shrine of the Pines.’
“‘What is that?’ I thought. ‘Shrine? Religion? What is he talking about?’
“It’s in Baldwin; my whole life I’ve been coming here, since the womb, and I never knew about it, and he says, ‘Let’s go see what it is.’”
They’ve been loving it ever since.
As my traveling companion said, as we left the Shrine of the Pines, “This whole thing is special, just very special.”
Volunteer-run Shrine of the Pines is located at 8962 S. M-37. Hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Friday-Monday, from May 15 through September 30, 2021. Adults, $10; Veterans and Seniors, $7; Children 5 and up, $5; Under 5, free; Family (two adults, three children), $25; Active military, free.
For more, go to: www.theshrineofthepines.com or follow on Facebook @shrineofthepinesfurnituremuseum. Call the museum: (231)745-7892.
RELATED STORIES:
Area artists to bring nature to downtown Baldwin
Fresh Water Cannabis and CBD: caring by design
A tree grows in Baldwin: a gift for the curious
New documentary cements Marlborough’s boom-to-bust history
Luther: from logging camp to tourist community
May bursts with blooms at Loda Lake National Wildflower Sanctuary
When the internet fails rural areas, who loses?
Idle no more: renovations begin on idlewild’s landmark hotel
Backroads to Baldwin
On the musical road to Idlewild
A pioneer’s camp legacy
See also Northwoods Sauce Boss
