Tourism Council attempts to save old Onaway State Park building
The Presque Isle County Tourism Council has itself a new project at the Ocqueoc Outdoor Recreation Center. The group is attempting to save a historic building slated for removal by the Department of Natural Resources.
Officials with the Tourism Council received an anonymous phone call recently that a building at Onaway State Park, which was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps more than 70 years ago, was ordered for demolition by the DNR.
The Tourism Council has stepped in to try and move the building to the OOC in Ocqueoc Township. The building, constructed in the side of a hill and located in the lower campground area, had been used as a restroom, but would be converted to an interpretive center.
“We’re trying to decide how it is going to happen, and of course nobody has any money to do anything, so how do you make that happen?” said Tourism Council director Kammie Dennis. “We went to the site, looked over the building, and we feel like we can move it.”
THE PRELIMINARY plan is to take it apart piece by piece, place it in storage, and when the Tourism Council is ready to reconstruct it, the building will be converted into an interpretive center as a part of the future nature center at the OOC.
“I think it’s important that we save this building, number one,” said Tourism Council events coordinator Mark Schuler. “It’s an old CCC building. It’s a building that can be taken apart and then put back together.
“This is a small building that we know we can handle,” said Schuler. “We know we are going to have to store it for a year. “It is a very unique structure, so we want to preserve it. The logs are in very good shape and they’ve been maintained well. There will be a little bit of log repair, but beyond that it is in very good shape.”
“It is important to save the heritage there, but it adds to what we have there at the OOC camp. It’s just another example what the CCC people did in the late 1930s, so it’s important to save the building because of that.” In order to not put the cart before the horse, Dennis and Schuler still needed the permission of the Presque Isle County Board of Commissioners make arrangements to move the building to the county-owned park. The board met Wednesday and had a number o
The Tourism Council coordinates the activities of the OOC for the county. As mid-summer approaches, the OOC is busy with restoration activity and the establishment of the inaugural Civilian Conservation Corps Heritage Camp, July 17 to 20.
The event will be a celebration of volunteerism with visits to the many historic sites at the camp, canoeing of Ocqueoc Lake, as well as other activities such as the planting of trees and construction of an osprey platform.
One of the goals of the gathering is to “instill a sense of volunteerism into youth at a camp setting.”
The CCC Heritage Camp is for youth eight to 13. IN THE MEANTIME, the Tourism Council is coordinating the painting of the barracks buildings. “We are taking the old white buildings that have been there for years and we are putting some color on them,” said Schuler. “We continue at a slower pace to do some work on the inside, but there was a bunch of work done last year.” Marketing also remains one of the main focuses for the camp, and it recently paid off with the Hillman High School football team planning to stay at the camp for three days of preseason training in early August. Advertisements have gone out in publications throughout the state. One of the largest projects of the year is the construction of a viewing platform. “Money has been set aside through the Hammond Bay Anglers, which in turn have been working with us in a committee formed to develop a viewing platform over the Ocqueoc River,” Schuler said. “We would like it installed yet this year.”