Hemingway’s Petoskey: the Walloon Lake cottage, the 1919 rooming house winter and where to trace his northern Michigan years

PETOSKEY, Mich. — Long before Paris, Spain and Cuba, Ernest Hemingway’s first landscape was northern Michigan, and Petoskey was its hub.

Windemere. In 1898, Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway of Oak Park, Illinois, bought an acre of waterfront on what was then called Bear Lake, near Petoskey, according to Central Michigan University’s Clarke Historical Library. The lake was renamed Walloon Lake in 1900. Six-week-old Ernest made his first trip in September 1899, as the family planned a modest $400 cottage they named Windemere.

Getting there. Between 1899 and 1921, the family spent at least part of every year in northern Michigan, traveling by steamship from Chicago to Harbor Springs, then by train through Petoskey to Walloon Lake, the library says.

1919. After he was badly wounded in Italy as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I, Hemingway returned to Michigan to recover. That fall, with Windemere closed for the season, he moved into a Petoskey rooming house run by Eva Potter, according to the Clarke. He was asked to speak about the war at the local library, and a listener, Harriet Connable, invited him to Toronto, where contacts led to a job as a Toronto Star reporter.

In his fiction. The Petoskey area and nearby Horton Bay appear in short stories including “Up in Michigan,” “The End of Something” and “The Three-Day Blow,” the library notes. He married Hadley Richardson at Horton Bay in 1921.

Visiting. The Little Traverse History Museum, in the old train depot at 100 Depot Court, has a Hemingway collection and offers Hemingway walking tours. The museum is seasonal; check its website for hours. Windemere remains private property and is not open to the public.

Sources:
Central Michigan University, Clarke Historical Library, “Hemingway’s Michigan” (Bear Lake purchase, Windemere, travel, 1919 Petoskey, stories, wedding), https://www.cmich.edu/research/clarke-historical-library/explore-collection/explore-online/michigan-material/ernest-hemingway-in-michigan/hemingways-michigan
Little Traverse Historical Society / Little Traverse History Museum (address, Hemingway collection and tours), https://www.petoskeymuseum.org/
Photo: rossograph, “Windemere-Cottage.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windemere-Cottage.jpg

Petoskey

Tags: Petoskey · Ernest Hemingway · History · Walloon Lake · Things to Do