Chelsea, Michigan, maintains small-town charm while developing as a Midwestern arts center

It's not difficult to see why small-town Chelsea in southern Michigan drew actor Jeff Daniels, who grew up there, back home to raise his family and establish his Purple Rose Theater. Daniels left Chelsea at the age of 21 to seek success in New York and Hollywood, but he and his wife Kathleen yearned to return to Chelsea--where they both grew up and met.

Daniels' father still co-owns a lumber company in Chelsea, and Jeff bought an old bus garage to turn into a professional theater that promoted the work of Midwestern actors, directors, designers, and playwrights. Nearly 20 years later, the theater continues to thrive in Michigan, and Jeff Daniels continues to consider Michigan as home.

The village of Chelsea, which celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, became a city a few years ago and boasts a population of about 5,000 residents (up from just more than 4,000 in the year 2000). Chelsea still retains the small-town charm that drew Daniels home, though.

One of our most recent visits to Chelsea came when we drove out for a day of geocaching and seeing some of the landmarks that put Chelsea on the map before Daniels returned home to start the theater.

Check out your grocery store shelves next time you go shopping. Those little blue-and-white boxes of Jiffy baking mixes come from the Chelsea Milling Company, one of the larger makers of prepackaged baking mixes in the United States.

Mabel Holmes worked in her Chelsea kitchen to come up with a biscuit mix, which became the country's first commercially marketed biscuit mix in 1930. Jiffy took its name from the idea that the mix made cooking biscuits quick and easy--that they would "be ready in a jiffy!"

The Chelsea Milling Company traces its beginning to the late 1800s as a flour mill. Harmon S. Holmes purchased the mill in 1908 from founder E.K. White, whose daughter Mabel married Holmes' son Howard.

Today, Mabel and Howard's son, Howdy S. Holmes, is still president of the company. Jiffy offers 19 different Jiffy mixes, including the extremely popular cornbread muffin mix. The company produces more than a million retail boxes of product each day, and a picture of the iconic cornbread muffin mix box adorns the company's facility in downtown Chelsea.

Railroad tracks run through town, and the Chelsea Milling Company, as well as several other Chelsea landmarks, sits alongside the tracks in the center of town.

Business owner Frank Glazier built the seven-story Chelsea Clocktower, which once held 20,000 gallons of water to supply the town's firefighters and four bells that chimed to mark each hour. The tower, built in 1907, is one of several buildings extensively renovated in recent years with hopes of creating a mixed use development that retains its historical character.

The Welfare Building, built in 1906 as a recreational facility for employees of Glazier's stove company, is one of several other nearby buildings clustered around the railroad tracks.

Chelsea's Farmer's Supply is one of the oldest buildings in the city, built around 1855 and serving at one point as the town's first hotel. A 1925 remodeling turned the building into a feed mill, and the business evolved into a supply store by the 1970s.

Chelsea also has a nicely restored railroad depot building, which housed the historical museum until recently, and other buildings that speak to the town's rural past.

Even as Chelsea retains a much of its small-town charm, newer enterprises like Daniels' Purple Rose Theater, galleries and restaurants--all just west of Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan--makes it a fairly easy day-trip from metropolitan Detroit or a quick overnight destination if you want to take in a play at the Purple Rose Theater.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

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Comments

[Leslie]

Thanks for the nice feature on Chelsea! I shared the link on my Chelsea Blog http://chelsea-mi.blogspot.com As a resident, I'm very proud of our city, and I love reading about how we are perceived as a great place to visit as well. Glad you had a nice trip here.

[Dominique]

Leslie-Thanks for stopping by! We've enjoyed visiting Chelsea several times, and I like posting about smaller towns and their history. Chelsea has a lot of great older buildings with some great stories behind them.