I'm not a fan of the dreary metro-Detroit winters that I not-so-laughingly call "six months of November", so I fondly remember driving through Gaylord during early November a few years ago and suddenly finding myself in the middle of the first snowfall of the year.
Gaylord's location in the snow belt along the 45th parallel in northern Michigan's Lower Peninsula pretty much ensures a white winter for winter sports enthusiasts, along with mild summers perfect for warm weather activities. The area boasts one of the largest concentrations of ski and golf resorts in the Midwest, and other outdoor options like hiking, fishing, snowmobiling, skiing plus more off-beat pursuits like mushroom hunting and elk viewing.

Many businesses along Main Street transformed their facades to resemble Alpine-style chalets, and others throughout the business district followed suit.
Gaylord held its first Alpine Festival in 1965, and the Alpenfest is still an annual summer tradition in the city.
Officials deemed the vintage late-nineteenth-century Otsego County Courthouse in Gaylord structurally unsound, replacing with a large Alpine-style city-county building in 1968.

Visiting the grounds of the city-county building is a good way to get a quick course in Gaylord and Otsego County history.
Michigan historical markers in front of the building detail the early beginnings of Gaylord and Otsego.
Explorer, geographer and geologist Henry Schoolcraft named many Michigan counties, giving anglicized Native American names to some of them. He originally named the county Okkuddo, which meant "sickly" or "stomach pain", but the state legislature renamed it Otsego several years later for a New York lake and county of the same name. Otsego reportedly means "beautiful", "clear water" or "meeting place", depending on what source you consult, and any of those meanings are certainly happier than the original name's meanings.
Lumbering and railroad development during the late 1860s and 1870s drove settlement in northern Michigan. The Homestead Act of 1862, where the federal government gave land to those willing to clear and settle wilderness area, and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which spurred demand for lumber to rebuild that city, further spurred development in northern Michigan.
Settlers established Gaylord, originally called Barnes, in 1874 as a railroad town. It became the county seat in 1877 and eventually took its name from Augustine Smith Gaylord, an attorney for the Jackson, Lansing & Saginaw Railroad.

The city-county building's lawn also hosts a large figure of a grumpy looking man in traditional Swiss garb reflecting the town's ties to its sister village of Pontresina, Switzerland and its Alpine identification.
Local chainsaw artist Jim Coon carved the 1,500-pound figure of Herr Gessler out of a cottonwood tree. Legend has it that Gessler was an evil ruler in 13th century Austria and Switzerland who arrested William Tell and ordered him to shoot an apple from atop his son's head as punishment for Tell's lack of deference to Gessler.
The wooden Gessler stands guard over a large rock with a message from Pontresina reading "Friendship, like Alpine Stone, lasts forever".
Another plaque in front of the city-county building describes a 1970s struggle between oil companies and environmental activists resulting in a landmark Michigan Supreme Court ruling and agreement between the state government, the oil industry and environmentalists to regulate drilling in the area and protect natural resources like the only substantial elk herd east of the Mississippi at the same time.

Other noteworthy stops in downtown Gaylord include the well regarded independent bookstore, Saturn Books, and, during the summer and fall, the Farmers Market at the open-air Pavilion on Court.

The Otsego County Historical Society is in a former early-twentieth cigar factory building downtown, which wasn't open when we visited, but it has a very good Web site with great resources and stories about Gaylord's past.
Hartwick Pines State Park is less than 30 miles south of Gaylord along I-75. Check out Visiting one of Michigan's few remaining old-growth forests at Hartwick Pines to learn more about the logging history of the area, the interpretive center for Michigan's state forest system and the park's great network of skiing, hiking and walking trails.
© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved
Nice.
Any ideas of gaylords past contruction of Swiss look?
Posted by: phil bliss | July 05, 2012 at 03:49 PM
Hi Phil-Thanks for stopping by!
The best source I found online about the conversion of some Gaylord buildings to the Swiss style during the late 1960s is a copy of a Gaylord Chamber of Commerce publication celebrating that group's 50th anniversary. There's a 7-page story about it with some great before-and-after photos! http://www.otsego.org/ochs/gaylordstoryupdate/Written%20Accts/CofC%2050th.pdf
Posted by: Dominique King | July 05, 2012 at 05:52 PM