By the end of the 1880s, Sammon’s Landing - while certainly still a landing - no longer had a pier, leaving the industrial oasis of Silver Lake cut off from the lake’s shipping routes. The small-scale industrial tycoon, Joseph Sammons, had up and left his eponymous landing and numerous businesses in 1884. The orchards sat unattended for the next five years until 1889, when a hot new bombshell entered the Point, E. A. Congdon.
If offered a guess, I’m sure most folks even tangentially interested in West Michigan’s history would probably accurately assume Congdon, with vast real estate development fortunes, was from Chicago. And they’d be correct! Gold star! Congdon the Chicagoan bought Sammons’ Landing, his farmland and adjacent parcels in 1889. Congdon seems to have taken a more hands-off approach, however, leaving the management of the orchards to tenant farmers.
The year following Congdon’s purchase, these and other Blackberry Ridge farmers came together and decided to reinstall a pier at the once bustling landing (sometimes called by its original name, “Sammons Landing," and other times renamed to “Congdon’s Landing”). That fall, an agreement between the landowner and farmers was reached, and at the start of the new year, timber was already making its way to the construction site.
However, by the summer of 1891, construction came to a halt. Charles Mears, aged about 77, already had a plan to turn Silver Lake into a port to rival Pentwater’s. They were going to dredge Silver Creek into a 9-foot-deep and 1 and 1/4 mile-length channel, and they were going to do it before the harvest was through. Alongside the new channel, Charles was planning a cold-storage warehouse, a vacation resort and a railroad extension from the village of Mears.
With that project on the docket, Congdon’s Pier paled in comparison.
On Aug. 13, the sound of dredging and sand pumping began echoing through the dunes, but by the harvest, the fall crops departed through those old sandy roads rather than a new port. It's hard for us not to look back and immediately recognize the Sisyphean task of trying to manipulate the dunes; with every new inch dredged, the sand just flooded back in. Oh, if only Charles Mears hadn’t cleared so much of the dunes, maybe his channel could have made headway. But by 1895, the channel dredging was abandoned, and soon after, Charles Mears had passed away at 81.
And as for the dredge rig, it's rumored to share a fate with many other man-made objects on the dunes - buried under the sand.
Re-enter Congdon and the pier. By the end of summer, a 600-foot-long “temporary” pier and fruit house were completed. Fruit shipments resumed at the landing almost immediately. As my collaborator, Mark Thomas, put it, “it was Congdon’s turn to envision a grand plan of his own,” and he began collecting more and more of Little Point Sable, at least 600 acres by the end of 1895. Congdon’s grand plans were reminiscent of Mears’ - a lakeside resort consisting of cottages and a grand hotel to draw in tourists from Milwaukee and Chicago (always Chicago). Congdon already had a name sorted too: Orchard Beach.
But first, Congdon needed a permanent pier that would fare better against the November storms than Sammons’, and even his own temporary pier, which was reportedly as “heavily damaged” by the end of 1895. Repairs began in the spring of 1896, and Congdon and other investors in Silver Lake’s industry formed the “Orchard Beach Pier and Improvement Company,” to raise funds for such a permanent pier.
That year, a new post office was established on Buchanan Road called Peach Ridge, with the pier adopting the new name. By the summer of 1898, a sturdy foundation of concrete piles was driven into the lake, and the Peach Ridge Pier, 800 feet long by 12 feet wide, was completed. Right away, carts of fruit traversed the pier and vacationers began arriving by steamship.
Following the pier’s completion, Congdon sold the new build and his Silver Lake properties and left for (can you guess it?) Arizona. The pier was not left abandoned, however, as local J. VanFleet was leasing and operating the property before and after Congdon’s sale.
Enter the new era of Sammons Landing/Congdon’s Landing/Peach Ridge Pier, which is the access point for the new religious education and recreational retreat being planned by a Mr. John H. Hill.
