Young Ernest Hemingway – merely an infant when he first visited Walloon Lake, Michigan – starting a 22-year tradition that shaped his life as an outdoorsman and storyteller.
“On September 5th, Tues, Ernest 6 ½ weeks old went to Walloon Lake with Mama, Papa and Nurse Norris on the steamship Manitou,” wrote his mother, Grace Hemingway, in his first baby book archived and digitized at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. The fare was $5 per passenger, not including meals or private berths (although it is likely there was no charge for the baby).
The previous summer, Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway had purchased land with 375 feet of beach along the north shore of Walloon Lake from Henry Bacon for $250, according to the Michigan Hemingway Society. The sandy waterfront was important to Clarence, who wanted to make sure his kids had a safe place to swim. The land was surrounded by maple, birch and hemlock trees, along with a rugged lane which skirted behind the lake – images found in another scrapbook titled Walloon Lake housed in the Hemingway archives at Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant.
In a handwritten note dated Sept. 6th, Grace compiled a series of images herself sitting on the recently cleared land holding baby Ernest captioned as “Mama and Ernest sitting on the ground of the future Windemere.” Many of these images appear in both Ernest’s book and the 1898-1899 Walloon Lake book. Several pictures are also featured of Ernest and his father, including one taken on the beach.
According to Grace’s entry on page 14 of Ernest’s book, construction on Windemere – which she designed – started on September 15, 1899, when Ernest was eight weeks old, and his older sister, Marcelline, was 20 months old. By the following summer of 1900, the small 20-foot-by-40-foot westward facing cottage – with its small kitchen, two bedrooms and a central fireplace – was complete. The cost, $400.
The trip from the family home in Oak Park, Illinois was an adventure. They would first have to get to the harbor in Chicago twelve miles to the east with all their luggage, trunks and in later years other necessities to get them through the summer.
Once aboard the steamer, usually the Manitou, they would travel north through Lake Michigan some 242 nautical miles to Harbor Springs, Michigan. They would then board the first of three trains which would transport them to the shoreline at “The Foot” of Walloon Lake. The family would then board one of the small boats like the Tourist that would transport them to the north shore. If it was the first trip of the season, they’d land at Bacon’s Landing or Echo Beach, where they’d climb onto a wagon for the final leg of the trip to their cottage (given their dock wasn’t in yet).
That first 1899 trip was short lived, with the family leaving by September 8 to return to Oak Park, as noted by the local newspaper.
Ernest would go on to spend time every summer of his life, until he turned 22, on Walloon Lake. As he got older, he began to explore the woods and waters, learning to hunt and fish. He was also an avid reader and became a prolific writer. It was here that Nick Adams was born, with some of the stories first appearing in the 1924 issue of in our time and ultimately becoming The Nick Adams Stories which were published posthumously in 1972.
