Village of Cash
Date Visited: August 3, 2019
Stop: #42
The next stop on our Michigan
Wines and Signs quest, Eastern Thumb Loop, had a promising name. We were off to visit the Village of Cash, so
my mind was conjuring up thoughts of interesting things to see that would be
all about money. Would it be a miniature
village made entirely of dollar bills?
Or would it be a village with an infamous bank? As stupid as this seems, I was NOT thinking
that this was a village named Cash. My
brain was locked onto everything other than that. So, imagine my disappointment when we arrived
at our destination and not only was it about a village called Cash, but there were
no remnants of this “historic” site to be seen anywhere!!!
As we left Buel Methodist
Episcopal Church and headed west on Peck Road, we all were curious about what
we would see at our next stop. Sarah and
I got into a little banter about the different possibilities, including an abysmal
rendition of “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash.
We drove 0.33 miles to Brown Road and made a right, heading north. We stayed on Brown Road for 5 ¼ miles until
it dead-ended into Marlette Road. We
made a left and headed west again for 2.6 miles until we came to a dirt road
called Cash Road. We made a right and
were again heading north. We were
basically in the middle of farm country at this point, and we passed a couple
of very large farm houses with barns and other large out-buildings. We crossed over Elk Creek Road and all of a
sudden, amongst the vast, flat farmland, we drove into a large grove of
trees. After a few yards, we entered
into a small residential area with five homes on the left and 3 more homes on
the right. Halfway through this small
neighborhood, the dirt road turned into pavement and we crossed a creek and
came to another crossroads. However, our
GPS said we had passed our destination.
So, I turned around and retraced our route back over the creek and there
it was, a green Michigan Historical marker tucked off the road a bit, just in
front of the tree line on the east side of Cash Road. This sign was actually obscured a bit by an
overhanging tree branch and the shadows cast by the tree made it even harder to
see (see the center right picture below).
There was no building there. In
fact, all we could see was a thick forest of trees and undergrowth. Certainly, the seven homes we just drove past
could not be the Village of Cash, could they?
There really wasn’t a place to park by the sign, so we found a gravel
one-lane drive that paralleled Elk Creek on the west side of Cash Road and
parked there and walked our way back across the street to the sign.
Well, I was disappointed on so
many levels. None of the things I
thought this sign could be commemorating were even close to what the sign was
actually recognizing. In fact, I
couldn’t even figure out if the eight homes we drove by constituted the Village
of Cash, and if they did, that just heightened my disappointment (at least one
website I found on the subject implied that these seven homes were part of the
original village, but they do not look old enough for that to be true). In any event, the sign told us that the
Village of Cash was founded in 1851 by Edward Cash. Edward was the first white settler to come to
and settle amongst the Native Americans in this region. In 1868, seven residents of Cash (including
Edward) met at Edward’s home and voted to found Watertown Township to govern
this area, which was growing rapidly because of the profitable lumber
industry. There isn’t much written
history about the Village of Cash until 1877, when the first church was built
(Methodist). A Baptist church opened a
year later in 1878. The fire of 1881
devastated the county, but the Village of Cash survived. In 1882, David Fowles constructed a shingles
mill and a saw mill on Elk Creek. A
third mill was added later that same year by another man wanting to capitalize
on the lumber industry. The Village of
Cash was growing rapidly and becoming the commercial center of the region. In 1883, a general store was opened by
William Tomelson, and a post office opened later the same year. One of the stores in Cash became a popular
eating place, often frequented by visitors from long distances. The Village of Cash was thriving.
#michiganwinesandsigns #michigan #history #michiganhistory #wine #michiganwine #winetasting #historyisbetterwithwine
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