Name/Title
Gage Cottage, Dune Fire, FrogsEntry/Object ID
2023.50.34Scope and Content
Three reminiscence by Helen Gage DeSoto that were printed in the SDHS newsletter inserts.
1. Gage Cottage
2. A Tale of Two Hills, about the Black Lake Hill in Holland and Ox-Bow Hill [aka Lone Pine Dune]. Text in the notes section of this entry.
3. Raining Toads and Frogs. Text in the notes section of this entry.
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1. Gage Cottage
If you stand at the Ferry landing and look up at the high wooded hills downriver, just beyond Mt. Baldhead, you may be able to discern two cottages nestled among the treetops. The house on the right, harder to find than the other because it is located on the far slope of the main ridge, was built by Edith Ryder Barron, a widow, around 1914. The lot was deeded to her as a gift by the Harbert family, with the stipulation that she should build within five years, which she did. She had often been a guest at the Harbert house (sometimes referred to as Avalon) and she loved the sense of being away from it all that the forest conveyed. It was a good thing that she enjoyed solitude, because it was 17 years before she had neighbors, The Gage cottage was built in 1931, some 120 feet away from hers, the most visible of the two because it perched on the front slope of the ridge. A cottage had been my mother's life long dream project, but this one came into existence almost by chance. Some old family friends, artists who knew Frederick Fursman, happened to spend part of the summer of 1929 or 1930 at Ox-Bow. While there they heard that the current owner of Avalon and the rest of the hill property was the last Harbert daughter, who was living in California, bent under the burden of the taxes on the extensive lands inherited from her father and anxious to sell building lots. Our friends impulsively rushed to offer for the lot next to Mrs. Barron's, and then excitedly convinced my parents that this hilltop property was everything my mother had been looking for. The price was right, they crowed, $150 for the lot next to theirs.
The land was thus bought sight unseen. Jean Richardson Gage had drawn floor plans as a hobby all her life, but when she finally saw the narrow ridge topping two steep slopes, she faced a real challenge. There were other constraints. The house had to be economically small- it measures 26 x 28 feet- but designed to provide an illusion of space and privacy for at least two adults and seven children. My mother expected her sister Clara and her five children to spend at least one month of every summer with us. As was the custom in that era, as in the decades preceding it, husbands figured only peripherally in the summer retreat of women and children. Rentals the two sisters had occupied in the past provided examples of inconveniences to be avoided, and Mrs. Gage was able to invent many neat arrangements and space saving devices. Though never schooled in architecture, she had the ability to think and visualize in three dimensions, and the plans she drew were accurate to the tiniest fraction of an inch.
Since the main entrance to the house is on the ridge path, the living room, dining area, and kitchen are actually on the upper floor, while the two principal bedrooms, dividing the width of the house equally, are down a twisted flight of stairs. Two smaller bedrooms, so tiny that they are reminiscent of old-fashioned Pullman compartments, are fitted, one off the living roam but raised three steps, and the other snugly underneath it, partway down to the lower floor. These small cubicles, whimsically named Parlor A and Parlor B, each have a built-in single bunk with drawers underneath and a curtained closet space. The larger rooms, 201 and 202, were named after a line in a romantic song popular during my mother's girlhood. They each have double beds built into upper and lower bunks. The sturdy steps leading to the upper berth conceal drawers for the occupants' belongings. Jean Gage's original plan was that 202 could dorm four little girls; Parlor B would belong to her then pre-adolescent niece, while the eldest of Clara's children, a boy, would have Parlor A. The two sisters would use 201 which, in addition to the built-ins, contained a child's bed for my brother Jack, then three years old. Though never occupied in exactly this way, the cottage was always able to provide comfort and privacy to a greater number of people than its measurements might indicate.
One of the things that Mrs. Gage wished to avoid in her design was the traditional broad front porch. Instead, the living room was made to extend to a full width screened window, displaying a mass of leafy treetops descending to the river and Lake Kalamazoo. On each corner, a square porch could be closed off with French doors. Thus, in good weather, the whole house was open, but closing up when bad weather set in did not sacrifice space and light. The original windows themselves were a clever invention of the creative carpenter-builder, long square-paned panels that were ingeniously hinged to fold up accordion-wise and disappear into a neat rectangular package on each side of the broad-screened expanse.
The cottage was build single handed by a Mr. Allen, a native of Douglas, who over the years had built many cottages in the area, including Edith Barron's. He was not daunted by the apparent inaccessibility of Ox-Bow Hill, having previously driven wagon loads of lumber and building materials through the soft sand of its tilted, uphill trail. He hired a local laborer for a few days of heavy digging and unloading, but from then on he worked alone, depending on his diminutive wife if he happened to need an extra hand to steady some connection. She usually accompanied him, sitting in the shade with her sewing when not called upon to brace a two-by-four. Mr. Allen was very dubious of Jean Gage's meticulous and complicated plans, the like of which he had never seen in a lifetime of building. He begged to be allowed to put up a good, strong, square structure of any size. He had no confidence in what would result from the carefully measured Chinese puzzle box Mrs. Gage was insisting on; he admitted that he did not understand it, but under her guidance he was willing to give it a try. It was only after the house began to take shape that he was able to see what he was doing, and he suddenly found it very exciting. "Like a ship!" he would cry. When the job was finished, he considered it his greatest achievement and often asked permission to bring friends to admire its intricacies.
Allen was not only a master carpenter, he was also an artist who took pleasure in extra touches of beauty. He made attractive, high-backed dinette benches (with storage spaces under the seats), wood boxes disguised as benches, bookcases, cabinets, shelves, and all the doors, including the heavy front door in a kind of antique rustic design my mother had sought and failed to find. He had to be restrained from putting a gracefully curved banister where the plans showed a plain handhold on the steps leading to Parlor A. His eye told him it would be pretty, but measurement proved that it would interfere with opening the front door.
His interest, care and artistic sense translated Jean Gage's complex plan into much more than a raw cabin in the woods. The simple trims added to doors and windows added to the atmosphere of welcome, and my father John Gage, who never got to spend as much time on the hill as the rest of us, added a finished glow to the inner wooden walls by passing a blow torch over every surface. This brought out the natural grain of the wood, or at least added an autumn leaf shine to the interior.
At the time the cottage was built, the only utility provided was water. There were no electricity lines on the hill. We lighted with candles and kerosene and cooked on a full-sized gasoline-powered Coleman stove. We had no refrigeration, but, like other early built places, we had a shaft, a kind of dumbwaiter on a pulley, that lowered into a hole in the ground and kept things moderately cool for short periods. The brick fireplace with its guaranteed-not-to-smoke cast iron interior, still provides warmth and cheer, and, incidentally, appears to anchor the precarious thrust of the house.
My parents called it "Oh-Ja-Jo-Je," a kind of acronym of family names, with an Indian sound suitable to its location. It has welcomed generations of relatives, friends and their connections, close and distant. Alterations, additions and improvements have been made and loads of groceries, luggage, etc., no longer have to be toted uphill by individual strain and sweat, but can arrive by Jeep. With increased development down below, the view is a little different, but still one of the most breath-taking in Saugatuck. There are always pleasant breezes fluttering the leaves of the treetops that the big front window overlooks. Village buildings and boats on the water look like colorful toys, and the lacy ferry can be seen creeping slowly across the river. After more than three score years, the site remains restfully isolated, and although the older place has changed hands often, the Gage cottage is still home to Gages; Jack and Joanne Gage, their children and grandchildren. It stands as a tribute to Jean Richardsan Gage, architect, dreamer, and force of nature; to Mr. Allen, master carpenter and artist, and to John Newton Gage, my father, who stood back of it all.- Helen Gage DeSotoContext
The Gage Cottage is likely the one at 876 Park Street, built 1932, and owned by David and Alison Swan in 2023.
The neighboring property at 870 Park St., built 1914, is owned by Charles Wattles in 2023 and could be the Edith Ryder Barron cottage.Collection
SDHS NL Inserts, Buildings: Homes, cottages and private residences, Family History, Fires and fire departments, Nature, ecology, the landscapeCataloged By
Winthers, SallyAcquisition
Accession
2023.50Acquisition Method
Found in CollectionNotes
SDHS Newsletter insert pages 71-72, 163, 165Location
* Untyped Location
Digital data in CatalogItRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Lone Pine Hill/DuneGeneral Notes
Note
This information was OCR text scanned from SDHS newsletter supplements. A binder of original paper copies is catalog item 2023.50.01Note
A Tale of Two Hills by Helen Gage DeSoto
When the Gage family bought a lot and built their cottage on ox-Bow Hill in the very early 1930s, they were not really the strangers to the area that they had thought they were. My father was very interested to learn that the Macatawa house on Black Lake where he had spent several young boyhood vacations was not far away. Although the property had changed hands since those days and no longer belonged to a relative, he enjoyed taking us to visit and explore some of the scenes he remembered. In his youth Jenison Park, for example, had offered various lively amusements and rides which, while existing in our time in dusty, canvas-shrouded dinginess, still recalled happy memories to him.
At the west end of Black Lake, which lies only a few hundred yards from the shores of Lake Michigan, the changes were even more dramatic. The old-fashioned summer hotel with its long verandah and rocking chairs still stood, but it was no longer the elegant center of activity it had once been and had few guests. The quaint looking shops to its right were largely boarded up, and most of the cabins lining the sandy trail between the hotel and Lake Michigan were shuttered, locked and deserted.
The high wooded slope rising from the southwest shore of Black Lake showed many similarities to our Saugatuck forested dunes, both having been shaped in ancient days by the same powerful winds, but there was one startling difference. The Black Lake hill had once been thickly built up. My father remembered seeing the lights of some dwellings shining from its slope, but the popularity of the place must truly have exploded in the 1920s. More than a hundred cottages were terraced, one above the other on a hillside no more spacious than Ox-Bow Hill in Saugatuck!
By the time of our visit in 1931-32 little was left. All the cottages had been destroyed in a massive conflagration that had broken out off-season, too fierce to be contained. No lives were lost, but no whole structures remained. Fortunately, most of the trees had managed to survive, the root systems not having been affected. By the time we were wandering through the ruins there was no visible charring and the high forest appeared almost normal. A thick second growth half covered broken chimneys, crooked steps, cracked foundations and twisted iron railings. The inhabitants had enjoyed paved walkways through their woods, with easy access to every home, whether lower down or on the summit. For us it was like a visit to an archeological dig or at least a ghost town, but it was also an object lesson about fire on our beloved and vulnerable hills.
Ox-Bow Hill itself was once seriously threatened in those early years and it was only through the quick action on the part of dedicated townspeople that the whole slope was not denuded. As luck would have it my mother was utilizing a spring weekend to begin getting things ready for the summer. Down below, at the river's edge, a property owner was clearing and burning the winter debris accumulated on his land. Although he thought he could control the fire by keeping it within a large metal contained, in practice he couldn't. As he told it later, a sudden gust of wind snatched one burning leaf and grounded it at the base of the hill where flames immediately took off upward and spreading. He made a valiant effort to run uphill after it, trying to beat it out, but the flames were too voracious and too fast for him.
It was the villagers who saw the smoke and came to the rescue. A whole crowd of them crossed the river and came rushing up, carrying pails and kettles. My mother knew nothing of the near-disaster until the people arrived and quickly formed a bucket brigade that finally succeeded in extinguishing both the visible flames and the creeping embers. During most of this the Saugatuck fire engine could be seen inching its way across the Kalamazoo on the chain ferry. The long way around was really a long way in those days. It was fortunate that we were at our cottage and that Harry Newnham had already turned on the water for us.
Some of the trees on the highest point were killed because fire had crept along the roots and for some years it was possible to see the narrow fanshaped path of the burning. Little by little, however, we cut down the dead trees and pruned some of the too luxuriant second growth until no trace of the near-tragedy remained.Note
Raining Toads and Frogs by Helen Gage DeSoto
As my father drove the family car along what is now Park Street, we didn't notice anything unusual, but when we drove into the forest to park at the foot of Oxbow Hill, the ground appeared to be jumping. There were thousands of tiny toads leaping back and forth, landing on low-growing plants and the rough bark of trees, slipping off bent down leaves, and springing up again. I was entranced. When I bent down two or three would immediately come to rest on my palm where I could examine them. If they jumped off I could easily catch others.
They were perfect in every detail - a beautiful medium brown with complex dark markings, prominent eyes, visible pulse, splayed hind legs, and almost transparent miniscule feet. The biggest ones might have been half an inch long, but many were smaller. What to my parents was a mysterious infestation was to me a delight; that is, until I realized that it wasn't possible to walk on the path, no matter how carefully without stepping on some of the creatures.
Later, walking to the chain ferry, we saw that the road along the river was practically paved with squashed and dried toad bodies.
The town, however, appeared to be relatively free of the phenomenon in both its active phase and its residue. Even in the forest they disappeared within a few days, too many to survive in a place they were never intended to inhabit in such number. Our few, harmless snakes must have enjoyed a feast.
The explanation tendered to my parents by more than one city father (names like Force, Newnham, Parrish, Heath) was that the toads had arrived in a powerful deluge. It had "rained frogs and toads" only a couple of days before our arrival. The streets of Saugatuck had been jumping as residents and business people frantically swept the scourge off their property. The fire truck, we were told, had been called into service to hose large numbers of the unwelcome visitors from the streets of town into the Kalamazoo River.
It really happened, but fortunately only once
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Inquiries to Society naturalist John Legge, brought this reply.
"Here's what I learned from my friend Jim Harding, herpetologist at MSU:
I've witnessed the same phenomenon. It happens when toad reproduction is limited to a very short "window" in springs, followed by sufficient rainfall and good survival of tadpoles-which all metamorphose (turn from tadpoles into toads) at about the same time. The ground can literally be covered in little toadlets! Over in the dunes, it could be Fowler's Toads!
So, there you have it. Makes sense to me. The 'raining toads' idea didn't make much sense to me, considering that weather pretty much comes from the west, hence from over Lake Michigan, where ii would be unlikely to pick up any such animals."
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The Gage cottage is on the west side of the Kalamazoo River north of Mt. Baldhead. Helen's brother, Jack says that he recalls that following the year of the toad infestation there was an increase in the number of snakes seen on the hillside. They seemed to be waiting expectantly.Create Date
November 9, 2023Update Date
March 31, 2024