03/27/2026
Sometime around 1900, a kid named Ernest used to row across Walloon Lake at daylight, climb out of the boat, and walk four miles through the hills to a little general store in Horton Bay.
He'd buy supplies. He'd listen to the old-timers talk. Then he'd go fish Horton Creek until dark.
That kid grew up to be Ernest Hemingway. And when he sat down to write one of his first short stories — "Up in Michigan" — he described that store exactly as it was: a general store and post office with a high false front, on the main road between Boyne City and Charlevoix, in a town that was only five houses.
That was 1921. The store had already been standing for 45 years by then!
It was built around 1876, when Horton Bay was a lumber town and a man named William Ohle — who'd helped run the local sawmill — supervised its construction.
It was a two-story clapboard building on a fieldstone foundation. False-front Victorian facade. Groceries, hardware, and clothing on the first floor. The proprietor lived upstairs.
On September 3, 1921, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson at the little Methodist church just west of the store. The reception was a chicken dinner at Pinehurst Cottage across the road, hosted by Liz Dilworth.
Somebody tied tin cans and old shoes to the back of a Model T.
Then a local farmer drove the newlyweds to the shore of Walloon Lake, and Ernest rowed his bride across the water to their honeymoon cottage.
By December, they'd sailed for Paris. Neither one ever came back to Horton Bay.
But the store kept going.
It's had roughly 29 different owners across 150 years. Stroud ran it, then his clerk Conrad Schneider bought it. The Foxes had it. The Belnaps ran it through the Depression. The Housels took over in the '70s.
Chip and Claudia Lorenger held it the longest — over 20 years — and when they arrived, the building was falling apart. Every support beam was rotten. They put steel underneath, replaced the front and back walls, gutted both floors, and rebuilt it from the inside out. The false-front silhouette stayed. The bones changed.
One thing survived every single transition: a 150-year-old bakery display case that's still in use today.
Now it's Molly McCoy and Greg Cummings Jr.'s turn. They took over in 2022 and gave the place a whitewashed makeover without losing what makes it what it is.
The tagline says it all: "from bait to bubbles." You can buy nightcrawlers and champagne in the same visit. Cinnamon rolls and Crooked Tree Breadworks baguettes sit in that old bakery case next to Hemingway paperbacks and Crow & Moss Chocolate from Petoskey.
The upstairs where the original shopkeeper used to sleep is now an inn you can book — two bedrooms, a clawfoot tub, a writing desk stocked with letterpress cards.
And Horton Bay itself? It hasn't changed that much. That's the thing. An author once wrote that it's the only locale in Hemingway's Michigan that has remained virtually untouched.
The white clapboard buildings are still there.
The creek still runs west of town.
Lake Charlevoix is still down a steep sandy road through timber.
Every 4th of July, there's a parade organized by Samuel Horton's great-granddaughter — one of the shortest parades you'll ever see, and one of the best.
The store is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's in Japanese and German tour books as one of the top 10 Hemingway sites in the country.
Seasonal only, the store reopens for its 150th year in June 2026.
Horton Bay General Store
