My Journey Thus Far

I was recently laid off from work, so I thought I'd start a blog to kill some time. I wanted to highlight some of the oddities in Holland, Michigan. Holland's a lakeside tourist town, so most of the more unusual aspects of town are already well-documented; the last remaining, fully functional, wooden windmill in the Western hemisphere, and the surrounding Dutch village, for example. Wooden shoe factories and tulip farms; hell, even our annual Tulip Time festival make Holland unique, but I was looking for deep cuts, hidden spots, locals-only venues, and other truly weird stuff. What I found was so much more than that.

I started my search at the library, picking up and paging through assorted books in the Local History section. I was expecting to find a collection of 10-foot tall bronze tulips in a billionaire's backyard, evidence that AC Van Raalte was cremated and his ashes mixed in the mortar at Pillar Church, or maybe that Mad Hatter from New Holland Brewing is the same beer brought over by Dutch immigrants in the 1850's. Sadly, none of that has come to fruition (yet).

I moved onto the local museum, the archives at Hope College, and a few online sources, including a New Deal-era book on the State of Michigan, Ottawa County property records, and a geocaching site to find out more about my first few entries: Ghost towns and abandoned train lines, Indian villages that have been whitewashed out of history books, spite cemeteries, and (as cliche as it sounds) buried treasure.

I've got a few odds and ends to tie up, then my hope is to get some drafts written and begin a regular posting schedule. I'm on Twitter @TulipDispatch and available at tulipcitydispatch@gmail.com. We'll see where this rabbit hole goes!

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