Things are happening at Harrisville Harbor!

Some sort of spacecraft seems to have landed where the playground used to be. There are little filling stations for electric cars to recharge. There is a bright blue roof on a Harbor HQ that promises to be a kind of community clubhouse in the future.

There’s a new harbormaster with big plans. His name is Steve Alexander, recruited by mover-shaker Mayor Jeff Gehring to apply for the gig. More on them later.

First, to understand the significance of what is going on at Harrisville Harbor now, some historical context is necessary.

Recreational boating boomed after World War II, buoyed by fiberglass, one of umpteen wartime innovations that transformed American family life in the ensuing Baby Boom years. Fiberglass boats were lighter, more durable, virtually leak-proof, and far less expensive than wooden boats. Suburban families could tow their fiberglass boats on trailers behind their station wagons to the Great Lakes, and off they went!

By the end of the 1950s, it was obvious those new middle-class mariners needed a harbor of refuge between Oscoda and Alpena, a distance of 50 nautical miles that is notorious for its sudden climatic mood changes.

The plans for one were already on the books, part of a plan to cover the Great Lakes with coastal hideaways approved after the war. Construction on the Harrisville Harbor of Refuge finally began in 1960, with construction of a rock breakwater as the center of the project, and culminated the next year.

Harrisville Harbor’s opening in 1961 changed the city of Harrisville. Harrisville State Park had initiated the shift way back in 1920, bringing “car campers” north on Dixie Highway, which eventually morphed into U.S.-23.

But the harbor attracted different sorts of visitors.

Some came to fish. The biological roulette of invasive species set off by the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which brought an influx of sea lamprey, which killed off the native lake trout, until stocks of introduced coho salmon reinvigorated the Great Lakes fishery, and ushered in a charter fishing boat boom in the 1970s. Seventeen charter boats docked at Harrisville Harbor during the height of the boom in 1976.

The most prominent of the colorful charter captains of the era was Capt. Ken Beloskur, who managed to run his boat and operate Captain’s Corner Bar, Harrisville’s unofficial city hall, for 30 years. “The Corner” is now Shotmaker’s Sports Bar and Grill (longtime regulars still call it “the Corner”). Perhaps the last of the charter boat captains fishing out of Harrisville Harbor was Capt. Jeff Gehring, of the good ship Worm Dirt. He is now the mayor of the city.

Lonnie Crampton, who came to Harrisville in 1961, filled me in on all of this. I have his permission to cite him as a source. He said, “Better than being cited by the police.”

In the decades after the harbor’s inauguration, Harrisville developed an unequal summertime socio-economic taxonomy obvious to everyone.

The lowest form of life was the “parkies,” staying in campers, trailers or under canvas. There is an enduring stigma. A guy I know calls state park visitors “tent worms.”

“Townies” held “parkies” in contempt (I was a “parkie” for years). They also despised the “summer people,” but with a kind of awe, because they had two homes (I later became a “summer person”).

But swaggering above all of us came “the boaters.” Tan and sockless in Topsider deck shoes, with jaunty hats and striped shirts and blouses, they arrived in yachts and reeked of Grosse Pointe. I tried to stay upwind of them. I reeked of campfire smoke.

Parkies, townies, summer people and boaters co-existed, without connecting, in summertime Harrisville.

New Harbormaster Steve Alexander hinted at that disconnect in a recent interview with The Alcona County Review’s indefatigable reporter, Mary Weber, published on March 9: “Alexander felt the partnership between the community and the harbor was somewhat strained in the past.”

Watch this space to learn about the course being charted for Harrisville and its harbor.

Eric Paul Roorda is a professor, historian, lecturer, author, and illustrator. He has called Alcona County home for 50 years.