Web Design in Indian River, MI

Web Design Services in Indian River, Michigan

AppWT Web & AI Solutions has been providing exceptional web design and digital marketing services to Indian River businesses since 1997. Located in Cheboygan County, Indian River is home to approximately 1,977 residents and a thriving business community.

About Indian River, Michigan

History of Indian River

• Settlement here begins as early as 1876, and the community was founded two years afterward by a landowner named Floyd Martin, then surveyed and platted by Oliver Hayden by 1880. The name was taken from the Indian River, the waterway running through the place. A post office opened on September 22, 1879, and that account is sourced in the article to Walter Romig's Michigan Place Names. The twentieth-century story is a religious one. In April 1946 Bishop Francis J. Haas of the Diocese of Grand Rapids went looking for land for a church here so that parishioners would stop travelling long distances to Mass, and a Burt Lake resident, James J. Harrington, helped find it; the state conservation commission granted the land in May 1948. Father Charles D. Brophy, administrator from June 1946, wanted the church named for Kateri Tekakwitha, the seventeenth-century Mohawk woman who set small crosses in trees, but could not, because she had not yet been canonized. The original long house chapel, designed by Alden B. Dow, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, was finished by Memorial Day weekend 1949. The crucifix followed: a redwood timber cut in Oregon and shipped east by rail, assembled in two days and craned onto its foundation on August 5, 1954. The site was renamed Cross in the Woods in 1983.

Landmarks and Places in Indian River

• {'name': 'National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods', 'kind': 'shrine', 'note': 'At 7078 M-68. Declared a national shrine by the USCCB on September 15, 2006. A 55-foot crucifix bearing a 28-foot, seven-ton bronze Christ by Marshall Fredericks, with outdoor and indoor churches, the Holy Stairs and a nun doll museum on the grounds.', 'source': 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_in_the_Woods'}
• {'name': 'Burt Lake State Park', 'kind': 'state park', 'note': 'Inside the CDP on the southeastern shore of Burt Lake.', 'source': 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_River,_Michigan'}
• {'name': 'Indian River', 'kind': 'waterway', 'note': "A 3.9-mile channel flowing from Burt Lake to Mullett Lake, part of the Inland Waterway of Michigan and the source of the community's name.", 'source': 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_River_(Mullett_Lake)'}

The Indian River Economy

• Travel and pilgrimage carry this place. The shrine alone draws between 275,000 and 325,000 visitors a year, and the community sits on the great Inland Waterway of Michigan, the boat route running from Crooked Lake east of Petoskey across the top of the Lower Peninsula to Cheboygan on Lake Huron. Three state and federal routes meet here: Interstate 75 through the center, M-68 across the southern part on its way from Alanson east to Onaway and Rogers City, and M-27, which follows the old US 27 alignment and begins at I-75 within the community before running north to Cheboygan. A tenth business route of I-75, a loop through Indian River, has been proposed. The North Central State Trail passes through the town, and Burt Lake State Park lies inside the community on the lake's southeastern shore. Seasonality shows in the housing: of 1,644 units counted in 2020, 43.7 percent were vacant. No employer, payroll or business-count figure is published in any article consulted.

Community Life in Indian River

• The National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods at 7078 M-68 is the community's defining institution and one of only two national shrines in Michigan, the other being the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared it a national shrine on September 15, 2006. Its crucifix stands 55 feet tall and carries a bronze figure of Christ by the Michigan sculptor Marshall Fredericks, 28 feet from head to toe and weighing seven tons, cast in Oslo and among the largest castings ever shipped across the Atlantic; it was raised into place on August 9, 1959 and secured with thirteen bolts thirty inches long. The grounds hold outdoor and indoor churches, numerous smaller shrines, the Holy Stairs of 1956, twenty-eight steps up Calvary Hill, and a nun doll museum in the lower level of the old long house building. A new church seating a thousand, with windows keeping the cross in view during Mass, was dedicated on June 27, 1997.

Local reference: en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org