Tannery Bay

Loreen Niewenhuis is an author, adventurer, and Great Lakes speaker. She has completed a trilogy of 1,000-mile adventures exploring the Great Lakes and has written three books about the Great Lakes [A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach *a Heartland Indie Bestseller*, A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk *winner of the Great Lakes Great Reads Award*, and A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Island Adventure]. To learn more about her work, or to book her as a speaker, go to http://LakeTrek.com

Tanneries (places that cure hides into useable leather) use a lot of water in the tanning process, so historically they have been located near bodies of water. 

There was once a tannery on the shores of White Lake in NW Michigan (the towns of Whitehall and Montague are on the shores of this inland lake).

A developer has been trying to build condos on the old tannery site for years. It took time to do the clean-up on the site, then it took time to get the money together to fund the project.
He named the development "Tannery Bay."

Discarded signs for the development 

 Some of the machinery from the tannery still sits on the shoreline here:

Huge tumbling drums where the hides were mixed with chemicals

Told you they were huge...

 Some of the details of the tumbling drums: 

Inside one of the tannery drums (through a spider web)

Equipment from the tannery

 Discarded bricks

Discarded equipment

 Tanneries were responsible for a lot of chemical pollution both in small lakes like White Lake, and also in the Great Lakes (White Lake drains directly into Lake Michigan).