Town: Borland
Population: Unrecorded, Depends on how many people inhabit the few houses in the area.
Reason for decline: Lumber boom town, once the lumber was gone there was no longer a need for a station on the railroad.
History:
Borland was a village on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, 12 miles south of Big Rapids. In it's hay day, Borland was a very active and busy railroad siding. Two of the old buildings remain and can be seen while driving further down the road (177th ave.) from this cache. If you look closely you can still see the foundations of some of buildings that are now gone. The village was settled by John A. Bell in about 1869 and was first called Bell's Crossing. When the GR&I Railroad came through, a station was built named Bell's Siding. Daniel Borland was the owner of the grocery store and also ran a Post office out of it. He became the first postmaster and the settlement was named renamed Borland. The office began operations on Dec. 26 1884, it ceased operations on April 17 1886. Surprisingly, 2 days after closing the office was restored with lumberman Fred S. Nicoles as its new postmaster. About a year later the office closed again with Mr. Borland as its postmaster again. This time it took 2 years for the post office to once again be restored. It operated till May 15, 1905 when the office finally closed its doors for good. Below is a section of a 1900 Deerfeild Twp Map showing Borland. It shows the name as Boreland, I've seen it spelled more commonly as Borland, must just be an alternative name.
Chief Elk Horn of Boreland
The older Gray building down the road with the un-painted siding is the former village grocery store. The store was last used by an old Indian chief called "Chief Elk-horn" until his death in in the 1950's. Dried herbs still line the walls and cabinets of the former shop. Hundreds of people swore the chiefs herbs cured their ills. As late as 1950 a bakery operated on the site of the shop. In 1968 an old rusty bus used by the chief for his 20th century tour remained on site. Residents of this settlement claim he lived to be more than 100 years of age.
Notes: The Cache is a cammo matchstick container. You can park within 5 ft of the cache for easy access. This cache can also be grabbed from the White Pine Trail. Be careful as there is a steep incline at the cache.
ENJOY!
This cache is part of the Michigan's Lost Towns cache series. Visit this link to see the complete list and to submit your own!!