Michigan's Alpine Village

A brief history of Gaylord’s iconic Main Street look

By Kierstin Gunsberg | May 25, 2024

From nomming down smoked brats at Alpenfest to taking in the views from an alpine ski lodge, so many of Gaylord’s experiences and attractions tie back to its downtown Main Street.

Known for its alpine village look, Gaylord’s downtown architecture looks like it’s been pulled straight from the set of Heidi—all that’s missing are the snow capped mountain peaks and wildflower-adorned goats.

“Our alpine theme makes our downtown more distinct and memorable,” says Christy Walcott, Gaylord’s director of marketing and communications at the tourism bureau. From offices to boutiques, nearly every building adheres to the classic white-and-brown design. But how did the inspiration for the chalet-style facade make it all the way to northern Michigan in the first place?

It All Started with a Ski Club

When steel magnate Donald McLouth founded the Otsego Ski Club (now Otsego Resort) in 1939, he styled its lodge in the Tyrol style, synonymous with the quaint mountain villages of Austria, Bavaria, and of course, Switzerland. Nearly a century and a few owners later, Otsego Resort’s alpine motif remains inside and out, with their lodge rooms incorporating timber-framed designs and their restaurants serving up sausages, bavarian beer cheese, and plenty of beer on tap.

As northern Michigan historian Phil Alexander recalls, Otsego Ski Club was the first business in the area to take on the alpine theme. McLouth had even petitioned the rest of town to follow suit, but at the time, no one else shared his enthusiasm for the folksy design concept.

Clearly, McLouth was just ahead of his time. Ultimately, Gaylord’s Alpine Village did come to be—just a couple of decades after it was first proposed.

That’s when a few business folks took a look around and realized the small town was in a bit of a rut. By the late 1950s, Gaylord was “tired, threadbare, and very much down-at-the-heel,” according to Richard H. Drullinger. In his 1967 piece, “A Cinderella Town Wins the Recreation Prince” published by the Yearbook of Agriculture, Drullinger explains that the town was struggling to attract visitors and retain residents.

After a brief boom as a manufacturing hub (when local investors unsuccessfully attempted to transform Gaylord into an industrial mecca à la Detroit) and long past its lumber and agricultural rush at the turn of the century, Gaylord wasn’t exactly bustling. “There were 15 vacant stores in the three blocks of Main Street,” writes Drullinger. “Chronic unemployment among the 2,500 residents of the town and the 7,000 in the county drove young people to look to the cities for jobs and homes.”

That is until Harold Elgas, a marketer, and Gordon Everett, the president of Gaylord State Bank, decided to take up the task of reinvigorating the town.

Getting a Facelift

According to Drullinger and historian Alexander, the two business-minded men, Elgas and Everett, saw a whole lot of untapped potential in Gaylord’s location. Surrounded by hunting woods, fishing lakes, and the impending construction of I-75 that would bring the highway straight through the center of town, Gaylord was primed to grow. Elgas and Everett knew it was time to show northern Michigan’s visitors that the town was worth more than a glance out the passenger window.

Looking to McLouth’s Otsego Ski Club as inspiration, Elgas and Everett took up the torch to once again petition the town to incorporate a theme throughout, and this time it stuck. Everett brought renderings of Main Street’s empty buildings reimagined with added steep pitched roofs, cedar shake shingles, and stone elements to Gaylord officials. Sold on the glow-up, the Chamber of Commerce gave “Project Tyrol” its full approval, and in 1964, the entire town started working on Main Street’s overhaul, with a focus on “modern merchandising with old world charm,” as they called it.

“Cost of the facelifting operation is borne by the individual merchants,” writes Drullinger in that 1967 piece, estimating that the new exteriors and rebuilds cost between $700 and $15,000 depending on how elaborate the facade. (That’s between $6,500 and a whopping $140,000 in today’s money!) The good news is that while the original facades cost a pretty penny to build, the materials used—like stone and cedar—are naturally hearty against the elements, so upkeep since then has been pretty minimal.

Around the same time that Elgas, Everett, and other local leaders were bringing the Alpine vision to life, a particle board manufacturing plant built a factory in Gaylord, bringing a load of fresh jobs—and a market for locally sourced pine and aspen wood, which the product was made with—to the area. Because the plywood manufacturing process was patented by a Swiss businessman, the nod to Switzerland in downtown was even more fitting.

In 1965, only a year after the town began their reconstruction, downtown Gaylord held its first Alpenfest, then called Alpine Festival. Complete with locals dressed up in traditional lederhosen and dirndls and attracting 15,000 visitors to the four-day event, the festival proved McLouth’s original idea a very good one indeed.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Today, the summertime festival draws crowds of nearly 100,000 who come to celebrate the town’s historic Main Street attractions.

Staying On Theme

Since the alpine motif was first introduced in the 1960s, it’s become a bylaw of the downtown development authority (DDA). That means that every business in Gaylord’s downtown district, from Burger King to Circle K, abides by the Tyrol style. And, whether it’s a rainbow of stained glass window panes or faux balconies dripping in summer blossoms, each business’s exterior takes on its own interpretation of the theme. While exploring Main Street, make sure to check out these extra on-theme stops along the way!

Snowbelt Brewing Company: Grab a seat near one of the brewery’s Main Street facing windows and take in the après-ski atmosphere with a bowl of Bavarian-style broccoli and beer cheese soup. The beer and cider there are served “cold as snow,” with everything from lagers to stouts.

Otsego County Historical Society: For the full lowdown on Gaylord’s rise to a top NoMi destination, pop through the quaint doors of the Otsego County Historical Society for an immersive education about Main Street and beyond.

45th Parallel: This northern Michigan-owned lifestyle clothing brand offers fickle spring weather staples from tanks to windbreakers and sits inside one the Alpine Village’s prettiest stone covered buildings.

Alpine Chocolat Haus: No trip to downtown Gaylord’s Main Street would be complete without a stop at the irresistible Alpine Chocolat Haus. Known for their chocolate covered potato chips, the confectionery also carries haus made candies and chocolates, sea salt caramel apples, and Ashby ice cream for those meltier days.

White Birch Outfitters: Edelweiss may be getting ready to bloom, but it’s never too early to daydream about upgrading that sweet ski setup. Decked out in painted bricks and shaker shingles, White Birch Outfitters has slope season covered all year round.