Pleasant Plains Township, United States of America
Shrine of the Pines is a property south of Baldwin, Michigan on highway M-37. It is significant for its collection of early 20th-century American craft furniture. Created by Raymond W. Overholzer over the course of nearly 30 years from the early 1920s until his death in 1952, the collection was inte
nded as a memorial to the eastern white pine which had been logged to near extinction in northern Michigan. The property, which includes the original log cabin built as a gallery space to house the furniture collection, along with the furniture was designated a Michigan State Historic Site on July 20, 1982. Overholzer, a native of Ohio, moved to the community of Marlborough, Michigan with his wife in 1920 during the era of extensive logging. An avid hunter and taxidermist, Overholzer regularly wandered what is now Manistee National Forest hunting game that he would later mount. Deeply concerned that the white pine had been ravaged throughout the area, he began collecting stumps and roots that remained from the logging activity, initially crafting them into mirror frames and bases for his taxidermy. By 1939 Overholzer's collection of handcrafted items, made mostly of found white pine pieces...
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