Where the Wind Tastes Like Apples

Can the scent of apples be a part of history?

Out near Michigan Island, the wind can blow strong on an October day. Drifting in the waves there, you might catch the scent of white pine, the smell of sun-heated rock, or a waft of fish. But there is something else, something more faint but undeniable. On certain October days, I swear that I can detect a tinge of apples on that wind. It could be only in my mind, of course, but if history left a scent, the wind off of Michigan Island would smell like apples, and its influence would be felt all the way to the mainland shores and the Bayfield Apple Fest.

Michigan Island is best known for its lighthouses — the Old Michigan Light first lit in 1856, extinguished in 1858, relit in 1869, and then replaced by the New Michigan Island Light (a 118-foot skeleton tower) in 1929. Among the lighthouse keepers, the most well-known would be the Lanes, Ed and Elizabeth who tended that light from 1902 to 1938 (the longest stint of any keepers at a single Apostle Islands light) with Elizabeth planting and tending the famous flower gardens on the lighthouse grounds.

But, another, lesser-known keeper, Roswell H. Pendergast, left his own mark on the island, and a legacy that lives on in the famous Bayfield Apple Fest to this day.

(Roswell H. Pendergast - photograph courtesy of the Bayfield Heritage Association)

As the keeper of the Michigan Island light from 1869 to 1874, Pendergast recognized early the virtue of the cool nights and warm lake breezes and their potential for propagating fruit in the region. Lake Superior creates a kind of microclimate, frost free often until late into October, hot days, cool nights, perfect for apple cultivation, with a growing season as much as a month longer than even lands further south. The lake breezes tinge the apples with just the right touch of sweetness, those blue lake winds helping to ripen apples that taste of lake breezes and waves breaking.

In a wonderful short profile offered by local historian Robert J. Nelson (read it below),

the Bayfield Press reports on October 27, 1870 that Pendergast “is confident apple trees can be to bear thriftily here,” and that he has already begun planting “several thousand trees” on Michigan Island to bear out his confidence. Ever the booster, the paper goes on to trumpet the effort saying, “It is a mistaken idea that we are too far north to follow agricultural pursuits.  With a good soil, no frosts until late in October, our winters no longer and not as cold as those 160 miles south of us, we can safely count this one of the finest farming localities in the state.”

Pendergast was living proof of that, the Johnny Appleseed of Michigan Island. There were other things as well — potatoes, grain, corn, flowers, even attempts at peach, plum and pear trees and a quite impressive ”hennery” — but for Pendergast, it was apples that shined in his eyes.

He and his wife Helen planted over 1,000 trees, using a pair of oxen brought to the island on a barge to till the soil, and keeping detailed records on which varieties thrived in the island climate of warm summer days, lake-moderated autumns, and frost-free fall nights. By the early 1870’s, the Pendergasts were augmenting their $560 annual salary as lightkeepers by selling more than $3,000 in nursery stock to local apple orchards in Bayfield and throughout the region.

Life was not all apple blossoms for the Pendergasts on Michigan Island. In 1873, their infant son, just two months old, drowned there. By 1874, they resigned their station at the lighthouse and moved to the mainland, beginning a nursery and introducing methods and means that helped build Bayfield into the orchard region that it is today.

There were many claims of the great agricultural potential of these islands. A four-foot cucumber, a 70-pound squash, potatoes eight inches around but none have had the staying power or the economic influence of the Michigan Island apple orchard.

The air of October smelled of apples on many of the islands. There were attempts at orchards on South Twin, Ironwood, and Rocky. The Hermit of Hermit island was said to keep “fruit trees.” The McLeod-Bringham farm on Basswood Island had a stand of apple trees, as did farms on Sand Island but none rivaled the efforts of Pendergast.

Today, the orchards of Bayfield’s “Fruit Loop” and beyond are a major economic driver for the local economy. Apple Fest weekend alone brings in an estimated $8 million to $10 million. Yet, Roswell H. Pendergast was never anointed the Apple King. There are no floats commemorating his contributions in the Apple Fest parade and his name is on few, if any, of the caramel-sticky lips of the 50,000 plus visitors to the 2024 Bayfield Apple Fest. Still, no one did more to set the roots of Bayfield’s apple industry in those early days than the one-time keeper at the Michigan Island light where, to this day, at least to me, the October winds still taste faintly and, sweetly of apples.

— Jeff Rennicke