Indian River Skiff by Great Lakes Boat Building School

The Great Lakes Echo has a nice feature on the Great Lakes Boat Building School in Cedarville that begins:

At the northwest corner of Lake Huron, in Michigan’s eastern Upper Peninsula, is an 80 square-mile town of 240 people, one phone booth – and one boat building school.

That school is growing explosively, bringing the entire community along with it. Experts estimate that a planned expansion of the Great Lakes Boat Building School could bring an additional $2.5 million to residents of Cedarville.

The small town has a rich history of wooden boat building and repair. For over a century, wooden boats have been the primary mode of transportation around the nearby Les Cheneaux Islands. As the boating crafters grew older, the artful skill risked being lost.

To keep its wooden boat building heritage alive, the Cedarville community founded the school in 2005.

“In all of these academic qualifications we have for high school students, we have neglected our need for tradespeople,” said Ken Drenth, former Great Lakes Boat Building School president and current director of the Les Cheneaux Islands Community Foundation. “Everybody doesn’t have to get a four-year university degree. We need plumbers and electricians and wooden boat builders.”

Much more in the Echo!

The Great Lakes Boat Building School shared this on their Instagram. You can read more about their building of an Indian River Skiff on Facebook.