'We're still here': Baldwin's Shrine of the Pines continues to amaze visitors

Aug 01, 2023

BALDWIN — Jim Maxwell chuckled.

“Yep, we’re still here,” the kindly tour guide and caretaker of the historic Shrine of the Pines said on Saturday. “Some days it’s not so busy, some days it is busy, but we’re still here.”

Located on M-37 just a few miles south of Baldwin, the log-cabin style museum is home to a massive collection of early 20th century handcrafted furniture made of tree roots, the great majority of which were literally pulled from nearby rivers by Raymond W. Overholzer over a 30-year period from the early 1920s until his death in 1952.

Using only hand tools – he even handmade his own sandpaper – Overholzer created a unique collection of furniture, all one-of-a-kind items that challenge the imagination.

“Now this, this is the grandest piece in the whole collection,” Maxwell said as he pointed to the dining room table and set of chairs, no two of the latter matched because they were carved and honed of tree roots.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Maxwell said. “And if you look closely, there are even drawers and (cubbyholes) cut and carved into the table to put your personal things in. The table all by itself weighs about 700 pounds and has about 60 inlays.”

In guiding visitors through the unique museum, Maxwell joyfully and comprehensively explains the significance of each of the pieces of furniture, pointing out how each piece was cut and carved using only hand tools, and joined together with old-world style of wooden dowel joinery and a special type of glue made by Overholzer, himself, a glue that he stirred together using fish innards, pine pitch, deer different parts and sawdust.

An accomplished hunter and taxidermist, Overholzer smoothed the surfaces using his homemade sandpaper that he made of sand, used sanding belts from nearby logging mills and pulverized glass. The furniture was then coated with another homemade concoction that included “animal grease.”

And while the dining room table may be the museum’s show piece, a rocking chair also demands close and appreciative inspection.

“They say it’s perfectly balanced, that if you give it a slight push it’ll rock 50 times, all by itself,” Maxwell said. “Me? I’ve only got it to rock 27 times by itself. But I’ll tell you what, it is comfortable.

“Everything in here is made of roots. Mr. Overholzer would go into the nearby rivers and pull the roots out, bring them back, and he’d let them dry out. Then he’d stand back and look at them to see what he could make out of them. He was a ‘visionary,’ that’s for sure, he’d stand back and ‘vision’ what a certain set of roots might look like when he got to work on them, and then he got to work, and that would take him a while.

“The chairs (around the dining room table) for example, took him about 30 days each to make. The checkerboard he made he used blackberry juice to dye half of them, and he kept the other half looking natural.”

Maxwell pointed out how the medicine cabinet “looks like a snake … or an otter, I don’t know for sure.”

Maxwell said Overholzer’s collection was intended as a memorial to the eastern white pine. The property was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1982. The museum includes the dining table and seating for 10; a buffet and a side tables; beds; a game table with chairs; the rocking chair with an accompanying ottoman; a pair of fireplace chairs; a revolving gun rack with hidden drawers for ammunition and more, and an impressive chandelier that hangs in the center of the building.

Also an accomplished taxidermist, Overholzer’s collection includes a fawn, deer head, birds, a fox and more.

Outside the cabin-like museum, visitors can “... walk in the woods (and) experience serenity by walking our trails where woodland paths will take you through towering white pine – paths are wheelchair accessible.”

The Shrine of the Pines is open Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., through Sept. 30. For more information go to the shrineofthepines.com.

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