The fishing port behind Bay Port's fish sandwich festival

The little community of Bay Port, on Saginaw Bay, has a commercial fishing story that is still visible at the water. The Bay Port Historical Society dates the Gillingham fishery to 1886 and the Bay Port Fish Company to 1895. The surviving waterfront mattered enough to be listed as the Bay Port Historic Commercial Fishing District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

The fish company is not just a historic label. Its current fresh-fish page says fish still arrives in Bay Port by boat and truck for sale at the counter. That makes this one of those rare historic districts where the trade that shaped the place has not entirely disappeared.

Then there is the fish sandwich. Local histories date Henry and Edna Engelhard’s first Bay Port sandwiches to 1949. The fish company’s festival history says the sales began as a way to help pay their daughter’s college tuition and grew into the Fish Sandwich Festival in 1978. That is a good local origin story, but it is not evidence that Bay Port invented every fish sandwich. What Bay Port can claim is its own long-running recipe, company, and festival tradition.