Omer's old courthouse: built fast after a fire, lost the county seat, sold to the Masons for $500

In 1889 the Arenac County courthouse in Omer burned to the ground, and the county did what frontier towns did: it built another one in a hurry. The county hired Angus McDonnell, a local contractor and sawmill owner, who put up a new courthouse on the very same site and had it finished by 1890 for a shade under $3,000. For a brief moment Omer, sitting on the Rifle River, was the seat of county government.

It didn’t last. In 1891 a county-wide vote moved the county seat to Standish, out on the railroad and the main road, and the offices packed up and left. Omer was suddenly stuck with a brand-new courthouse and no county to put in it.

So in 1893 the empty building was sold to the Omer lodge of the Masons for $500 — a striking bargain even then. The Masons settled in and held the place for the better part of a century, which is the only reason it’s still standing. A courthouse with no county might well have been torn down; a lodge full of dues-paying members kept the roof on.

Today the building is back in caring hands as a small museum, with the local historical society watching over it, and it carries real credentials: a Michigan State Historic Site marker from 1976 and a place on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. It’s an easy thing to drive past in tiny Omer and never notice — a modest frame building on a quiet street that was, for about two years, the most important address in the county.