Vogel Center: an early Dutch farm settlement
Dutch families established Vogel Center in the late 1860s, while farming and logging were both beginning to reshape Missaukee County.
The first thing to know about Vogel Center is that its history does not fit into one tidy founding date. The congregation’s history says Jan Vogel and three companions arrived in 1869. A Calvin University article, drawing from Vogel’s memoir, says John Vogel, his brother-in-law Jacob Herweyer, and a few others had secured homesteads in 1867 and arrived in 1868. The careful version is that Dutch homesteaders established the community around 1867-69.
They were part of a very small but growing county. Missaukee County’s master plan says the 1870 census counted 34 households and 130 residents, with nearly half of those families coming from the Netherlands. It identifies Vogel Center as one of the county’s early population centers, in a part of the county where fertile soil suited Dutch immigrant dairy farms.
The original version of this story put the farms before the lumber camps. County records tell a different story. They place Missaukee County’s first logging camp near Vogel Center around 1866 and its first saw-and-shingle mill under construction by 1871. Farming and logging developed side by side here. Logging brought quick growth, then faded as the timber was cut; agriculture became the more durable landscape.
The church followed early. Vogel Center Christian Reformed Church organized in 1872 and celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2022. Sources differ by a year on the first building: the Calvin account says a church followed in 1877, while the congregation dates its first log church to 1878. Either way, the church was established in the community’s first decade and remains active today.
You may also see the congregation call Vogel Center the oldest European settlement in the broad area between Manistee, Traverse City, and Big Rapids. That is best understood as a local tradition, not a settled regional ranking. The better-documented story is plenty strong: Vogel Center was one of Missaukee County’s first population centers, and its Dutch farming roots still show in the fields and church east of McBain.
Where to see it
Vogel Center is a rural community rather than a museum district. Its clearest public landmark is the active Vogel Center Christian Reformed Church at 1789 E. Stoney Corners Road, McBain. Check with the congregation before expecting to see the interior.
Sources
Last reviewed against the listed sources: July 16, 2026.