45. Dingleville and the Wallin Tannery

Location: 135th Avenue, Saugatuck Township
Date: 1830s to present

Wallin Tannery, circa 1872, with owner’s sun Luman T. Wallin in the buggy at far right. The stacks of material are likely animal hides awaiting processing.

As early as 1834 Benjamin Plummer built a sawmill in Saugatuck Township on the creek that carries the overflow from Goshorn Lake to the Kalamazoo River. In 1835 Andrew S. Wells built a tannery just downstream, near the intersection of present-day 64th Street and Clearbrook Drive. The tannery was bought by C. C. Wallin & Sons in 1857. Members of the Wallin family built homes nearby and the area was known informally as Wallinville. The community was enlarged with the addition of a gristmill built for G. P. Heath in 1873 and a sash and door factory. It was Thomas Wallin who first called the settlement Dingleville, supposedly because of the noise from the belled cows grazing around the countryside. The Franklin B. Wallin home, a large white Italianate building west of the remnants of the millpond, still stands. The tannery moved to Jenison, near Grand Rapids, in 1881, when tanbark became difficult to obtain in the Saugatuck area.